Enchanting

Enchanting is a primary profession in which characters use magical formulas to grant permanent augmentation to armor, weapons and other items. Enchanting recipes require the use of special Enchanting ingredients which can be gathered by disenchanting items of uncommon or better quality or found as loot. Using these ingredients enchanters can make items more powerful by adding a statistic bonus like strength or intellect or many other options.

See Enchantments by slot for a list of enchantments and their benefits.

Blood Elves have Arcane Affinity, which provides a bonus of +10 to their Enchanting skill.

Official overview
''Enchanters disenchant surplus magical items - and use the residue to permanently augment equipment of their choosing. With the right incantations and materials, an enchanter can add bonuses to their armor or weapons, making them stronger, faster, or more resilient (among a host of other mystic powers). Canny enchanters sell their unique services to other heroes, and command prices commensurate with the rarity of the work they produce.

''Enchanters need the residue of magic items to work - the more potent the item, the rarer the residue. They also require enchanting rods to channel their magic.

Enchanting doesn't rely on a particular gathering profession, so Enchanters occasionally pursue Tailoring to allow them to quickly create magic items to disenchant.

Training as an Enchanter
Enchanting is taught by various enchanting trainers located throughout the world. Prospective enchanters must be at least level 5. Initial training costs, granting the Apprentice level with a potential skill of 75 and access to a few starting enchantments. More enchantments can be learned from trainers, bought from vendors, or found throughout the world as the enchanter raises their skill level. In order to do enchantments, enchanters will need a Runed Copper Rod in their inventory.

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

† Shadowlands proficiency is only available after purchasing the Shadowlands expansion.

Advancing as an Enchanter
Enchanting items is the only way to progress through the stages. All enchantments have a requisite minimum enchanting skill needed to be able to be learned and used. Known enchantments will appear as one of four colors in the profession window, with a certain chance for a skill up (gaining a point).


 * Red: Not high enough skill to learn the enchant. (seen on items that teach an enchantment.)
 * Orange: Always gain a skill point doing the enchant (unless you're already at the maximum). When indicated (with a number and up arrow to the right of the pattern name), the enchant will skill up by the shown number for each craft.
 * Yellow: Probably gain a skill point doing the enchant.
 * Green: Probably not gain a skill point doing the enchant.
 * Gray: Will never skill up doing the enchant.

As enchanting skill increases, enchantments will eventually change from orange to yellow, yellow to green and green to grey. Only by finding higher skill level enchantments can one continue to progress through the profession. Approximately every 5-10 points, new enchantments will become available to learn from enchantment trainers. Alternatively, enchantments can be looted from corpses or purchased either from vendors or the auction house. Additionally, some enchantments cannot be gotten until you have a certain reputation level with a particular faction. These are listed at the faction recipes entry.

How to be an Enchanter
Low-level enchants (below skill 250) require rather large amounts of expensive components, but can rarely be sold. Even attempts to give them away for free can fail. Thus enchanters frequently end up re-enchanting the same item dozens of times just to increase their skill. At very low levels, disenchanting an item can increase one's Enchanting skill. This should be taken advantage of while available, as the materials gained will be used later regardless.

Leveling enchanting is possible just with the materials gained from disenchanting items you find yourself and items from quests, but due to the slow rate, buying materials from the AH or having alternative characters, or friends or members of your guild supply you with items or materials can be quite a boost. Buying and disenchanting underpriced items from AH can be a cheaper way to obtain materials. Items such as a plate armor with +12 to Spirit has little value if worn or sold, but may disenchant to materials far in excess of the item's vendor value.

A common tip is to disenchant items created with one of the crafting professions, such as tailoring, blacksmithing, jewelcrafting, or leatherworking. By leveling the crafting profession at the same time as enchanting, you will generate many uncommon-quality items. This is an easy way to obtain dusts and essences. However, depending on the item crafted and your server, selling either the crafting materials or the crafted item and buying enchanting materials with the money gained can be more effective. In most cases, it's an excellent way to offset the costs of leveling a crating profession, since the vast majority of low level crafting products are utterly worthless, but need to be made in order to train the skill. For this reason, recommended primary professions to accompany enchanting are:
 * Tailoring
 * Jewelcrafting
 * Leatherworking
 * Blacksmithing

In order to sell enchantments on the auction house or transfer them via mail, you have the option of putting an enchantment onto a piece of Enchanting Vellum. This will give any skill points as though the enchantment was put onto a piece of gear, and will allow the enchantment to be treated and moved around as a physical item. Enchanting Vellum is created by Inscription, and can also be bought from Reagent or Enchanting suppliers.

