Jewelcrafting - a guide to profit

[puurboi]

Jewelcrafting explained.

By now I’ve seen a whole lot of threads on Jewelcrafting, ranging from “should I get it” to “Should I buy this recipe” and “How do I make money with this profession”. This guide intends to answer all questions most starting Jewelcrafters will have, and answer some that more advanced Jewelcrafters may not have had. In no way do I claim to be a super-duper Jewelcrafter, but it’ll answer many questions people have on this profession. As for my background, I started to jewelcraft not until sometime September on an alt, and started JC on this character at level 62 (my first over 30 on this server). Maxxer managed to earn enough to buy his epic flying mount 30 minutes after hitting 70, and the JC market here is much, much tougher than on my alliance pve server.

Getting started

The cost of leveling Jewelcrafting is approximately 1000g to get to 300. From 300 and on, it is profitable already. Part of the 1000g you can earn back with disenchanted materials, but not many of the items you make can be sold. There are plenty guides on the web on how to level it, go ahead and look them up. Cost for Draenei will be much cheaper, I’d expect it to be around 600-700g instead.

Tips for reducing cost of leveling:

Yellow recipes level about 70% of the time and early greens about 30% of the time, it can be cheaper to level on yellow than it is to level on orange.
When you get to the Star Ruby level of gems, it can be cheaper to prospect a whole lot of thorium to get
Star Rubies, and higher gems. Those gems can be scarce and/or pricy on the auction house, and this is a pretty certain supply.

Find a disenchanter (or have one yourself, or as your 2nd profession). Many of the stuff you make disenchants in valuable materials, and at 375 it’ll prove valuable as well.

Ok, I got 300/325/350/375, now what?

Well, to make money at JC, you need 325 at least so you can prospect Adamantite Ore. At 350 you can learn the rare gems cuts, and at higher levels metagems and necklaces. Don’t worry about powerlevelling to 375, when you hit 350 you’ll be fine. You will have four sources of income as a jewelcrafter, two of which are pretty comparable. These are prospecting, disenchanting, blue gems and green gems. Disenchanting will be handled in a later bullet.

Prospecting adamantite, and base uncut gem value

Step 1 – check auction house for the current uncut gem values

Just check Nightseye, Noble Topaz, Star of Elune, Living Ruby, Dawnstone and Talasite prices. Write them down, and yes it’s normal for Talasite to be dirt cheap.

Step 2 – calculate average uncut gem value
Add up all 6 values, and divide by 6. (Example, Nightseye 30g, Star of Elune 50g, Living Ruby 50g, Noble Topaz 40g, Dawnstone 20g, Talasite 5g – 30+50+50+40+20+5 = 195, divide by 6 = 32.5 gold) The Auction House takes a 5% fee on sold gems, so take that off your final average price. In our example this makes our average uncut gem worth 30.9 gold.

Step 3 – calculate average return per stack of adamantite ore

You have 22% to get a blue gem from a prospect of 5 adamantite ore. “A” blue gem is worth 30.9, and 30.9 times 0.22 equals 6.8. So prospecting 5 ore is worth 6.8 gold in our example. That makes our average return on a stack of adamantite ore (20 ore) 6.8 * 4 = 27.2 gold. I wouldn’t buy ore if I had less than a 10% margin on just the blue gems, so I’d buy stacks of 24g or less in this example. However, see the ‘Demand and Supply' part before you buy out 70 stacks of adamantite ore. For me prospecting accounts for approximately 35% of my JC profit.

Blue gems

Generally, cut gems are worth more than uncut gems. Two recipes are easy and cheap to get, and definitely worth getting. When your faction is in control of Halaa, a vendor sells Mystic Dawnstone design for 10g, and another sells the design for Steady Talasite gems for 4 research tokens. These tokens actually require a great deal of farming to get but chances are you have some lying around from leveling. No other designs for non-metagems can be farmed or bought. In general, gems that everyone can use are most in demand (duh), those that many people can use come after that (no really) and ones that only one or two classes can use are least in demand, and can even destroy value in gems. Just look at a gem and think what classes could possibly use it, and the more you can come up with, the more in demand the gem cut will be. On average, a gem cut of a wanted gem will be worth 5-10gold. You will find very little protesting of people on fees for gemcuts, unlike enchanting fees. You can either cut your own prospected gems, or buy uncut and put them on the auction house or a combination of the above (which is best if the AH allows it…) For me cutting blue gems accounts for approximately 20% of my JC profits.

