Tips for powerleveling professions

So with Ideale's mining just short of 300, I figured it was time to get her jewelcrafting past 80. This is not the first time I've power-leveled a profession — I had some interesting adventures with blacksmithing and leatherworking with two of my now-deleted Whisperwind toons — so I knew a few things ahead of time.

1. Save the mats. Lootables and the Noob School both have guides for several professions that list exactly what you will need and when. Run a lowbie alt or new bank alt to a capital, and hoard those mats as you level your complimentary gathering profession (or farm them on your gathering toon, or whatever). This will save you a crap-ton of gold. In fact, reading the powerleveling guides are a good idea in the first place.

2. Have an alt or a friend with at least mid-level enchanting. The higher-level stuff you make might sell decently, but the stuff you make in any profession from about 1-200 will sell on the Auction House for far less than the cost of materials — and for less than the materials from disenchanting will sell for.

With jewelcrafting, for example, I made 10 Amulets of the Moon yesterday. Now, these sell for a little over a gold on my realm, but the jewels and bronze required to make them cost about 8g an amulet. I had a ton of the moonstones saved up, so this wasn't a big deal, but still, not very cost-effective. However, the Greater Astral Essence, Soul Dust, and Large Glimmering Shards I got from disenchanting them will bring in about 25g after selling it all, or a little over 2.5g per amulet. Still less than the cost to make them (had I bought the mats), but more than selling the amulets themselves — and since the AH is somewhat flooded with them, they might not have even sold.

3. Spend as much of your skill-ups on things you will need for later skill-ups as possible. So if, say, you're doing leatherworking and making medium leather or curing light hide is orange, that's an almost guaranteed skill-up. And you will use that medium leather or light hide later on. So make that until that skill goes green! That way, you're making more materials instead of wasting them. I had an overabundance of bronze settings sitting in my bank because I made them until I stopped leveling at all. I'm about to have the same problem with mithril filigree. Don't worry about making too much of this stuff — anything over-make use can go on the Auction House or in the guild bank when you can't use it anymore. To quote my ex-boss who was quoting some other dude, "Work smarter, not harder."

4. If you can hold off until 70, do it. Because no matter how much you prepare, unless you have a lot of time to farm materials, a ton of bank space, and/or a great support network of high-level alts or rich guild members, you're going to have to spend some money. Not much if you plan well, but enough to hit your pocketbook ... unless you can do quests for gold, whether it's dailies or the quest chains in Outland/the Plaguelands/whatever that you never got to before hitting 70. So do those quests, get your rep and cash, and then you don't have to worry about losing too much money if you need to buy something (and you don't need to sell those mats quite as desperately).

That's about all I have right now.