Inscription Guide – How Inscription Works

As everyone knows by now, Inscription is the new World of Warcraft profession. There are several detailed inscription guides available out there, but the basics of the profession are simple enough to grasp and, unlike other crafting professions, Inscription is relatively cheap to level. Especially if you pick your own herbs.

The Herbalism skill provides the raw materials for Inscription and the herbs that you will need are easy to find, they the standard herbs you see all over Azeroth and the Outlands. One of the unique features of Inscription is that the herbs requried for any one ink (more on inks below) can come from any of a group of herbs, not just one herb in particular.

For example, the Lion’s Ink, required for glyphs such as Eviscerate, Judgement, and many others, uses Grave Moss or Kingsblood or Liferoot or Wild Steelbloom. It makes no difference which one you use, so use the herb that’s easiest for you to gather or cheapest to buy off the Auction House.

All other mats needed (currently) for Inscription can be found off the Inscription supply vendor. All you need are the Virtuoso Inking set and the various papers.

What You Can Make

• Major glyphs
• Minor glyphs
• Vellum (allows an enchanter to make a scroll with an enchant on it, only armor vellums are available so far.)
• Scrolls (Agility 1-6, etc. )
• Cards (such as the Darkmoon Cards)
• Tomes (held in off hand, they add stats and ratings.)

How to Use/Install Your Glyphs

Every character from level 15 up has at least one slot available to install glyphs. Click the Glyphs tab at the bottom of your spellbook and you will see which slots are open to take glyphs. At level 70 you will have two major and three minor slots available. Here’s the breakdown:

• Level 15: 1 Major, 1 Minor.
• Level 30: 1 Major (total 2 Major, 1 Minor).
• Level 50: 1 Minor (total 2 Major, 2 Minor).
• Level 70: 1 Minor (total 2 Major, 3 Minor).
• Level 80: 1 Major (total 3 Major, 3 Minor).

One you have obtained the glyphs that you’re interested in you need to find a Lexicon of Power. These can be found near the Inscription Trainer in the any of the Capital cities, except Shattrath. Ask a guard for directions.

One you are near a Lexicon all you have to do is right click the glyph, your Glyph book will open up, and you just point the glyph to an open slot, in the same way that you enchant an item.

The glyphs are permanent, like gems or enchants, until you decide to drop in a different one to replace it. If you find you made the wrong choice in glyphs, just get a new one and drop it in over the bad one. Most of the glyphs are pretty cheap right now, so glyph swapping is painless. You can even stock a few for different occasions, such as switching from raiding to PvP.

Which glyphs are available? Just have a scribe post her list, browse the Auction House, or hop over to Thottbot.com. Remember, that not all minor glyphs are in the game yet.

Prices are pretty good now, since there are so many scribes the market is flooded for certain glyphs and the only expensive ones are the minors. Even those are far less expensive than other crafted items, enchants, or many gems.

Majors and Minors

With one exception, the minor glyphs, all the recipes for glyphs, cards, scrolls, etc are available from the trainers. I assume that more glyphs will eventually be available from drops, just as are recipes for other crafting professions, and we’ll probably see a few as reputation rewards at some point.

So it’s likely that right now every high level scribe in the game has every recipe available from the trainers. They’re cheap enough to learn.

Minor Glyphs are only available through Minor Inscription Research and that research can only be done once per 20 hours. It’s cheap enough to do, but that cooldown means that the sharpest Scribe in the game only had access to five minor glyphs 100 hours after the 3.0 patch dropped.

Just which minor glyph they get after researching is random, inscribers don’t get to pick from a minor glyph list.  Check the AH every few days for new minor glyphs and be prepared to possibly spend 50-100 gold for each one.

Here’s How Glyphs (and scrolls, etc.) are Made

It’s all the same process, regardless of what’s being scribed.

• Take a stack of 5 of the appropriate herb
• Mill it down into a pigment. You will get 1 -3 pigments from any stack of 5 herbs and you may get some rare pigments as well.
• Create an ink from the pigments (you will have the skill from the trainer. ) Inks require 1 or 2 pigments, depending on the ink.
• Grab the appropriate paper from the supplier
• Make your glyphs(s)

All glyphs, cards, etc., are made in the same way.

If you spend 40 gold on a stack of 20 herbs each milling (requiring 5 herbs) will cost you 10 gold. (This cost is a reason for you to think about taking the herbalism profession)

• You get 1-3 pigments per mill
• Inks require 1 or 2 pigments
• Glyphs require 1 or 2 inks.

As an example, if you spend the 40 gold on an herb stack and you have to mill 10 herbs to get 2 inks to make one glyph (paper costs are low,) that glyph will cost you 20 gold to make. Most glyphs (on Bloodscalp, anyway) aren’t selling for that much, though minor glyphs are. Buy your herb stacks at 10 gold each and your glyphs cost 5 gold to make.

By the way… How many stacks of herbs can you gather in an hour if they’re selling at 30 to 40 gold a stack? If you can find a place without too much competition? This is why leveling your herbalism skill might be a good plan. Check the Auction House for herb prices, first.

Inscription does provide some fun buffs. My Rogue will enjoy sprinting on top if the water, rather than swimming throug it, for example. It also provides some that aren’t so interesting, which is why you’ll see some glyphs selling for pennies.