Green gems

You cannot sell these gems uncut, and you don’t want to cut these gems for other people. However when your JC business is still young, these are a decent source of other income. Cut your red gems into Runed’s, blues into Solid’s, Yellows into Rigid’s and Smooth’s, Orange into Glinting and Potent’s, and Purple’s into Glowing and Shifting’s. They tend to sell between 1 and 5g each. Later on you’ll have so many that you’ll start vendoring the raw gems (or you do not consider your time worth the gold). Green gems account for approximately 5% of my JC profits.

Disenchanting and “the most valuable JC design you can ever buy”

Due to Blizzard’s enchanting design flaw, the enchanting materials most in demand are Large Prismatic Shards. Jewelcrafting can create many of these as side materials, and many jewelcrafters do not do this or do not care. Check your auction house regularly for the Design: Braided Eternium Chain. This design makes a rubbish lvl 70 blue necklace for 2 Eternium Bar and 3 Mercurial Adamantite. Eternium is usually dirt cheap (2g per bar) because it’s too abundant and not used enough. Mercurial Adamantite requires 1 Primal Earth and 4 Adamantite Powder and the Primals are 2-5 gold as well. Powder is a residue you have left from prospecting. LPS tend to sell between 25 and 35 gold, and even in the worst case scenario (2g per eternium bar, 5 gold per PE and 25 for LPS) this means 6g for 12 adamantite powder return. Best case is obviously much better. This recipe accounts for approximately 40% of my JC profits.

What recipe should I buy?

Like I just said above, the most valuable design you will probably buy is Design: Braided Eternium Chain. Also definitely get Steady Talasite and Mystic Dawnstone as they are cheap and easy to get. Other designs are listed below with the price I’d be willing to pay for them, as of January 19, 2008:

Reds

Design: Bold Living Ruby (+8 strength)
Price: 100g
A gem used by dps warriors and enhancement shamans, the demand for this cut is low. Unfortunately supply of the recipe is as big as the others so I wouldn’t pick this up for more than 100g.

Design: Bright Living Ruby (+16 attack power)
Price: 300g
Used by hunters and rogues, this gem is already in higher demand. However I am not sure why because I think Delicate Living Ruby is better for both of them.

Design: Delicate Living Ruby (+8 agility)
Price: 400g
Used by hunters, rogues and feral druids, and to some extent by dps warriors and enhancement shamans. This is the melee dps gem of choice in pure red.

Design: Flashing Living Ruby (+8 parry rating)
Price: 100g
Used by warrior and paladin tanks sometimes, parry rating translates into avoidance at a worse rate than dodge, but it immediately gives you a swing after for more threat than dodge, which resets your swing timer. Still, generally speaking this is an on-demand gem and not an AH seller.

Design: Runed Living Ruby (+9 spelldamage)
Price: 600g
This is the winner of Living Rubies, one of the best dps caster gems out there. Expect competition on this gem cut to be rather high on the auction house though, but you should still be able to put out a big amount of gems.

Design: Subtle Living Ruby (+8 dodge rating)
Price: 200g
Used by warrior, paladin and druid tanks, this gem has the best translation from rating to avoidance. Druid tanks usually pick agility gems since they scale better with their class, but warriors and paladins will pick this one often. From my experience, this is not a good AH seller and more an on-demand gem.

Design: Teardrop Living Ruby (+18 healing / +6 spelldamage)
Price: 400g
For me this has been the second best selling Living Ruby cut, and well worth the money to pick it up. Note how this is used by many classes making it an easy ah seller.

Yellows

Design: Brilliant Dawnstone (+8 intellect)
Price: 150g
Although I am not sure why these sell, they do sell and they sell pretty well at that. Seems to me any class has better stuff to put in yellow slots than this.

Design: Gleaming Dawnstone (+8 spell critical rating)
Price: 150g
Mostly for elemental shamans, I can see this gem also being decent for holy paladins. I don’t have any first hand experience with it though, so I am not sure if this is a good seller.

