Legacy Points Are Paid For in Materials
Most summaries treat the Legacy system as a list of perks. Read it as an expense instead: the tradeskill points are earned by raising crafting professions, those professions eat raw materials, and an account chasing points is a standing buyer on the auction house rather than a seller.
Only the crafting trades pay points
The Legacy list is 65 challenges worth 1 point each, and 18 of them sit in tradeskills: a point at 150, a point at 225 and a point at 300 in each non-gathering primary profession. Mining, Herbalism and Skinning pay nothing at any skill value, and the secondary trades sit outside the list entirely, so neither First Aid nor Fishing moves the total. The block of points closest to a farming plan is therefore the one farming cannot earn.
The perk most gatherers want sits on the far side of that wall. Bountiful Harvest is 5 ranks in the Professions tree and raises what the same route returns in scarce materials, and it is bought with points earned by crafting, by class levels, by PvP, by dungeons or by exploring. A character carrying 2 gathering slots and nothing else collects none of the 18 and still wants the perk, which is the trade described in the Legacy split by profession type.
The first unlock is usually reported at level 25, or at skill 150 if a tradeskill gets there first, which is early enough that the decision lands while the character is still short of a mount. That timing is the whole problem: the cheapest moment to raise a craft is also the moment every coin is wanted elsewhere.
The bill arrives as stacks, not as coins
A skill bar from 150 to 300 is paid in ore, herbs, hides and cloth at the tier each recipe asks for, and that tier is rarely the one your character is questing through. Gathering it yourself means a long stretch of route-running at a level band you have already passed, or a second character built for the job. Buying it means stacks off the auction house, which is what most people actually do, because the hours a crafting climb needs are not the hours they wanted to spend.
That turns the usual craft-or-sell test inside out. Normally you compare the finished item against what the raw materials would fetch and craft only when the item wins. Here the item is not the reason for the spend at all, so the comparison fails every time and you do it anyway. The honest way to book it is as a purchase: the point is the product, the crafted goods are a by-product, and anything they vendor or list for is a partial refund rather than income.
For everyone selling, that is the useful half. A crafter levelling for gear stops when the gear is made; a crafter levelling for a point stops at 300 and not before, which puts a floor under the mid-range tiers that normally go quiet. The same effect is described from the seller's side in one shared market for materials.
Alts turn it into a repeating expense
Points are held on the Battle.net account and shared by every non-Hardcore character, which is the reason the system reads as a bargain. The catch is on the spending side: a single character can hold 16 points active across the 3 trees, so an account can bank far more than any one character is able to use. A second crafting trade raised on an alt adds points the account keeps, and a material bill the account pays again from the start.
Players working through the trees on the beta put a realistic single-character ceiling near 29 earned against 16 spendable, so filling one tree means leaving another empty. Prerequisites make that tighter than it looks, since reaching Talented asks for 5 points in Well Rested first and the pair costs 10 of the 16. Allowance spent on a line that does not behave as written is gone too, which is why testers keep flagging Luremaster: the extra fish is reported not to arrive.
Run 2 budgets rather than 1. One belongs to the character actually levelling, and it is measured against the cost of riding training like every other spend. The other belongs to the account and buys points that outlive the character that earned them. Trouble starts when the second quietly eats the first.
What has not been published
Nobody has published a challenge-by-challenge list, so the category totals are the only breakdown available and there is no way to plan which point arrives when. Material quantities for the new recipes are unpublished as well, and with more than 600 recipes added across every skill range, a shopping list copied out of an older Classic levelling guide is describing a different recipe book. Profession skill is also bounded by character level, and the table mapping one to the other has not been released.
None of that can be filled in with arithmetic, so we are not going to put a figure on what a point costs. The tradeskill window and the Legacy tab on a live character answer it faster than any guide does: check which recipes your skill range actually offers, price the inputs on the day, and decide which trade you are feeding before committing a slot. The comparison between the trades themselves is worked through in which crafting trade earns fastest.
Questions
Can I earn Legacy points by gathering?
Not the tradeskill ones. Points land at 150, 225 and 300 in non-gathering primary professions only, and Mining, Herbalism and Skinning pay nothing at any value, as do First Aid and Fishing. A gatherer can still earn points from class levels, PvP, dungeons, raids and exploring, which is how most farmers reach the Professions tree without ever training a craft.
Is it cheaper to gather the materials myself?
It is cheaper in coins and more expensive in hours, and which one you are short of decides the answer. Gathering the inputs for a crafting climb means working routes at the tier the recipes ask for rather than the tier your character is levelling in, so the time comes out of the climb itself. Buying stacks keeps the character moving and books the points as an ordinary expense.
Do the points carry to my other characters?
Points are held on the Battle.net account and shared by every non-Hardcore character, so a trade raised on one character funds perks on all of them. Spending is the limit rather than earning: 16 points can be active on any single character at a time, which means an account can bank more than any one character is able to use.
Should a first character chase points at all?
On a first character the levelling perks are the easier case, because the bracket you are in decides the value of an hour more than a perk does. Raising a craft purely for a point on that character spends materials and delays the riding fund at the same time. The professions tree is a better fit for a second or third character made specifically to gather, where the points are already banked.
Sources
- Blizzard's own description of the Legacy system, including the 65 challenges, the cap of 16 per character and tradeskill points from non-gathering professions only — Wowhead's publication of the Legacy system.
- Profession changes, the recipe count and the point thresholds at 150, 225 and 300 — Wowhead's professions breakdown.
- Bountiful Harvest and the structure of the 3 trees — Icy Veins on the Legacy system.
What changed on this page
- 7 Oct 2026New page on what earning Legacy points costs in bought crafting materials.