Herbalism Guide for The War Within

As usual, Herbalism will be responsible for gathering herbs and related materials around The War Within zones. These are mostly used by Alchemy and Inscription.

You will also be able to gather rare reagents used by most professions, such as Leyline Residue, Viridescent Spores, Writhing Sample, and Crystalline Powder.

Earthen will be able to gather more herbs with their Hyper Productive racial, making them one of the best options for the current meta of quantity above all.

Dracthyr mobility abilities and +2% baseline Perception racial are a decent alternative, although under the current meta it is more valuable to gather more herbs than to get more rare reagents.

The final contender are regular Tauren, especially when combined with Druid instant cast flying with Travel Form, as their Cultivation grants a massive 25% increase in gathering speed and +5 herbing skill, which will help you get more valuable Rank 3 herbs when gathering!

Herbalism can make great use of all three stats, but you might want to focus on specific stats for different playstyles. We go into detail with Herbalism stats and the gear you can use to boost them in the specialized guide below:

You can gather five base herb types: Mycobloom, Arathor's Spear, Blessing Blossom, Orbinid, and Luredrop.

Leyline Residue, Viridescent Spores, Writhing Sample, and Crystalline Powder can also be gathered occasionally from Perception procs and related special nodes.

The base types can be found as special nodes: Lush, Irradiated, Sporefused, Altered, Camouflaged, and Crystallized. These will grant you extra materials, but also have annoying or dangerous properties.

An Altered node, for example, will inflict the Horrific Poison debuff on you when picked, which lasts a minute or until you can find a Crystallized herb to harvest, as doing so removes the debuff. Talents can alleviate the potency of this poison, and also increase your yield when using Overload Empowered Herb.

Overload Empowered Herb is learned when gathering your first special node, and while its effect differs from node to node, it will give you an extra knowledge point for the first time you do it on a specific herb type and a larger or more specific resource yield.

Herbalism is easy to level, as all you need to do is gather from the many herbs found all around the world. The most common regular herbs will only give you skill up to 30 or so, but uncommon herbs will go further and special nodes will continue giving skill ups all the way to 100.

As you gather herbs you will also occasionally loot items that can increase your knowledge, up to a weekly maximum tracked on your profession journal.

You will be able to track all weekly and one-time sources of profession knowledge with Myu's Knowledge Points Tracker, a very helpful Weak Aura!

There are multiple treasures around Khaz Algar that you can loot for up to 24 extra knowledge. You can find them all easily in-game with the aforementioned Weak Aura or the Rarescanner addon, which will put up small treasure icons with a hammer underneath at their map location, as exemplified below.

Herbalism Specializations dictate what herbs you are proficient at gathering, and can even let you herb while mounted! In fact, that feature is so strong that we would recommend you to invest 40 points into Botany (unless you are a Druid or using the Sky Golem mount, which have the same effect) to begin with, before branching out to any of our suggested builds below.

The rest of the Botany tree is dedicated to finding and planting seeds. Unlike in Dragonflight, these can only be planted at a specific place in the world, near Beledar's Bounty in Hallowfall 48,64. That makes using the seeds very simple once you get them and eliminates inefficient time spent looking for soil where you could plant them in Dragonflight. You can also learn about Mulch, such as Empowered Mulch in the other talent node, Mulching, which also unlocks the Green Thumb ability early on!

Bountiful Harvests and its sub-nodes are the best investment after learning how to herb while mounted, especially the Spear Scavenger node for maximizing Arathor's Spear yield and their quality. Maximizing any of the sub-nodes will also increase your Null Lotus yield when harvesting that particular herb.

Finally, Overloading the Underground focuses on Overload Empowered Herb and your skill at gathering special nodes, but also requires a massive amount of talent point investment. To get the most of your knowledge, invest into the Irradiated sub-node to maximize your Leyline Residue yield and improve your related Overload ability, which allows you to duplicate any basic herb node, and should typically be used on Arathor's Spear nodes, making it a great combo with the previously recommended talents.

Herbalism makes gold by farming herbs in The War Within zones, with rarer herbs being looted based on your Perception stat.

As herbs are a common ingredient for Alchemy and Inscription, try to sell yours in raid days, when crafters are more likely to be looking to create and sell their wares. The Undermine Exchange can also help you understand the price fluctuation for herbs in your server, and which herbs are best to farm at any given moment.

We have a specialized guide for The War Within goldmaking below, which contains a goldmaking tier list and goes deeper into techniques and habits for successful gold making, as well as websites and addons that can help you on your journey!