Alt Professions

I enjoy the idea of being mostly self reliant in the game. I have a couple of friends that I know from real life, but I don't like to rely on them too much. I start to feel guilty if I am continually going to them to get things crafted. So to further my self sufficient goal, as well as to bring some more utility to my little group of friends, I am leveling 3 professions, more or less in parallel. My low level druid has Herbalism and Inscription. I had wanted to level inscription but did not want to have to buy all the herbs on the way up, as I know at certain levels they become rather expensive. Meanwhile, my higher level mage was going to skill up alchemy, so as to take advantage of transmutations. The problem here, is that I can either spend twice the time gathering herbs as I level herbalism, or buy them off the auction house, emptying much of my bank account.

Well, I have devised a third alternative. I do not claim credit for it, as I first read it over at the greedy goblin, but it is an interesting idea. My mage has developed a bit of a bank account by selling netherweave bags for several gold profit per bag. Since I didn't want to be spending upwards of 15 to 20 gold for a stack of herbs to level alchemy on this character, I decided to buy the herbs to level inscription on the other character instead. This wouldn't make for any difference of price, except for the fact that many northrend herbs are cheaper, and when milled and turned into ink, can then be traded down to any lower level ink. So, over the last couple of weeks, I have gathered around 120 to 140 stacks of herbs, which I will ship over to a friend of mine to mill and turn into ink.

Not sure if I saved much money or not, but I'm fairly certain that I did. Plus, I'll soon have 2 crafting professions up to a level where I can start selling their goods on the auction house, or start saving them to make future goods.