Note: this
page is out of date and is just here for legacy sake. We have a new Inscription page that is more up to date.
Go here => Leveling Inscription
The GotWarcraft Inscription Leveling Guide
for Cataclysm 4.3
Inscription is the process of taking various herbs, milling them down to pigments, creating inks from those pigments, and then creating glyphs, cards, scrolls of stat buffing, and various other
items. It's a great way to add several small, permanent, buffs to your
character.
What the glyphs do is enhance one of your character's abilities in
some way. For example, Glyph
of Eviscerate adds 10% to your
Eviscerate crit chance. Other glyphs change cooldown times, cut mana
costs, increase ranges, and so on. See below for other items that can
be created.
If you would rather have an in-game Inscription
guide, along with
one for all the other professions, helping you every step of the
way and showing you where to go and what to do whether you're farming
(or buying) your own materials, then here's
your guide.
Glyphs come in three flavors: Prime, Major, and minor. In addition
to glyphs you can make books (off-hand items,) a few relics, stat scrolls,
self-only shoulder enchants, enchanting vellums, and a few other items.
Most of the glyphs and such are learned from the trainers, but a number
of other glyphs are learned via:
Minor
Inscription Research - Most of the minor glyphs
are learned with this skill. The cooldown resets at midnight, server
time. This also creates a couple of random lew level scrolls. When
you have discovered all the Glyphs that you can through this skill
you will still be able to use it, but you will only create the scrolls.
Northrend
Inscription Research - Another research skill. The cooldown
resets at midnight, server time. It works like the minor research
skill, but higher level scrolls are created.
Book
of Glyph Mastery -
these books are rarely dropped from Northrend mobs. They're green and
BoE and can be traded or sold.
There was a rumor that the need for these books would go away in patch
4.2, but that was changed by Blizzard. You will
still need to buy or find these books to get the Glyphs that
are unique to them. Spend a ton of
gold and learn a bunch of glyphs quickly, w/o the research cooldown.
As of 4.3 there are 54
Glyphs that these books will teach.
The books will not
teach you any other glyphs. You will still need to so your daily research and read
books in order to get them all.
All Inscription recipes are either bought off the trainer
or discovered through research or the books. It's certainly
possible that some glyphs or other Inscription recipes will appear
as drops off some critter or boss, somewhere. As of Cataclysm 4.3 this
hasn't happened, so maybe it won't. Ever.
The old way: To install a glyph you needed to buy, beg, borrow, steal,
or create an appropriate glyph and then find a Lexicon
of Power. Generally these are (still) located next to the Inscription
trainers.
The new way: Just like an item enchant, you buy the glyph and "right
click" it. You will permanently "learn" it by doing so. All glyphs learned
will be listed on the "glyphs tab" of your talents window.
To install a glyph just drag it from the right area to the appropriate
slot in the left area.
Note the Dust
of Disappearance at
the bottom. This is required to change any installed glyphs.
This means that you can reset your glyphs for any particular situation.
Keep a stack in your bags at all times. Need a couple of glyphs
for one boss, but others for a different boss? No problem, just
swap them.
If you're level 80 or lower you can use Vanishing
Powder instead, also found at the same vendor.
This also means that once they are learned you will not need to ever
again by those glyphs. Buy them all, learn them, and then swap back
and forth as necessary.
The basic process to make a glyph, or any other inscription item,
is this:
Buy a Virtuoso Inking Set from the Inscription supplier.
Buy a stack of the appropriate herb (see below for the herb lists.) You might also
be able to buy the inks or pigments directly off the Auction House and skip the milling
step.
Mill the herbs into pigments
Process the pigments into inks
Grab a stack of the appropriate parchment from the Inscription
Supplies Vendor or Trade Goods vendor
Make your items. Every glyphs costs three inks and one piece of
parchment to make.
Other items, such as Relics and Darkmoon Cards,
will require additional mats, such as Eternal Life or Frozen
Orbs or Volatile Whatever.
What You Can Inscribe
Like any other WoW profession there is more to Inscription than just
glyphs. You can hop over to WoWhead for
a complete list of glyphs and other inscribed items for your particular
class, but here's the short list:
Glyphs, of course.
Scrolls of <stat.> Scribes can create all
those Agility/Int/etc. scrolls. Want a bunch of +100 Agility (or
Int or Str or Spirit) scrolls? Buy them off the AH or ask a scribe.
