0. Powerleveling Spreadsheet for Engineering 10/17/2009 03:50:31 PM PDT
I've designed powerleveling guides for other professions before, but Engineering turned out to be one of the more challenging professions I've encountered, for two reasons. First, many of the schematics turned out to be prerequisites for other schematics you would make later on. When developing a powerleveling guide, linked schematics and recipes add an extra degree of difficulty when estimating exactly how many to make of each item, since increases in one item would require increases in any of its prerequisite items.
Second, I found that you were frequently forced to skill up many items deep into yellow and green territory before you could move onto the next item. Other professions seem to be easier to powerlevel because you can usually stick to orange recipes with the occasional yellow from time to time. Engineering, on the other hand, seemed to feature fewer useful schematics in certain level ranges, so you often had to keep rolling the dice and hope for lucky green skillups before the schematic would eventually go gray.
Despite those disadvantages, there were a few positive aspects when it came to powerleveling Engineering. I found that almost all of the schematics you need to powerlevel the profession can be obtained from your trainer, with only two non-trainer schematics to hunt down along the way. And even those are pretty easy to find, with one being a common, inexpensive schematic on the AH and the other needing little more than a visit to Shattrath City. Also, one of the major inconveniences of Engineering - - the fact that many schematics require various tools as you progress - - is effectively eliminated by purchasing a single Gnomish Army Knife from the AH.
As I started working on this powerleveling guide, I quickly realized that I could make the process a lot easier by putting it all into a spreadsheet. Most powerleveling guides don't really address the issue of using alternate schematics nor do they provide you with any kind of estimate as to how much this effort is going to cost you. I've designed this spreadsheet to give you the ability to select alternate schematics, calculate material costs and customize your own personal powerleveling plan based on resource availabilities and AH price fluctuations.
Not only that, but I've also included tables at the bottom of the spreadsheet that you can use to calculate the approximate number of attempts needed to skill up each point in the Yellow -> Green -> Gray ranges, which can be useful for pretty much any profession.
