Guide to Leveling Blacksmithing and Making Gold in Shadowlands

One of the core new systems being introduced in Shadowlands is the Legendary Crafting system. Similar to the Legion Legendary system, everyone will eventually be able to craft and equip a legendary item on your character once you have the required components. There are several components required to craft a legendary item, one of which is a piece of armor or jewelry created through a crafting profession. Blacksmithing is used to craft all of the plate armor pieces.

It is important to note — while these crafted armor pieces are required to create a legendary item, they are not soul-bound. This means that you can buy them on the auction house or get someone else to craft them for you. However, they require lots of materials to make and may be extremely expensive in the first few weeks of Shadowlands. This also means that if you are a Blacksmith, Shadowlands launch could be an opportunity to make lots of gold if you focus on crafting the right legendary pieces early.

Additionally, Blacksmithing offers an excellent set of starter gear, better than the equivalent that you could make in BfA or Legion. As a Blacksmith, you can create a full set of 151 item level gear, which is good enough to do heroic dungeons with. This might be difficult at the start of the expansion since ore will be expensive, but depending on prices could be worth investing in.

Lastly, with Shadowlands we are seeing the return of two long lost Blacksmithing items — Sharpening Stones and Weightstones. These stones are consumables that will buff your attack power by a small amount for an hour while using the weapon. These will be highly desired throughout the expansion.

Leveling from 1-100 in Shadowlands Blacksmithing is potentially fast, but depends on how much ore you have access to. Early on in the expansion you should expect ore to by quite expensive, so you may want to go Mining yourself for your own source of crafting materials. Below is the easiest way to go about leveling from 1-100.

1. 1-10: 10x Porous Weightstone — 10x Porous Stone, 10x Shrouded Cloth
2. 10-16: 3x Ceremonious Gauntlets — 24x Laestrite Ore, 3x Luminous Flux
3. 16-18: 2x Laestrite Skeleton Key — 4x Laestrite Ore
4. 18-20: 1x Ceremonious Shield — 9x Laestrite Ore, 1x Luminous Flux
5. 20-26: 2x Ceremonious Breastplate — 24x Laestrite Ore, 4x Luminous Flux
6. 26-30: 2x Ceremonious Axe — 16x Laestrite Ore, 6x Luminous Flux
7. 30-36: 3x Ceremonious Greaves — 36x Laestrite Ore, 6x Luminous Flux
8. 36-40: 2x Ceremonious Pauldrons — 16x Laestrite Ore, 4x Luminous Flux
9. 40-45: 5x Ceremonious Blade — 25x Laestrite Ore, 15x Luminous Flux
10. 45-50: 5x Crafter's Mark I — 35x Laestrite Ore, 25x Luminous Flux
11. 50-60: 77x Shadowghast Ingot — 77x Solenium Ore, 77x Sinvyr Ore, 77x Phaedrum Ore, 77x Oxxein Ore, 308x Luminous Flux
12. 60-65: 10x Shaded Weightstone — 10x Shaded Stone, 10x Lightless Silk
13. 65-71: 3x Shadowsteel Waistguard — 12x Laestrite Ore, 21x Shadowghast Ingot, 3x Elethium Ore, 6x Luminous Flux
14. 71-80: 7x Shadowsteel Gauntlets — 35x Laestrite Ore, 49x Shadowghast Ingot, 7x Elethium Ore, 14x Luminous Flux
15. 80-92: 4x Shadowsteel Breastplate — 24x Laestrite Ore, 48x Shadowghast Ingot, 8x Elethium Ore, 12x Luminous Flux
16. 92-100: 3x Shadowsteel Greaves — 18x Laestrite Ore, 36x Shadowghast Ingot, 6x Elethium Ore, 9x Luminous Flux

For 1-100, this comes out to the following totals.

• 10x Porous Stone
• 10x Shrouded Cloth
• 278x Laestrite Ore
• 105x Luminous Flux
• 10x Shaded Stone
• 10x Lightless Silk
• 154x Shadowghast Ingot — either the materials to make these, or the 77 ingots themselves. The materials are 77x Solenium Ore, 77x Sinvyr Ore, 77x Phaedrum Ore, 77x Oxxein Ore, and 308x Luminous Flux. The materials are sure to be cheaper early on in the expansion.
• 24x Elethium Ore

Blacksmithing offers some excellent ways of making gold, particularly in the beginning of the expansion. The best ways are outlined below.

This is by far the biggest benefit to having Blacksmithing in Shadowlands. As I mentioned above, in Shadowlands you can craft legendary items. For more information on how to craft these items, check out the guide linked below.

One of the required components for forging a legendary is that you need a crafted piece of gear of the appropriate rank as a template of sorts to craft your legendary item with. These are specific items, and for Blacksmithing these are the "Shadowghast" armor pieces. Players will want specific armor pieces because legendary power can only be utilized in specific gear slots depending on the legendary, meaning not everyone will want the same pieces.