Tomes, held of the "off hand," such as Faces
of Doom
Vellums, which allow enchants to place enchants on scrolls,
and then pass them around or sell them like any other scroll. Yes,
you can now buy a scroll of Mongoose (if a 'chanter has
bothered to make one and post it on the AH)
Cards - Darkmoon cards of various levels
are now being made by Scribes.
Relics - Just the thing for Paladins, Death Knights,
and Druids. You will be able to make i377 PvP relics and i359 PvE relics.
Why Inscription is Cool
Why is Inscription cool? Let's see...
Relatively cheap to level - You won't need exotic items, such
as TrueGold, and you can level the entire way from 1 to 525 for less
than the materials cost of some engie items. Pretty much the only
thing you'll need is herbs and supplies from the Vendors, but see
#2.
Cataclysm relics and items will require some Volatile items (Earth,
Water, etc.) and some require other items which can be found on a
vendor in Twilight Highlands. Alliance
vendor, Horde
Vendor. Acces to the vendor will require you to do enough of
the Twilight Highlands quests to get portal access Storm or Org.
Alternatively, you can often buy them off the Auction House, usually
at a small premium.
Glyphs are cheap enough to make that you can make and learn all
the glyphs for your class, probably for less than 500 gold.
Tomes, cards, shoulder inscriptions. and more.
It can be a decent money making profession.
Where is Everything Located?
To train up to skill level 525 see the Inscription Trainer in any
of the Azerothian capital cities. You don't
need to do any special recipe quests, just buy the recipes and
skill promotions from the trainers. Ask one of the city guards for
exact directions.
Materials Needed for Inscription
To make any of the ink needed for Inscription yu will need to have
some herbs, which is why Herbalism is
the perfect companion skill for Inscription.
The herbs are milled into
pigments, and each milling requires five herbs. Each time you mill
a 5 stack you will receive 1 to 4 (usually 2 or 3) common pigments
and you might receive a rare pigment. The latter is used for the
special inscriptions, such as cards. Generally any stack of 20 herbs
will yield 10 pigments (5 inks) and one or two rares.
Note that higher level
herbs will give a slightly higher quantity of pigments than lower
level herbs. For example, Cinderbloom give
1-3 Ashen Pigments and Whiptail gives
1 to 4. You will also need a higher level of skill to mill the higher
level herbs.
You then process the pigments into inks (you will pick up th ink
creating skills from the trainers, there is a different one for every
ink.) It takes two pigmnets to create one common ink, one pigment
to create one rare ink.
Once you have your inks you will need parchment to
create your glyphs and other items. All parchment papers can be bought
from the Inscription Supply vendor next to the trainer.
The cool thing about the herbs required is that you can use any of
the herbs from a set of herbs, rather than just one herb. To create Midnight
Ink, for example, you can use any of these herbs, five at a time:
Briarthorn, Bruiseweed, Mageroyal, Stranglekelp, or Swiftthistle. Use
whichever is cheapest or easiest to buy/gather, the drop rate of the
pigments is exactly the same for each of the herbs in a set.
Note: You don't need all of the herbs from
a group, any of the herbs from a group will do. So use whichever
is cheapest. Allso notice that you don't need exotic herbs, such as
Fel Lotus or Frost Lotus. See the next section for the herb lists.
Each glyph will require three inks to create and will award three
skill points (if it's orange to you.)
Most glyphs only require one
piece of parchment. Items such as Tomes will require more materials,
and a very few
require mats that aren't inks or parchments, such as the Frozen
Orb,
required by Faces of Doom.
The new relics, such as Tatooed
Eyeball, will require items that are
either dropped by various mobs or which can be bought from a vendor
in Twilight Highlands (you have to do some of the TH quests to get
access to these vendors.) In addition, you will need some of the
Volatile Air etc.
These mats also appear on the Auction House
at, usually, higher prices.
Still, making these relics will cost you a tiny fraction of what it
costs to make high end Blacksmithing or Engineering stuff.
Keep an eye on pigment and ink prices, too. Sometimes
they're cheap enough to be worth your while. My personal targets for
buying are:
herbs - 1g each, 20g per stack (yields about 5 inks)
inks - 4g each, 80g per stack
pigments, 2g each.
This works out to a cost of about 12g per glyph. Whether or not you're
gathering your own herbs, buying the pigments and inks can save a lot
of clicking.
