#0 - June 29, 2007, 1:14 p.m.
So I decided to work it out and here are the results.
These are the average costs of the raw materials required to level each crafting profession. This includes vendor bought items such as vials and thread. The only cost I haven't included is the training costs. But on average you can expect to pay about 30g for training costs for 1 to 300 and about 100g for 300 to 375.
Alchemy
1 to 300 = 125g
300 to 375 = 240g
Total Cost = 365g
Blacksmithing
1 to 300 = 883g
300 to 375 = 3324g
Total Cost = 4207g
Enchanting
1 to 300 = 726g
300 to 375 = 4116g
Total Cost = 4842g
Engineering
1 to 300 = 231g
300 to 375 = 2516g
Total Cost = 2747g
Jewelcrafting
1 to 300 = 231g
300 to 375 = No Price Yet (really can't bothered to work it out at the moment)
Total Cost = 756g
Leatherworking
1 to 300 = 171g
300 to 375 = 1773g
Total Cost = 1944g
Tailoring
1 to 300 = 240g
300 to 375 = 1141g
Total Cost = 1381g
So Alchemy is the cheapest to level all the way from 1 to 375, by a long way. I expected that, so no surprise there.
Enchanting is the most expensive, followed by Blacksmithing. I'm not really surprised, seeing as this would be the cost if bought every single mat off of the AH.
But realistically you're not going to do that. An enchanter will DE a lot of those mats and a Blacksmither will mine a lot. In fact about 75% of the cost for levelling Blacksmithing is the primals required to get from 360 to 375. 75% of the cost for 15 points!! But if you got the felsteel plans, you could knock off over 3,000g off of the cost of levelling BS.
I didn't do JC 300 to 375 as it varies way too much. You could spend as little as 100g or as much as 5,000g.
So to my mind, Engineering is the most expensive to level as there are not a lot of options for cutting costs, except for mining endlessly to gather the mats needed.
Price data is taken from http://www.wowecon.com