Blacksmithing on retail realms runs on a single 1 to 100 skill bar for the current expansion tier, Midnight Blacksmithing, rather than the 1 to 600 ladder older guides describe. This guide is computed from that tier's live game data, and it says something the tier's own recipe list forces on it: there is one recipe that reliably carries the climb, not a dozen.

That is not a shortcut we took. It is what is left after the other 106 recipes in this tier are counted and sorted, covered in full below along with what it means for the shopping list.

What you need

Blacksmithing at 100 has no separate trainer ranks to unlock, unlike Classic's Apprentice through Artisan walls. You learn the profession and the skill bar runs 1 to 100 without a mid-route trainer visit.

Knowledge Points and profession specializations exist this expansion and affect how fast you produce higher-quality gear once you are past leveling, but our data does not hold the specialization tree or Knowledge Point allocations, so this guide does not guess at them. Check your Blacksmithing profession page in-game for how those systems apply to your character; this route only covers getting from skill 1 to 100.

The only materials this route needs are three refined trade goods: Refulgent Copper Ingot, Gloaming Alloy, and Sterling Alloy. All three are common-tier crafting materials, not rare drops.

How the craft counts work

A recipe gives a guaranteed skill point while your skill is below its yellow threshold, a shrinking chance once it turns yellow, and nothing once it goes gray. The expected craft count below comes from that math applied to the recipe's real threshold values in the current client data. Expected means average, so the Buy column adds a 20 percent buffer on top for a normal unlucky run.

The route

Skill	Craft	Expected crafts	Buy (+20%)	Materials
1-100	Gilded Silvermoon Anvil	135	162	Refulgent Copper Ingot x2916, Gloaming Alloy x810, Sterling Alloy x810

Gilded Silvermoon Anvil stays guaranteed until skill 85, then tapers through a yellow window that closes at 100. There is no learnable skill requirement blocking it, so it is available from skill 1.

Read the caveat below before buying that full list. It is a large quantity of ingots for one recipe, and our data cannot confirm the recipe behaves like a normal leveling filler rather than a limited crafted item.

Total shopping list

Material	Total	Buy (+20%)
Refulgent Copper Ingot	2430	2916
Gloaming Alloy	675	810
Sterling Alloy	675	810

Why this route is one recipe, and what we could not confirm

There is no competitor guide to check this route against. Midnight has no published leveling guides yet, so every number and every caveat here comes from our own data pass or gets left out.

The Midnight Blacksmithing tier holds 107 recipes. Sorted by what they actually craft: 29 are weapons, 29 are armor pieces, 24 are the older-style profession tools (blacksmith's hammers, pickaxes, sickles, toolboxes), 3 are utility items like repair hammers, and 17 resolve to no craftable item at all in the current data. That leaves 5 recipes, including Gilded Silvermoon Anvil, in a newer item category this expansion introduced for profession equipment: anvils, a crafting hammer, and hanging displays. Of those 5, the Anvil is the only one whose reagents are common trade goods and whose skill window is wide enough to cover the climb alone, which is why the route lands on it.

Here is the part we cannot verify from item data: Gilded Silvermoon Anvil is itself a profession-equipment item, the same broad category as the tools we otherwise exclude from leveling routes because they are typically crafted once and used, not crafted repeatedly for skill points. Nothing in the item's data flags a one-per-character limit, and its skill window behaves like any other leveling recipe in our model, so the math above is real. What we do not have is confirmation that live Blacksmithing actually expects you to craft an anvil 162 times. Check in-game that the recipe stays queueable past your first craft before you buy the full material list. If it does not, this page gets corrected the moment a wider recipe pool resolves in the data.

FAQ

How many crafts does 1-100 Blacksmithing take in Midnight? 135 on average with the current recipe pool. The Buy column adds a 20 percent buffer for a normal unlucky run, landing at 162.

Why is there only one recipe on this route, when older expansion guides need a dozen? The Midnight Blacksmithing tier's 107 recipes are almost entirely weapons, armor, and profession tools, none of which make sense to craft repeatedly for skill points. Only one recipe in the whole tier, the Anvil, resolves to common reagents with a wide enough skill window to cover 1 to 100 by itself.

Do Knowledge Points or specializations change how fast this goes? They affect what you can craft and at what quality once you are past leveling, but our data does not include the specialization tree, so this guide does not cover that layer. Check your profession page in-game for it.

Is Gilded Silvermoon Anvil really meant to be crafted 162 times? We cannot confirm that from item data alone. Its skill thresholds behave like a normal leveling recipe and nothing flags a craft limit, but it is classed as profession equipment rather than a consumable, so verify in-game that it stays craftable past your first one before buying the full list.

Does this route apply to every retail realm? Yes. The Midnight tier is a single global skill line for the current expansion, so the route and the counts are the same on every retail realm.

When this guide changes

This route is computed from Midnight client build 12.0.7.68887. Seventeen recipes in this tier currently resolve to no craftable item in our data; if a later mining pass resolves them, or a content patch adds recipes that behave like normal trade-goods fillers, this route gets recomputed and the anvil caveat above may go away entirely. If your in-game recipe list or thresholds look different from what is described here, assume a newer build moved them and check back.

Updated 2026-07-31 for Midnight build 12.0.7.68887. Not affiliated with Blizzard Entertainment.