Design: Great Dawnstone (+8 spell hit rating)
Price: 150g
Mages and Destrolocks that are far below the hitcap will gem these to reach it. Again, no first hand experience.

Design: Mystic Dawnstone (+8 resilience)
Price: 10g from vendor in Halaa.
It kinda depends on your server whether you can make a good margin here or not. Some servers the cut gems sell for less than raw Dawnstones and some servers it sells for more. Regardless, it’ll be well worth the 10g investment from the vendor.

Design: Rigid Dawnstone (+8 hit rating)
Price: 200g
Combat rogues and Fury warriors have a tough time getting too much melee hit rating. This gem sells decently well, although not amazingly so.

Design: Smooth Dawnstone (+8 critical strike rating)
Price: 250g
Part of the “crit is fun!” category, fury warriors and enchancement shamans will gem these relatively often as well. These have been my best selling Dawnstones to date.

Design: Thick Dawnstone (+8 defense rating)
Price: 100g
Could possibly be used by tanks, but I think in general they will gem Enduring Talasites in their yellow slots.

Blues

Design: Lustrous Star of Elune (+3 mp5)
Price: 50g
Novelty value only, this gem is rubbish. It should be 4mp5 but for some reason they decided not to.

Design: Solid Star of Elune (+12 stamina)
Price: 1000g
Well worth the investment, with the outbreak of pvp fever, these gems sell idiotically well. The only gem cut that drives the prices of the Stars of Elune as high as they are. I literally just picked it up for 538 and consider it a steal (yay!!)

Design: Sparkling Star of Elune (+8 spirit)
Price: 50g
Spirit was fixed a while back, but it’s still not worth stacking these gems.

Design: Stormy Star of Elune (+10 spell penetration)
Price: 50g
The only other Star of Elune that might be worth stacking, but there is not enough resistance out there to make it a gem that’s sold often.

Greens

Design: Dazzling Talasite (+4 intellect and 2 mp5)
Price: 50g
I could possibly see this one being sold, but still think it sucks.

Design: Enduring Talasite (+4 defense and +6 stamina)
Price: 150g
Used by all tank types, this is the second best selling Talasite I have encountered.

Design: Jagged Talasite (+4 critical strike rating and +6 stamina)
Price: 100g
Not wanted by many, although two of these are cheaper than Smooth Dawnstone + Solid Star in the same slots.

Design: Radiant Talasite (+4 spell critical rating and +5 spell penetration)
Price: 50g
This too, classifies as rubbish in my book.

Design: Steady Talasite (+4 resilience and +6 stamina)
Price: about 800 kills in Nagrand
The best selling Talasite, as with Mystic Dawnstone on some servers you will get a margin, on others it’ll cost you gold to craft these. Regardless, the cheapest way to powerlevel your JC to 375 if that is what you want.

Orange

Design: Glinting Noble Topaz (+4 hit rating and +4 agility)
Price: 300g
A very good orange gem for hunters and rogues, this will be the gem of choice in yellow and red slots for many of them

Design: Inscribed Noble Topaz (+4 critical strike rating and +4 strength)
Price: 200g
PVP gem of choice of many arms warriors and enchancement shamans, this gem sells reasonably well.

Design: Luminous Noble Topaz (+9 healing / +3 spell damage and +4 intellect)
Price: 350g
The only decent gem healing classes can put in yellow sockets if they want the socket bonus, this gem sells much better than I had initially thought.

Design: Potent Noble Topaz (+5 spell damage and +4 spell critical rating)
Price: 500g
Mages, Elemental Shamans and Destro Warlocks love these gems. They consider them to be the best thing since sliced bread, and who can blame them?

Design: Veiled Noble Topaz (+5 spell damage and +4 spell hit rating)
Price: 400g
Initially this would’ve been worth more, but with the age of arena combat and the difficulty with which new raiding guilds start, these gems are selling more slowly. Note how two of these gems equals 10 spelldamage and 8 hit rating, while the ruby + dawnstone gives 9 and 8.

Design: Wicked Noble Topaz (+8 attack power and +4 critical strike rating)
Price: 300g
I have no first hand experience with this gem, but it would be the one rogues and hunters pick if they are looking to increase AP in yellow slots while keeping socket bonuses, or crit in red ones.

