The Art of ALTing: Professions & Events

This article is part of our “Alternate Characters Guide” that explains the current functions of alts and the best ways to utilize them. If it feels a bit disjointed, click through to our guide hub, get an introduction, and links to even more related topics.


Profession are a popular way of utilizing alternative characters. Since all toons have a hard cap of nine slots, the productivity of your account directly scales with the numbers of characters you use. Additionally alts are set up quite fast because most professions are easy to level. That’s why bringing up professions is a standard procedure even if you don’t actively play a toon.

Leadership Is King

Professions UIThe best profession to level is Leadership. Unfortunately that one is a severe pain and it takes months to get to level 25. Ideally you want all nine slots unlocked before you start it, making even the preparation a grind of its own. The rewards however are worth it. The Resonant BagArtifact Paraphenalia, and Thaumaturgic Bag drop unbound RPs that can be sold. It might not seem a lot on a daily basis, but over time it adds up. Especially if you use higher level assets and achieve a decent uptime, the AD gained by Leadership can be significant. Already starting tasks only once per day is enough to notice your wealth growing.

Professions Other Than Leadership Can Be Great, Too

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Leadership is the best long-term investment, but you might find value in other professions as well. At the start of Module 6 players had Alchemy farms that produced Unified Elements. Two mods later Masterwork Professions raised the demand of some basic resources and there will be other opportunities. Overall it can’t hurt to start some professions when you’re invoking anyway. I personally bring two common professions to 20, unlock eight slots (Alchemy works great to get the rank 3 result btw.) and then hop onto the Leadership treadmill. It might be faster to start Leadership right away, but that way I have two additional professions that I can instantly use in case they get relevant.

If you want to avoid Leadership altogether then you can produce “crates” for your guild coffers. Each profession has recipes either for “Surplus” or “Gems”. The Guild Marks you gain generate a little less AD (using Explorer’s Charts) than Leadership, but you also don’t need to wait for months until you can actually start farming the profession.

Summer and Winter Festival

Winter Event RacingSome events particularly scale well with character slots. The Summer and Winter events offer a gift per day on each character. The Winter Festival has been especially great in that regard, but the Summer Festival has caught up as well thanks to some favorable changes. The more characters you complete the daily with, the more chances you get at a reward, possibly even an unbound one. Just note that your toons need to be level 30 to fully participate in both seasonal events.

The viability of alts in other events differs. Most have daily rewards, but may hand out bound stuff that you don’t need on alts or the account. Even the rewards you can actually sell might only go for pennies on the Auction House. So it’s always advised to judge whether it’s worth the effort. Generally though it’s not wrong to have an alt army ready to farm events.


Do you use your alts to do profession and events? What’s your approach to profit? Share your experience in the comments below and visit the corresponding thread on our message board!

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j0Shi

j0Shi plays the Neverwinter MMORPG since the open BETA in 2013 and is a regular contributor to the blog and the whole UN:Project. Originally a Guardian Fighter, he has built up ALTs of all classes and plays on BIS/near-BIS level.

10 thoughts on “The Art of ALTing: Professions & Events

  • August 10, 2016 at 9:47 am
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    what’d like to know how to do, is how to transfer my ad from my alternate characters to my main?

    • August 10, 2016 at 10:21 am
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      Use the ZAX exchange. Create an offer below market value so it doesn’t get matched, switch characters and cancel it with your main.

  • August 10, 2016 at 9:01 pm
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    Start 3 characters at once. Buy 96 purple guys (Artificing first, then 32 for any other 2 professions). Use those to achieve the full 9 slots before starting leadership (4 purple heros per guy). Having all 9 slots open will let you learn leadership faster than 8 slots….by a ton. Be sure to check for the Rank 3 result each time you collect results. You can then pass those guys to the next character, so you never need to reinvest. Whichever character starts with Artificing will finish faster to the rank 20 result first….so for that guy just have him cook leadership for a while till you can swap the companions around (or start a 4th guy for a bit!!!!)

    It’s a bit of a mess, but if you set timers, you will max your characters out fastest this way with the least amount of cost. If this doesn’t make sense, you’re drunk….go home! 😉

  • August 15, 2016 at 7:08 am
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    96 Purple guys. Awful, awful nonsense.

  • December 12, 2017 at 7:35 am
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    Alchemy is by far the fastest to level up (as long as you have the reagents) and opens slots for Rank 3, 10, 20, 100% Speed and Tier III Result (potions or dyepacks) VASTLY faster than anything else.

    Artificing is barely worth doing on a DC, CW and SW. I would not bother on any other class at all, except my Master Crafter DC that has rank 25 in all crafting professions and is now off to Chult to learn the new recipes.

    I used to say Alchemy, Jewelcrafting and Leadership on all, then Weapon and Armour according to class, Rank 5 Black Ice on one of each class. But with the Mod 8 BtA rings, I really don’t think there’s anything worth making in Jewel crafting anymore. And even the good rings (when they WERE good) would be character-bound when upgraded, anyway.

  • December 12, 2017 at 7:39 am
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    Oh, and for Leadership, my first 12 characters have 3 purple, 6 blue and 3 white men. That lets me do all the RP stone tasks in 8 hours each. After that, the next 8 characters have a mix, but I sort of lost motivation to bother much with professions quite some time ago.

    My Grand Master Crafter has dozens of Grandmaster Alchemists, as I need to make a lot of Aggregates and Unified Elements for Black Ice Shaping rank 4 and 5 on 2x Professions XP, and then to upgrade Drowcraft gear.

  • January 15, 2018 at 11:39 am
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    This is what I did, not sure if it will work for everyone. I currently have 2 mains and 8 alts.

    First, unlocked the easiest 8 slots as fast as I could (all except the “3 professions to level 20”). Alchemy is best for the rank 3 result task since you can do rare tasks that grant rank 3 results as early as Level 3 in Alchemy, whereas the other professions have to be ranked up much higher before you get a similar rare task. Any profession except leadership is best for the 100% speed result task.

    Second, during the long slow grind in ranking up Leadership using 6 or 7 slots, I would reserve 1 or 2 slots to rank up two other professions, so as to be able to unlock that 9th slot. The two I generally chose are EITHER alchemy and jewelcrafting, OR only one of alchemy & jewelcrafting and some third profession.

    Then, once all 9 slots are unlocked, I would devote 6 slots to Leadership RP tasks, 1 slot to the Leadership Astral Diamond GM crate, and 2 slots to the other two professions that I ranked up, either producing Elemental Aggregate/Unified Elements if it was alchemy, Gems crates if it was jewelcrafting, or Surplus equipment crates if it was some other profession.

    Jewelcrafting is a good choice because the crates you get from it go into the stronghold coffer for gems, not surplus equipment, and most guilds are always needing gems, and the GMs you get from gems per crate are higher than the GMs you get from surplus equipment per crate. The downside is that the purple tools for jewelcrafting tend to be pricier than the purple tools for other professions.

    • January 15, 2018 at 12:09 pm
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      Sounds like a plan, thanks for sharing! 🙂

  • January 24, 2018 at 9:10 am
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    The problem with Alchemy is that the level-up isn’t guaranteed. I end up blitzing that during the “Double Profession XP” weekends, since that averages it out. My path is 3->5 Leadership, with jewelry and one other until I get those up to 25, and then start bringing up the others. I do 3x the level 25 on leadership, one Labor and one AD crate. then I do 1-2 Jewelry, 1-2 Alchemy (depending on resources), and then fill the rest in with Crates for the Guild.

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