Leveling Inscription is just about the same as leveling any
other crafting skill. Buy a bunch of mats, camp the trainer, buy whichever
skills are available, train the skill while it's orange (if possible,)
and so on. Same here, with a couple of differences.
Inscription skills go from orange to yellow to green to gray very quickly.
So the typical routine will be to buy a skill, level your skill by
five points, then buy a new skill and level the new
one for five points, and so on. Note: Since Cataclysm
all the crafting skills have various items that will award different
amounts of skill points per creation. For Inscription:
All Glyphs award three skill points each, while
orange, so
you will usually be making two at a time for your 5 points.
Scrolls, inks, misc items, shoulder enchants, cards, etc. award
one point each.
The skill level 475+ books and relics award 5 points
each.
The general routine is this:
Grab your new skills
Grind up your hebs and make the appropriate inks. (Keep an eye on the Auction
House, you might be able to find pigments and inks for cheap with any luck.)
Pick a glyph to make and make two
Keep an eye on your skill level
Every five points, usually, you will get your new skills.
repeat until 500, after that you will be making relics and such.
Which glyphs to pick as you level? It doesn't matter. They all cost
the same and give the same number of points. Pick the ones that you
or your friends can use or that you can sell. You can use your own
Auction House research for the selling part, or use an addon like the
tycoon gold addon. Remember
that they gray out very quickly.
When you get near 500 skill you will need the inferno inks
(burning embers) from the Cata herbs. You will no longer
be able to level by making glyphs. It's not awful, since the items
you will be making return 3 to 5 points each. These items also sell
decently well and are far cheaper to make than
the other high end crafted items from the other professions.
If you're bored of crafting you can make money by selling
the inks. Blackfallow ink will get your costs back and Inferno
Ink will make you some money.
While it sounds expensive to buy a ton of herbs, keep in mind that
you can probably level Inscription from 0 to 400 for less then the
cost of a few advanced points of something like Enchanting or Blacksmithing
and all the way from 1 to 525 for less than the cost of one MechanoHog.
Keep all of the Moonglow Ink and the Snowfall Ink that you make. You
will need them for your Minor and Northrend Inscription Research. Inferno
Ink is used with some of the Cataclysm items (not the glyphs, though.
The other rares can be kep or sold, depending on what you want to
make.
As mentioned above: Any of the herbs in any group
will do, you do not need to have a few of one and
a few of another. Just gather whichever is easiest and/or buy the cheapest
off the Auction House. You can use something like Auctionator to
make shopping lists which will make buying easier.
Save all surplus inks. Unlike other professions, high level characters
do have use for low level Glyphs, such as Pyroblast.
If you're leveling this skill to make gold than you will have need
all of the common inks. The rares are your choice, though you will
need them at 500+.
If you have a bunch of Blackfallow Ink you can trade it to
the Ink Trader (next to the trainer) for other common inks at a 1:1
ratio and for rare inks at a 10:1 ratio.
Just add in the names of the herbs you're using. There is a limite
to how many lines you can have in one macro, so if you end up milling
lots of different herbs you will want two or more macros.
Note: All stacks of herbs
in your bags have to be in multiples of 5: 5, 10, 15, 20. If they're
not then the macro will be unable to continue. For example, if you
have two Cinderbloom herbs left over then you will get an error message
that says something like, "not enough herbs..." regardless
of how many stacks of any other herb you might have.
Also, If that stack of 2 Cinderbloom comes first in
your bags, before larger stacks, then it will stop the macro. So either
put those 2 herbs in the bottom of your bag or send them elsewhere.
All your herbs should be in stacks of some multiple of 5.
In-game Professions Guide
I've made a ton of gold (see pic)
with inscription since it went live, one month before Wrath was released.
(Since the 3.1 patch that number is much higher, I bounced
off the old gold cap.) As far as I'm concerned it's a pretty killer
money maker.
One of the things that will make your Inscription leveling even faster
than the above guide is an in-game guide. Everything you
need to know will be presented in a small window in your game screen.
It will also show you all the mats you will need and where to farm
them if you don't want to buy them off the Auction House.
The guide also includes all of the
other professions. Want to do Inscription and then level
some other profession? You're covered.
Think of the convenience and all
the time you will save by not having to bounce back and forth to
a web based guide.
Go here and
grab your Dugi
Professions Guide, now. Before you level up another profession.
By the way, that same guide also comes with an achievements guide.
You can level your professions and then earn a pile of achievements.
Pretty cool, huh? Get it here.
There used to be something here, now there is not.
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