Here are my top 3 tips for making sure you are ready to make the most of your profession as soon as the Cataclysm hits.

1 – Have a stock of Titanium and Saronite. It is very likely that the lower levels between 450 and 525 will require a quantity of this. Players may mistakenly be selling it off cheap before the expansion hits in the belief that it will soon be redundant.

However, the first 10 or 20 items you craft to get to perhaps 440 or 445 will more than likely need a great amount of the existing minerals. You will get a head start in the race to 525 Blacksmithing and Illustrious this way.

2 – Levelling you Blacksmith to character level 85 is very important. High end quest, reputation, dailies etc. will all help you gain the recipes and experience you need to craft at the highest level.

3 – Be a miner! How many Blacksmith’s are not miners. OK this doesn’t matter so much if you have multiple characters, but supporting a Blacksmith without a max level miner is very very expensive.

I’ll use Saronite as the example. For the three or four weeks after Wrath of the Lich King hit the shops Saronite was fetching over 100g a stack (some servers record almost 180g a stack). It now fetches rarely more than 26g, and that’s what vendors will give you! Having a level 525 illustrious miner will be vital.

If you want to take the opportunity to really rake in the gold after Cataclysm hits to make the great new items that the expansion will brings before they become too common, then you don’t want to waste your gold and profit on buying materials for the massive over-price that you will need to pay.

Getting to Illustrious level and 525 will be hard work. A little preparation will go a long way

Get your Blacksmith 525 Illustrious ready by downloading our Free Blacksmith Guide Or get our other free guides at our Free Warcraft Guides page