Common Problems
- Gathering herbs and ore is not increasing my profession level
- Crafted an item using a yellow recipe and it did not increase my skill
Professions are split into categories that correspond with each World of Warcraft expansion.
- Each category is unlocked at the trainer separately.
- Each category is raised independently by gathering or crafting items of that particular expansion.
Gathering professions
If you are an herbalist, miner, or skinner who started questing in the Shadowlands zones, you won't receive gathering or skinning skill points unless you first learn the Shadowlands profession category at the trainer.
For leveling Vanilla skinning, if you are below level 60, leveling in Eastern Kingdoms or Kalimdor, and stop getting skinning points around 240, make sure your character is set to Cataclysm's Chromie Time by speaking with Chromie in your faction's capitol (Orgrimmar or Stormwind). This should allow enemies to scale with your level beyond 30 and will allow you to level up Skinning beyond 240.
Crafting professions
You must use recipes, schematics, or formulas of the same expansion that you are trying to level up. For example, if you want to raise Legion leatherworking, you must craft Legion recipes; if you want to raise Cataclysm Engineering, you must craft Cataclysm schematics.
A skill point is not guaranteed when the difficulty of the recipe you are using is green or yellow.
If all you can craft is of green or gray difficulty, talk to your trainer or complete quests to learn new recipes.
Archaeology
Archaeology will only grant skill points when surveying, not when solving an artifact.