The Guide to Enchanting, Enchanters and Enchantments.

This simple guide will teach you how to flawlessly ask for, search for and purchase enchantments from your local enchanter. Sure, you could use this guide to apply to other professions, but the amount of horrible and painful customers I’ve been faced with lately makes me want to correct that figure…

I: Advertising, comprehension and writing.

I sometimes get grief for advertising, and sometimes I see adverts that are… Impossible to fathom out. So here’s a guide to the more simple, and more complex ads.

Your typical enchanting advert will state whether or not materials (mats) are included, and they will almost definitely be a macro with abbreviations for things like Stamina (Sta) or gloves (Glo).

Your average enchanting macro looks something like this:

Enchanting: +7 AGI Gloves, +100 MANA Chest, +7 STA Boots, +9 SPI Bracer, Fiery Weapon (Your mats) /w for details.

This states that all of the enchantments require your materials, do not make the mistake that only the Fiery Weapon is your materials.

Some enchanters use a separated bracket system.

Enchants: [Bracer]: +7 STA, +9 SPI, +7 INT | [Boots]: +7 AGI, Minor Speed | [Chest]: +100 HP, +100 MANA |

This has the item the enchantment is for, then the enchantments for said item listed after it. This macro doesn’t say whether or not materials are provided or requested, so it is best to whisper and ask.

When you are searching for an enchantment, be clear about what you want, do not simply say in Trade “Looking for enchanter” as this could get you a seasoned 300 enchanter or a skill 1 enchanter.

Never ever, ever just say “Looking for enchanter” as it only serves to irritate any enchanters nearby who have no idea what you want them for. Thus, you won’t get an enchanter.

A good way to look for the enchantment +7 Agility on Gloves is:

Need enchanter for +7 Agility Gloves, don’t have mats.

This states exactly what enchantment you have and also that you don’t have the mats required for it, allowing all enchanters to check if they have both the skill and the materials for the enchantment, and contact you if they do. If you do have mats, then specify so that all enchanters can contact you if they have the skill. Precision is the key.

II – Avoiding Scamming.

Scamming is something that gives enchanters a bad name, by taking mats from customers then logging out, not giving the enchantment itself. This can be avoided by requesting a ‘trust fee’ where the enchanter gives money to the customer in exchange for the mats, then gets it back after performing the enchantment. This avoids any form of scamming, though don’t be shocked if some enchanters are uneasy about performing such an action.

Also, it is possible that some enchanters charge way above what they should, thinking that their customers won't notice. So it is always best to check the AH mats to get a rough idea of what the enchantment should cost, before diving in and buying. After all, who wants to pay 50g for a 10g enchantment?

III – Service Fees.

Enchanters, in most cases, will charge a service fee. Depending on the enchantment, it can range from 1g to 30g. Typical enchantments will have a 1g service fee, whereas enchantments like Fiery Weapon have about 3g, and things like Crusader have 10g. A service fee is requested when the customer is providing the mats, but since the enchanter worked so hard to learn to do the enchantment they are entitled to money in return for lending their skills.
This is completely fair.
After all, we spent time and money learning this enchantment to help you, so it’s only right that, even though you’re providing the materials, we make at least some money.
Some enchanters charge a % of the material cost, rather than fixed sum. And it is safe to be said, that most if not all enchanters charge less for repeat customers :)

IV – Prices.

Not all enchanters charge the same for enchantments, and enchantments don’t always cost the same from day to day. This is due to Auction House activity and materials prices. If the price of Dream Dust is 1g and +7 Stamina Bracers needs 5 Dream Dust, the cost of the enchantment will be about 6g. A 1g profit for the enchanter.
But if the price of Dream Dust drops to 50s, the price of the enchantment could change to 3.5g. Still a 1g enchantment, but much cheaper due to the Auction House’s liability to drastically change the enchanting market.

If you find an enchanter that you feel is charging too much for an enchantment, do not insult, aggravate or in any way flame the enchanter. Merely state that you either are simply not interested or you find the price too high and would perhaps like to bargain.

Good reactions:
Ouch, sorry, too much for me :)
Hmm… What how about, say, 5g?

Bad reactions:
No.
4g.
WTF! I got it cheaper yesterday!! – This is the one that annoys enchanters the most. If you got it cheaper yesterday, why do you want it again? And if you did get it cheaper, why not ask him instead of me?

V – Know what you want.

Do NOT ask an enchanter what he can do on an item. This would take years to list. Do Not ask the enchanter to tell YOU what you want. Do NOT list all your gear and ask what enchantments are available.
ALWAYS research exactly what enchantments you want or wait for an advert to mention an enchantment you like.

Asking for enchantments is like going into a shoe shop. Asking for them to list all of their enchantments is like asking the owner to list every single shoe they have in stock. The item is the shoe size and what the enchantment does is the enchantment itself.

