Crafting to 225 Buys Legacy Points
Account progress in Forever is not only earned by playing characters. A crafting trade pushed through its milestones adds to the same total, and that route is paid for in reagents and gold rather than in evenings. This is the comparison written out: the skill-up bill against the alt that stops at the current level ceiling.
Two ways to pay for the same point
A Legacy point is account progress rather than character progress, which is the only reason it can be compared with gold at all. There are 2 ways to add one. You push a crafting trade through a milestone, and that is settled in reagents, trainer ranks and whatever the listings ask that week. Or you level another character, and that is settled in hours at the keyboard. Nothing in the system converts one into the other directly, so the choice is the ordinary one between the evening you have and the stock you can afford.
The first perk opens once the account holds 10 points, and for a gatherer that threshold matters more than the individual ranks sitting behind it. Bountiful Harvest runs 5 ranks and tops out at 20% more scarce materials from nodes the character was already clearing. Until the 10th point lands, the account gets nothing back, so the cheapest road to 10 is the question worth costing out. After that the arithmetic changes, because each further point buys a visible rank instead of an unlock, and Legacy perks that raise gathering yield start paying into the same bags you were filling anyway.
What 150 and 225 cost in materials
The 2 crafting milestones sit on different sides of the grind. Everything under 150 runs on low-tier materials, and in the opening weeks those are the goods everybody with a free gathering slot is dumping into the listings at once, which is why early supply of raw materials decides how cheap the first milestone is. The stretch from 150 to 225 is a different market. Mid-tier bars, cloth and leather come from a narrower band of the world, fewer characters are farming there yet, and the same stack costs more because fewer people have reached it.
The real bill is not the price of one recipe. It is the number of attempts, because skill-ups go yellow and then green long before the milestone arrives, and every grey attempt is materials spent for no progress. That is the part people underestimate on both milestones, and the material bill behind a skill-up is where the money actually goes. Buying the stacks outright makes the cost visible in one line. Gathering them yourself only changes which currency is spent.
There is a second line under both of them. Mid-tier crafting means holding stock, and stock means storage, so bag and bank space for crafters gets paid for before the milestone does. A character that gathers its own stack also needs somewhere to put it between trips, which is why crafters and gatherers end up buying the same bags for different reasons.
An alt under a level 30 cap
The other road is a new character, and in a phase where the ceiling is 30 that road has a visible end. An alt climbs to the cap and then stops, so whatever the account gains from levelling is limited to what the system hands out below 30, and the rest waits for the ceiling to move. The crafting road has no such wall: a trade can keep climbing toward 225 while the level cap stays where it is, which is the whole argument for spending reagents instead of evenings in this phase.
An alt is not free in gold either. It needs bags before it can carry anything, trainer ranks as it climbs, and a weapon the quest rewards did not supply, so what equipping a second character costs lands on the main's bank long before the alt pays anything back. The crafting milestone is a single concentrated bill. The alt is a thin stream of smaller ones spread across the climb.
What each route leaves behind is different, and that is worth counting alongside the points. A finished alt is a second gathering route, a bank character or a second set of hands at a node. A trade pushed to 225 is a supply line that can sell to other players for as long as the recipes stay in demand. Both outcomes are useful; they are just not interchangeable, and the one you want back should decide which bill you agree to pay.
What we have not been able to pin down
We are not publishing a points-per-milestone figure, because we have not seen one stated anywhere we trust. The 2 crafting thresholds are the ones players talk about, and the comparison above holds regardless of the exact award, but the precise value of a milestone is not something we are going to invent to make a table look complete.
There is also a reported oddity that sits directly under this subject. Beta players have described their point total reading differently from one character to another on the same account, and no explanation for that has been published. Until it is resolved, treat any plan built on a precise account total as provisional, and weigh the 2 routes on what they cost you rather than on a number the client is currently showing.
Questions
Is crafting a faster way to the first perk than levelling an alt?
Under a level 30 ceiling it can be, because a trade keeps climbing toward 225 while an alt stops at the cap. Whether it is faster in points depends on the award values per milestone, which we have not seen published, so the honest comparison is between a concentrated materials bill and a stream of levelling hours rather than between 2 confirmed point totals.
Which milestone is cheaper, 150 or 225?
Almost always 150. Everything under it runs on low-tier materials that flood the listings in the opening weeks of a phase, while the stretch from 150 to 225 needs mid-tier goods that fewer characters are farming yet. The second milestone also burns more attempts per rank, because skill-ups turn yellow and then green well before it is reached.
Does gathering my own materials make the milestone free?
No, it changes the currency. The stack still has a market price, and the hours you spend collecting it are hours not spent on anything else that pays. Self-gathering is the right call when your evenings are worth less to you than your bank balance, and the wrong one when the reverse is true.
Should I push a crafting trade on an alt or on the main?
Whichever character already has storage and a funding line. A crafting trade needs stock held between sessions, so the character with bags and bank slots is cheaper to run. Starting a fresh alt specifically to hold the trade adds an equipment bill on top of the materials bill, and that bill arrives first.
Sources
- Blizzard's official news channel, where the Forever system breakdowns are posted — World of Warcraft news.
- Community database and beta build coverage used to cross-check profession thresholds — Wowhead.