Blacksmithing skillupsFollow

Yes, it gets a little expensive, if not in actual cash to buy reagents, then in the loss of money from selling the reagents at this point. However, what I did was bought the Thorium Bracer plans at the auction house - they're usually available pretty cheap (~1G) and all the mats are easy to find (thorium which you can mine and power crystals, which are laying all over in Un'Goro crater for the taking). I've bought most of the other plans for the set, none of which take any rare materials, and hopefully I'll be able to level up to 300 as soon as I can accumulate enough thorium. Unfortunately Ahn'Qiraj sent the price of thorium through the roof on my server, and I need tons of it to get the imperial plate plans for my own personal use. So I'm spending all my spare time trying to accumulate thorium in competition with tons of farmers both alliance and horde.