Self-made

What is the Self-Made achievement?

The Self-Made achievement is a simple one. Once you spawn, you are unable to equip anything that you did not craft yourself - including, weapons, armor and even bags. These restrictions and limitations create unique profession paths and interesting gear restrictions. It also creates one of the most rewarding leveling experiences.

Getting bags

Unless you are playing a cloth caster, the first step your character should make is crafting 10 x Linen Bag.

My recommended route is to first craft 45 x Bolt of Linen Cloth, and then try to reach 45 tailoring with linen belts. You should have enough bolts left at this point to make your 10 bags, and this only requires 90x Linen Cloth in total. This will equip you with 4 bags for your inventory and 6 to eventually fill your bank.

Warrior / Paladin

While you are farming Linen Cloth for your Linen Bags. You might as well pick up Mining since your final professions will be Blacksmithing. Unlike other classes, Warrior / Paladin can create both weapons and armor with their professions.

The other profession you will want to pick up is Fishing. This is because you will need small amounts of leather to craft your gear. The only reliable way to get leather outside of the skinning profession is to fish up chests that are found in Floating Wreckages, which can be found on the coasts of Ratchet, Stranglethorn, Tanaris, Aszhara and other coastal areas.

If you're creating a Self-Made Warrior, consider rolling a race which starts with a shield (Night Elf, Gnome, Human, Troll, Undead) since you can not craft a shield and may want to use it with Shield Bash macros.

Self-made Warrior / Paladin weapon progression

Druid

Assuming you are levelling a Feral Druid, you will ultimately pick up Leatherworking to craft your gear and Skinning to gather the mats.

Taking Leatherworking means you will not be crafting any weapons for your character, although if you've read our Feral Guide, you'll remember that they're nothing more than 'stat sticks', so it's not a massive loss.

Self-made Leather Armor Progression

Below is a list of recommended pieces for each item slot. Again for a further deep dive, check out the spreadsheet for more.

Rogue

Rogues are one of the most challenging classes to level with the Self-Made achievement, since you're torn between armor or weapons and they are both important. Once you have farmed your Linen Bags, you have a few paths you can take:

1. Level Blacksmithing for your weapons. You may as well go on the Nudist run achievement also.
2. Level Leatherworking and keep your starting weapon. If you go this route, you will hit like a wet flannel and will only be half a rogue with a single weapon.
3. Repeatedly drop one profession for the other, relearning everything along the way in order to get both weapons & armor. This is VERY slow, but the safest route.

Self-made Rogue weapon progression

Hunter

Hunter is in the same boat as the Rogue where you have to commit to either making your armor or your weapons (yes, this includes ammunition for a Self-Made Hunter).

Fortunately, your pet makes the decision a little easier by allowing you to focus on crafting weapons and ammunition with Engineering while it does all the tanking. Again, you can choose to run the Nudist achievement here, it will just mean that you hit a little less considering the amount of stats you lose by not wearing any armor.

You could also choose to switch between Engineering and Leatherworking once you have crafted your Mithril Blunderbuss, as there are no massive upgrades from engineering from this point on.

Self-made Hunter weapon progression

Mage / Warlock / Priest

These three casters are considerably easier than the earlier clases. For starters, Tailoring is the primary profession used for their armor and is also used to create bags. This means that you don't need to stop at Linen Bags and drop it, you can continue creating bags with more slots, which is a massive improvement to the levelling experience.

My personal recommendation is to start your journey by focusing on crafting the Lesser Magic Wand. The #Priest channel on the Hardcore Discord has a great breakdown of the route but the basic idea is to collect 60 x Linen Cloth. You then craft 10 x Brown Linen Robe, disenchant them and then use the Lesser Magic Essence to craft your first wand. The next step is to do the same again, this time collecting 120 x Linen Cloth and then using all the disenchanted materials to level up to 70 Enchanting.

For priests that are game enough to opt out of using a Wand, they could also tack on the Pacifist achievement (no weapons at all) for extra achievement points.

Self-made Cloth Armor Progression

Below is a list of recommended pieces for each item slot. Again for a further deep dive, check out Frarth's spreadsheet for more.