After returning to Dalaran, Karen borrowed a large number of books on secondary professions from Dalaran's mage library under Kael'thas's identity, gaining a basic understanding of them.
First were the major crafting professions: tailoring, leatherworking, blacksmithing, engineering, and the like. They all existed, but differed greatly from their versions in the game.
For instance, tailoring couldn't make the bags Karen had been looking forward to.
These professions could make some equipment, but that was all they did. Armor they made only differed in attributes like sturdiness, durability, and resistance, while weapons differed in sharpness, sturdiness, and penetration.
Equipment made from some excellent materials came with certain properties, but those properties came from the materials themselves.
The equipment made in the game didn't come with extra attributes or skills. To gain those, an enchanter had to enchant the equipment.
These professions had nothing to do with magic. They were fairly ordinary, and ordinary people could take them up.
Gathering professions like herbalism, mining, and skinning were also suitable for ordinary people. But professions like alchemy and enchanting could only be taken up by magic users, since they both involved working with magic.
There was no information about inscription or jewelcrafting, either. Karen didn't know whether these professions didn't exist or were hidden professions that ordinary people couldn't access. They weren't even mentioned in Dalaran's library.
Jewelcrafting might not have arrived in this world because the Draenei hadn't come here yet and hadn't brought the craft with them. Oh, and there were also the three life professions of cooking, fishing, and first aid. Karen could only laugh at those.
As for which profession to choose, Karen wasn't considering any of the gathering professions. He was rich, and that was that.
The crafting professions were too ordinary, so Karen had no interest in learning about them. That left alchemy and enchanting.
Karen had originally wanted to look into enchanting first, because enchanting and being rich really went hand in hand. If you weren't rich, this profession wasn't for you, since you wouldn't have the materials needed to practice and improve.
Moreover, High Elves made up the majority of enchanters, and the Enchanters' Guild headquarters was in Silvermoon City, the High Elves' capital.
Just think of the High Elves' splendid magical equipment, and you'd know where it came from.
But enchanting required not only materials, but also the study of magical runes.
Enchanting involved using magical materials to construct and stabilize magical patterns on equipment.
The level of this secondary profession generally followed the level of one's primary profession. Karen had only ever heard of enchanters whose level was lower than that of their primary profession, never higher.
Thinking about the level of his own primary profession, Karen felt he'd better put enchanting aside for now.
That left alchemy. Although this profession also required magic, it didn't require the study of magical patterns, and the amount of magic one had made little difference to one's alchemy.
Even a mage apprentice could become an alchemist. Karen had even heard of one particularly impressive mage apprentice who had become an advanced alchemist.
His secondary profession was three levels higher than his primary profession, just one level short of the highest rank, master alchemist.
By that measure, Karen was an intermediate mage, so in theory, he could reach the highest level of alchemy.
All right, he'd choose this profession.
Karen stopped going out on adventures and began studying alchemy.
First, the products alchemists made were divided into potions and elixirs.
Those without magic were potions. Something like a potion for treating a cold counted as a potion.
Those containing magic were elixirs. Healing Potions and mana potions from the game both fell into this category, since they contained magical components. The effects of elixirs mainly came from these magical components.
The lowest-grade Healing Potion in the game was different here.
Here, a Healing Potion was considered a mid-level elixir, and there were no Healing Potions of different levels. If your injuries were severe, you took more bottles. Once one bottle's effect wore off, you took another. You could also take several bottles at once for a stronger effect, but the result wouldn't be multiplied accordingly.
For example, taking two bottles at once had the effect of one and a half bottles.
Of course, there were also some special Healing Potions. Their recipes had been improved and were kept secret by a very small number of people.
Karen didn't get ahead of himself. He spent a few days first learning the basics of alchemy. After all, reality wasn't like a game, where you found the materials and clicked a skill to automatically craft something. Making an elixir in real life involved many steps.
Karen wasn't interested in making potions. Elixirs contained magic, and several steps in their production required him to work with his own magic.
To begin with, many materials used in alchemy contained magic, including certain magical herbs.
Magic was abundant in the world of Azeroth. These herbs could absorb magic and transform it into magical properties of their own. Silverleaf, for example, was a very commonly used herb because its magic had a harmonizing effect, allowing herbs with different properties to blend together.
The first step in alchemy was processing the materials: removing impurities and retaining only the essential parts. This step required using one's own magic to keep the materials' magical essence from escaping. Whether the essence remained intact directly determined the upper limit of the final elixir's quality.
After processing the materials, the next step was blending them. Every elixir was made by blending several alchemical ingredients.
The quantities of the ingredients, the order they were added in, and even the timing and manner in which each ingredient was added during blending all mattered.
At this step, the alchemist needed good magical sensitivity, carefully monitoring how the different ingredients were combining and adding the next ingredients at the right moment.
The final step was when the elixir took shape, also known as the solidification stage. When the blending stage ended, the magic in the liquid ingredients had reached a point of equilibrium, but this balance was fragile and easy to disrupt. Special magical techniques were needed to stabilize the magical structure.
It was like filling a cup: first you put in stones, then sand, and finally water, creating a balanced arrangement.
But the moment you turned the cup upside down, that arrangement would be destroyed.
You needed a technique to fix the arrangement in place, such as cooling it until the water froze into ice. Then the arrangement would be solidified, and even if you removed the cup, it wouldn't be destroyed.
These were the special magical techniques alchemists needed to learn.
Different solidification techniques had also given rise to different alchemical schools, each with its own unique methods.
Some ordinary techniques had been leaked, while others were too common or had become so widely known that they were simply made public. These were the standard techniques currently shared by the Alchemists' Guild.
The ordinary techniques could be learned for free at the Alchemists' Guild, but they had a low success rate when solidifying elixirs, and the resulting quality wasn't very good.
To learn more advanced solidification techniques, one had to complete tasks for the Alchemists' Guild to earn contribution points, then spend those points to learn them.
Of course, given Karen's status, he could learn them even without contribution points. And some techniques from secretive alchemical schools could be learned by paying a price without joining the school, as long as he didn't pass them on.
Karen looked down on ordinary techniques, so he decided to choose a more advanced one to practice first, then see whether he wanted to learn one of the secret arts.
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