WoW Engineering

Engineering is a primary crafting profession that can create many useful, unique and amazing items, as well as junk (but often explosive junk!). Engineers can create helpful items for generally all classes to be used in PvE or PvP. To counterbalance this usefulness, most items crafted by engineering require engineering skill to use, and many of these items come with a chance for unexpected backfires with often hilarious results. Hunters in particular see much use for engineered guns and scopes.

Engineering profession recipes are known as schematics. Some notable engineer-crafted items are:

•  [Jeeves], providing repair services to everyone and bank access to the engineer.
•  [MOLL-E], allowing the engineer to summon a portable mailbox they or any ally can use.
•  [Blingtron 5000], who grants one free gift per day per account to whoever speaks with him.
•  [Gnomish Army Knife], allowing a chance of resurrecting a player on a long cooldown.
•  [Mekgineer's Chopper]/ [Mechano-Hog], an epic ground mount with an extra seat.

There are also several engineer-only enhancers to gloves, belts, and cloaks (including a well known parachute cloak enhancement).

Grand Master Engineers have access to an auction house of their own faction in Dalaran by visiting Horde Reginald Arcfire or Alliance Brassbolt Mechawrench in the engineer shop Like Clockwork. (Each of these NPCs are visible only to members of that faction.)

For the Alliance faction, Gnomes benefit from a +15 racial bonus to their Engineering skill.

Training as an Engineer

Engineering is taught by various engineering trainers located throughout the world. Prospective engineers must be at least level 5. Initial training costs 10c, granting the Apprentice level with a potential skill of 75 and access to a few starting engineering schematics. More schematics can be learned from trainers or found throughout the world as the engineer raises their skill level.

The following are the required levels and potential skill of each stage of the profession:

Advancing as an Engineer

Crafting items is the only way to progress through the stages. Plans will appear as one of four colors in the profession window, with a certain chance for a skill up (gaining a point):

• Orange: Will always skill up. When indicated (with a number and up arrow to the right of the recipe name), recipe will skill up by the shown number for each craft.
• Yellow: Will almost always skill up.
• Green: Will sometimes skill up.
• Grey: Will never skill up.

As engineering skill increases, plans will eventually change from orange to yellow, yellow to green and green to grey. Only by finding higher skill schematics can one continue to progress through the profession. Approximately every 5-10 points, new schematics will become available to learn from the trainers. Alternatively, schematics can be looted from corpses, given as quest rewards, or can be purchased either from vendors or from the auction house. All schematics have a requisite engineering skill to be able to be learned and crafted. Additionally, some schematics cannot be gotten until you have a certain reputation standing with a given faction.

Schematics usually require the use of some additional item, which will need to be in your inventory or equipped. Each schematic will show what it requires. This may include:

•  [Arclight Spanner]
•  [Blacksmith Hammer]
•  [Gyromatic Micro-Adjustor]

You may also be required to use an anvil. Anvils can be found throughout the world, particularly in civilized areas such as cities near a forge or Blacksmithing Trainers. At high level, engineers can create their own Thermal Anvils to use or sell.

Companion Skills

By far the best option for your second primary profession is mining. The vast majority of the materials you need for Engineering recipes are acquired through mining. The only other profession that might be mildly beneficial is skinning, since a small number of engineering recipes use leather.

Note: If you have an alt with the Mining profession (such as a blacksmith), and that character can pass materials to your engineer, then the jewelcrafting profession would be a good secondary profession. This is primarily because most engineering items only require skill in engineering and are not level dependent, and the engineering skill can be rapidly advanced by making blasting powder, dynamite, and bombs for personal use. Thus, low-level characters can equip themselves with powerful engineering gear, making leveling faster and easier. This also gives such engineers a distinct advantage in low level battlegrounds (such as Warsong Gulch) as they will be far better equipped than comparable non-engineers. Jewelcrafting can then be used with the same basic materials to craft early rings, amulets, and trinkets - making the character with this combination even more powerful. In addition, jewelcrafting allows  [Prospecting] raw minerals to produce gems, which are used quite extensively in engineering schematics.