The alchemist mixes herbs to generate potions with a variety of effects. A player can create healing, invisibility, elemental resistance, and mana potions; oils to coat weapons; and much more.

Blacksmiths take bars of metal from miners and work them into finely crafted arms and armor. There are many unique weapons and other armaments that cannot be found on any of the vendors or monsters in the game, but can only be created by blacksmiths.

Enchanters use their magical formulae to grant both temporary and permanent augmentation to weapons, armor, and other equipment.

Engineering is used to assemble metal and stones into parts needed to make explosives, guns, scopes, bullets, mechanical dragons, aquatic helmets, and more. More than any other Profession, engineering products require several steps to be completed.

Herb gathering is used to collect plants found throughout the world, with more powerful herbs requiring a higher skill level to find. Each type of herb has specific uses and places where it is found. For instance, grave moss must be sought in cemeteries, whereas wintersbite grows in snowy areas.

Inscription allows players to augment the cooldown, damage, or mechanics (stun, knockback, DoT, HoT, etc.) of a spell. It will have two aspects: augmentation of abilities and spells with the creation of a new type of item ("scrolls", for example, from ink, parchment, and other reagents).

Jewelcrafters learn the art of creating beautiful jewelry and trinkets from metals and rare gems. By processing the raw ore mined from the various deposits and mineral veins, jewelcrafters can extract gems from the ore which they can then use for their craft. Although miners sometimes find gems while gathering ore, jewelcrafters mostly rely on their prospecting skills to get more of the precious stones.

This skill allows players to work various leathers and pelts into leather armors as well as patches integral to the creation of higher-level, metallic armors and enhanced weapons.

Mining is used to extract ores, stones, and gems from mineral nodes found throughout the world. Generally, more of these nodes can be found in the dangerous underground than on the surface. In addition to gathering the raw materials, it's up to the miners to smelt the ores taken from the ground into metal bars. These are the raw materials that artisans such as Blacksmiths and Engineers will transform into deadly weapons and wondrous objects.

Skinning allows players to gather leather and hides by skinning animals. Leather and hides are used for leatherworking. Leather is also used for some blacksmithing, engineering, and tailoring recipes.

Tailoring allows players to cut and weave various pieces of cloth into armor, bags, shirts, and other cloth items.

From beer-basted boar ribs to giant clam scorcho, there is no recipe too obscure or odd to avoid notice by the chefs of Azeroth. Food is used in the game to heal players out of combat so that they can return to the fighting as quickly as possible.

The benefit of this skill is the ability to heal yourself (and others) using items created from ingredients you are finding anyway while you are killing monsters. You might be throwing these first aid ingredients away, but you should instead turn them into something useful.

So you want to be a fisherman? Fishing is a mini-game that allows you to catch fish, which can be used with the cooking secondary skill. You can also catch fish that cannot be eaten but are instead useful for other Professions. You can even catch equipment and funny items. Fishing isn't for everyone.