A man walks into a shoe shop…

“I’d like a shoe please.”
“Very well, sir. What kind of shoe?”
“A size 7 shoe.”
“What colour?”
“What colours do you have?”
“Well, we have a wide range of colours, perhaps you would like to look around?”
“No thank you, I’d rather you told me them.”
“(Long list of colours)”
“I like the blue shoe.”
“Alright sir, that shoe costs £30.00.”
“I’ll give you £20.00.”
“No sir, the cost is thirty.”
“I got it cheaper the other day! Good day!”
“Get out of my shop… Sir…”

This was a massive waste of the shop-keeper’s time, and believe it or not enchanters go through that every day.
Let’s change it for enchanting…

“Looking for enchanter.”
“I’m an enchanter, what do you want?”
“An enchantment for my gloves.”
“What sort of enchantment?”
“What sorts do you have?”
“Why don’t you look on Thottbot/Wowhead first to see what there are?”
“No thank you, I’d rather you told me them.”
“(Insert long list of enchantments)”
“I’d like +7 Agility.”
“That’s 30g” (For comparison reasons)
“I’ll pay 20g.”
“The price is 30g, I don’t haggle.”
“I got it cheaper yesterday, do it cheaper.”
“/ignore”

This is why enchanters are generally short-fused and bitter ;) Sorry, but it’s how we are. We deal with people like this whenever we post our macro or talk to someone, and this guide is here to hopefully cut down how often this occurs.

Also, don’t be afraid to ask an enchanter if he has x enchantment or can add y stat to z item, we will happily tell you if that is possible or if we can do it, just don’t take the service for granted. We are the shop-keeper, we expect you to know what you want beforehand. You walk into a shoe-store to buy shoes, not cake. So when you talk to an enchanter, know what is physically possible for our sake ;)

The amount of times people ask me to enchant their legs, head or shoulders is almost unbearable.

Guide by Valalerin – Enchanter.

And in closing, please remember... Thottbot is your friend :)

[EDIT 1]: Added some bolding etc. to make it easy to skim through, added additional information to service fees, and additional information to avoid being scammed. Also added note about wowhead.

Reported for sticky, but please do change thottbot for wowhead, much more people that use it and it's more user-friendly to people without experience (= potential customers)

Do you work in customer service? :P

Made it a bit clearer so that people can skim through it, the guide was a bit of a rush job ;)

Also added that note about wowhead, personally I've never used it so I didn't know what sort of info it had, hehe.

Nice guide, especielly the part for buyers...

I thought I was the only one annoyed by all people saying "LF enchanter" only, or asking what I can do etc. This is not the case with just enchanting tho, I'm getting equally annoyed when I see "LF jewelcrafter".

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Q u o t e:
On the thotbott / wowhead debate, personally I'd recommend WowDigger over both of them :)

Enchanting section here:
http://www.wowdigger.com/profession/enchanting

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Why?

Compared to wowhead, wowdigger takes like forever to load, is not as comprehensive and is ugly to boot...

Is it because of the "Known by"/"Upload Character" feature? The information there is limited to people who create a profile, is most probably *badly* outdated for most of those *and* seems limited to US servers, so a big fat help to us here in Europe servers...

So why do you prefer it over wowhead? Is it because it hasn't gone corporate yet? Oh, don't worry, it will... plus, it's not like it's open-source, so they can't even claim moral superiority...

Just curious,
Solidstate

Nice guide, if only 1 out of 10 buyers followed the last part of it, I wouldn't have just ditched 375 enchanting yesterday. Picking up Blacksmithing instead, I just got too tired of the whispers from lvl 34 hunters wanting "crusador" & "moon guss" and obviously not wanting to pay the price when they got the reply.

Even lvl 70 characters seem to think that a 10g fee for an enchant requiring you to farm an instance to get, and where the mats cost 30 times the fee, is out of the question.

At least I'll get a decent offhand out of Blacksmithing, and I'll make a few bucks off the primal nethers.

Don't respond to people who are just "looking for enchanter". The last time I did, I ended up linking the enchant the guy wanted, he bought the dust on the AH, and when he didn't have enough money for the essences he actually demanded that I supplied him with money. I was gonna do the enchant for free as it was a low-level enchant, but I wasn't gonna pay him to get nothing in return.

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Q u o t e:
Don't respond to people who are just "looking for enchanter". The last time I did, I ended up linking the enchant the guy wanted, he bought the dust on the AH, and when he didn't have enough money for the essences he actually demanded that I supplied him with money. I was gonna do the enchant for free as it was a low-level enchant, but I wasn't gonna pay him to get nothing in return.

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LOL

Give a carpenter a hammer, some nails and some wood and have him build your porch for free. After all, you *did* provide the mats ^^

I gotta make myself a macro to spam to those who refuse to pay a 1g fee for enchants.

*EDIT* Forget about the carpenter hammer - it's soulbound and he's paid 500g for it himself. Just give him the nails and the wood and expect the porch for free.