All characters benefit from an enchanter's abilities. Some particular reasons why are:


 * Twinks. Persons who have decided to create a character to play in different brackets in the battlegrounds reach a limit on gear upgrades. The popular twinking brackets are levels 19 and 29, less so 39 and 49. These are the most lucrative markets for those whose skill level is 300 in enchanting (as this is the Artisan Enchanting cap, before Burning Crusade enchants can be learned, which usually require item level 60).


 * Weapon glows. This is where those with lower-level enchanting skills can earn some profit. Many enchants make weapons glow in various colors. Minor Beastslayer (red), (orange) and Superior Striking (blue) are three of the more popular glow enchants. As in other professions, the more popular enchanting formulas can't be learned from a trainer; they are drops and must be purchased through the AH, or in some cases can only be bought from a vendor after a certain level of reputation has been reached, one popular example for this is the agility enchant for weapons (much liked by rogue twinks). In some cases, rich players (particularly on RP servers) may pay for weapon glows simply for the aesthetic aspect.


 * High end content. Top level characters doing dungeons, raids, and PvP are generally expected to have enchantments on their gear. The most desirable high-end enchants are harder to get, but sell for a large amount of gold. Many rare recipes are BoP, and are boss drops (and thus are available only to raiding enchanters) or require faction grinding.


 * Non-enchant products. Enchanters can create low-level wands and oils, which can be used to provide a small temporary boost to Intellect or Spirit. They also create Enchanted Leather, which is used by a few leatherworking recipes.

Enchanting requires a fairly good understanding of the mechanics of the game. You need to be familiar with what stats are of interest to which players and why, so that you can determine which enchants will be of value, and be able to advise players who might be unsure.

Disenchanting
Magical elements (dusts, essences, shards, and crystals) are needed as enchanting ingredients, all of which can be created with disenchanting. Some magical elements can be found as loot or purchased from the Auction House, or even certain Vendors in limited quantities.


 * more often disenchants from Armor and less often from  Weapons.
 * more often disenchants from Weapons and less often from  Armor. Three Lesser Essences can be converted to one Greater Essence of the same type, and vice versa.
 * usually disenchants from items and rarely from  items.  Three Lesser Shards can be converted into one Greater Shard of the same type, but not vice versa.
 * always disenchants from items and rarely from  items.

Disenchanting requires a certain amount of skill to perform, depending on the level of the item being disenchanted. items cannot be disenchanted.

Disenchanting items can level your enchanting skill up to at least 60.

Enchanter-Only Benefits
High level enchanters are able to enchant their rings with a powerful statistical boost. See Enchantments by slot for a list of the available enchants.

Raids or dungeons greatly benefit from having an enchanter in the party. Having an enchanter in the group will enable the Disenchant option when items uncommon-quality or better are being rolled for. This allows everyone the ability to disenchant any BoP items that no one wants, thus making an enchanter a valuable addition to a group.

Frequently asked questions
Q: Can I disenchant soulbound items?

A: It is possible to disenchant one's own soulbound items, but impossible to do so with other players soulbound items, even in the no trade window of the Trade dialog. Also, some soulbound items that are reputation related such as the cannot be disenchanted, so be wary (do some research, see Non-disenchantable Items, before trying to get some items with the intent to disenchant them).

Q: Can I enchant a single item more than once? Can I stack enchantments?

A: Yes, you can enchant a single item multiple times, overwriting previous enchantments; no, they do not stack. A confirmation dialog is displayed before the replacement is committed. Overwriting is done to either upgrade the enchantment or to skill up rapidly, wasting the enchantments.

Q: Can ANY enchantment stack?

A: Yes, WoW distinguishes two kinds of enchantments that will stack, permanent enchantments and temporary enchantments. One temporary enchantment can be stacked with one permanent enchantment on each item. Enchanter enchantments are permanent as are item augments like for example armor kits or shield spikes. Oils such as those produced by enchanters and alchemists and poisons used by rogues are temporary enchantments. For example, you could enchant your staff with an intelligence buff and use on it.

Q: If I get the same enchant on both my main-hand and off-hand weapon (e.g., +15 agility), do I get the total of both enchants (+30 agility total)?

A: Yes, they stack.

Q: Can off-hand objects like orbs be enchanted? How about Fishing Poles?

A: Fishing Poles are not considered 'weapons' and attempting to enchant them by an enchanter will give a "That item is not a valid target" error. Fishing lures are a temporary enchantment that can only be placed on fishing poles. Wands are a class of ranged weapons and currently can not be enchanted. Cataclysm level off hand items can be enchanted with intellect. At lower levels, only off-hand weapons and shields can be enchanted.