• Helm — Shadowghast Helm: 30x Shadowghast Ingot, 15x Enchanted Elethium Bar, 30x Luminous Flux, 15x Orboreal Shard
• Boots — Shadowghast Sabatons: 25x Shadowghast Ingot, 10x Enchanted Elethium Bar, 25x Luminous Flux, 10x Orboreal Shard
• Chest — Shadowghast Breastplate: 30x Shadowghast Ingot, 15x Enchanted Elethium Bar, 30x Luminous Flux, 15x Orboreal Shard
• Shoulders — Shadowghast Pauldrons: 25x Shadowghast Ingot, 10x Enchanted Elethium Bar, 25x Luminous Flux, 10x Orboreal Shard
• Pants — Shadowghast Greaves: 30x Shadowghast Ingot, 15x Enchanted Elethium Bar, 30x Luminous Flux, 15x Orboreal Shard
• Gloves — Shadowghast Gauntlets: 25x Shadowghast Ingot, 10x Enchanted Elethium Bar, 25x Luminous Flux, 10x Orboreal Shard
• Belt — Shadowghast Waistguard: 25x Shadowghast Ingot, 10x Enchanted Elethium Bar, 25x Luminous Flux, 10x Orboreal Shard
• Bracers — Shadowghast Armguards: 20x Shadowghast Ingot, 8x Enchanted Elethium Bar, 20x Luminous Flux, 8x Orboreal Shard

The best pieces to craft early are going to be the Chest and Pants, so Shadowghast Breastplate and Shadowghast Sabatons. These should be the most desired pieces initially since several plate specializations can all use one these slots for their BiS legendary powers. In general more people will want the pieces that offer the most stats, meaning Helms, Chests, Pants, and Shoulders. If you can craft these early on to put on the auction house, you should be able to charge a decent amount of gold for eager players looking to quickly get a legendary item.

Legendary items can be crafted in ranks. Higher ranks of legendary items require more materials to craft, but will be higher item level and thus will give more stats. You will learn the rank 1 patterns from the Blacksmithing trainer, and from there you can earn higher ranks of specific armor pieces by crafting multiple copies of the previous rank until you have enough "experience" that you will automatically be given the next rank. Overall, you need to earn 225 total "experience" in a specific slot to learn how to craft the rank 4 version of that piece of gear, which is the highest rank in the first tier of Shadowlands. Each new rank requires 75 experience in the previous rank, which equates to 15 crafts per rank.

1. You start with Rank 1 of a recipe from your Trainer.
2. To learn Rank 2, you must craft 15x of the Rank 1 pattern.
3. To learn Rank 3, you must craft 15x of the Rank 2 pattern.
4. To learn Rank 4, you must craft 15x of the Rank 3 pattern.

This rank up process has to be done for every piece of gear that you want to craft higher ranks for. As you can see, this requires lots of materials, and if you wanted to learn the rank 4 pattern for every single slot you are talking about thousands of materials, which will take significant time and gold.

Blacksmiths can also craft excellent starter gear for fresh Level 50 and 60 characters. The Level 50 gear is the "Ceremonious" set of gear that ranges from item level 99 to 129, such as the Ceremonious Breastplate. Blacksmiths can also craft ilvl 100 weapons such as the Ceremonious Axe. This lower ilvl armor will probably not be popular or profitable to start however, since the ore could be better used for the 60 set or for legendary crafting, and more importantly you can quickly replace the gear just by questing. The Level 60 gear is the "Shadowsteel" set of item level 151 gear, such as the Shadowsteel Breastplate. The Shadowsteel gear specifically will be quite popular at the start of Shadowlands since it is a quick way for fresh characters to become geared enough for heroic dungeons. For making gold, you could sell full sets of the ilvl 151 Shadowsteel gear early on to newly leveled characters, which would be in high demand.

• To craft a full set of 99-129 ilvl Ceremonious plate armor (9 pieces), you would need 69x Laestrite Ore and 11x Luminous Flux.
• To craft a full set of 151 ilvl Shadowsteel armor (9 pieces), you would need 40x Laestrite Ore, 66x Shadowghast Ingot, 11x Elethium Ore, and 18x Luminous Flux.

Additionally, you can learn how to make Crafter's Mark I. Crafter's Marks are optional reagents for when you craft armor than can upgrade the armor depend on the rank of the mark and the item level of the crafted item. There are four ranks of Crafter's Marks.

• Crafter's Mark I is learned from the Blacksmithing Trainer in Oribos.
• Crafter's Mark II is bought from Venari in The Maw.
• Crafter's Mark III is bought from Archivist Janeera, the Revendreth Quartermaster. This requires Revered.
• Crafter's Mark IV is currently unknown.

As I mentioned above, weapon stones have returned in Shadowlands. These are consumables that players can use which will give them an AP bonus for 1 hour per use while the enchanted weapon is equipped. These stack on top of other enchant and consumable buffs, meaning they will be widely used by players in most PvE content, and thus will be in high demand.

• Porous Sharpening Stone — 2x Porous Stone
• Porous Weightstone — 1x Porous Stone, 1x Shrouded Cloth
• Shaded Sharpening Stone — 2x Shaded Stone
• Shaded Weightstone — 1x Shaded Stone, 1x Lightless Silk