Crafting reagent
- For items used in casting spells or abilities, see reagent.
Crafting reagents, also known as materials (often shortened to mats), are items used in profession recipes to craft other items. They differ from tools in that reagents are usually consumed in the process, while tools are not. There are several synonyms for crafting reagents as Blizzard did not really give profession crafting parts an "official" name until after some time. Other synonyms include components, ingredients, Trade Goods, and, for the Engineering profession, the term Parts is widely used.
For a list of crafting reagents, see Category:Crafting reagent items and its subcategories.
Quality
Reagent quality
Some crafting reagents from the Dragon Isles and Khaz Algar have different qualities that affect the properties of the produced item when that item is crafted using those materials. Lower-level qualities can be combined to create higher-level ones, usually in a 5-to-1 conversion per Tier. These crafting reagents come in 3 tiers:
- Tier 1: "Bronze"
- Tier 2: "Silver"
- Tier 3: "Gold"
Gear quality
Gear crafted from professions receives increased item level upgrades and better stats depending on the tier level of the crafting reagents used. Depending on the mixture of crafting reagent tiers used, some crafted items can have up to 5 crafting tiers. For example, using all tier 1 crafting regents will result in a Tier 1 product, but using all Tier 3 crafting reagents will result in Tier 5 product.
- Tier 1: "Bronze"
- Tier 2: "Silver"
- Tier 3: "Gold"
- Tier 4: "Diamond"
- Tier 5: "Legendary"
Other types
- Optional crafting reagents are used to ensure a crafted item will have a certain attribute(s), a certain item level, or a certain special passive ability. They can often function very similarly or identical to enchants. For a list of optional reagents, see Category:Optional crafting reagent items.
- Finishing crafting reagents are used to boost crafting stats while crafting an item. For a list of finishing reagents, see Category:Finishing crafting reagent items.
Notes
- Some items used in crafting were temporarily initially classified as reagents (the spell kind), rather than trade goods (for example,
[Ironfeather]). This was presumably a mistake.
Patch changes
Patch 11.0.0 (2024-07-23): The "Crafting Reagent" tag now also includes which expansion it is from. 
Patch 10.0.2 (2022-11-15): Finishing reagents added. 
Patch 9.0.1 (2020-10-13): Optional reagents added. 
Patch 6.0.2 (2014-10-14): Trade goods used in profession recipes now have the "Crafting Reagent" tag.