Purples

Design: Balanced Nightseye (+8 attack power and +6 stamina)
Price: 150g
A nice design, wanted by hunters and some rogues. These gems will sell reasonably well, but the market for nightseyes is dominated by other gems.

Design: Glowing Nightseye (+5 spell damage and +6 stamina)
Price: 400g
Gems like these, that are solid choices in both blue and red slots. Especially warlocks love these, but they are bought and used by all other damage casters.

Design: Infused Nightseye (+8 attack power and +2 mp5)
Price: 50g
A gem intended for hunters I think, but looks like rubbish to me anyway.

Design: Royal Nightseye (+9 healing / +3 spell damage and +2mp5)
Price: 500g
This has been my best selling Nightseye to date. Almost all casters gem these in their blue and red slots. Definitely for pvp the best healing gem you can find.

Design: Shifting Nightseye (+4 agility and +6 stamina)
Price: 300g
A better Balanced Nightseye for rogues, hunters and druids, this will most likely sell better than the Balanced counterpart. Feral tanks love these, like prot tanks love Enduring Talasite.

Design: Sovereign Nightseye (+4 strength and +6 stamina)
Price: 100g
Another niche gem, Strength is only desired by dps warriors and enhancement shamans, and as such the market is limited for these.

Demand and Supply basics

This is all basic pricing strategy from business courses. However, not everyone has had business courses so I’ll give a little primer here for them. The price of gems is a function of their supply and demand. Supply is determined generally by the gem in highest demand – if I see there are no living rubies on the auction house, I will prospect ore to get them on there for a high price. Demand is tempered by the price of current gems. Would you buy rubies for 200g? Nope, for 10g? You’d buy them all. The sweet spot for them is somewhere around 50-70g. The demand for living rubies however, counts both raw gems, as well as the Runeds, Teardrops etc. Total demand for rubies determine price of the raw gem. Particular cuts have their own supply and demand, and the balance between them will determine what price that particular cut will have. Especially with Stars of Elune you can see this, a 10-20g margin on Solid cuts isn’t uncommon, but the other Stars of Elune tend to sell for less than the raw gems. Use your brain when determining what gemcuts to buy and what not. When to undercut your own gems because someone else has, and when to buy out his auctions instead.

Metagems

There are some easy and good metagem recipes available (18sta / 5% stunresist, 14 spellcrit / +3% spell critical damage) but since these are not needed as often as regular gems, they will be mostly irrelevant to your JC business.

Addons

Here are addons I use for my Jewelcrafting business atm:

Simple Prospector - a tiny addon that allows you to prospect with less clicks. As you will be prospecting hundreds of ores a day in no time, this addon saves you from carpal tunnel.

Auctioneer - although it can be used for analysing the auction house, price trends etc etc, many people know how to toy with it and can mess it up. However, it does make posting many auctions easier.

Advanced Trade Skill Window - allows you to queue up crafts. Especially when you are going to be making and selling a lot of uncommon gems, this will save you many headaches. (Thanks to Nine-Earthen Ring)

Gemlist - addon that you may have seen before. A !gem whisper from potential customers allows them to browse your different gems and saves you some time answering whispers. You can customize whether you see incoming whispers, and your autoresponse outgoing whispers.

Most importantly

You need to have fun doing this. If you don’t enjoy working a market, and competing with the other jewelcrafters on your server, you will find this to be a living hell. You will be prospecting a lot, and will be in the auction house a lot, but there is a certain charm with earning your gold this way. On Khadgar, a good day of JCing earns me 1000gold easily. On sunstrider, the same activities will net me about 300-400gold since it’s more competitive. Make sure you always have about 1000g in liquid gold for buying recipes or really cheap ore. And finally, use your brain when it comes to these things. I tried to cover as much as I could in this guide, but am leaving a couple reserveds just in case I want to add something later on.

[jdismeuc]

Awesome guide, +rap for teaching me how to calculate the average price. /sacarsm

[moffett]

if only there was a place you could get all the Adamantite Ore u every wanted within a 10-20 min time span hmmmmmm

[The Maffyx]

Way to copy and paste this off the WoW forums. WoW-Europe.com Forums -> Jewelcrafting - a guide to profit

[imoTEP]

Great guide, thanks man.

[nachonut]

great guide. but go to the wow forums for a few extra tid-bits on the original post.

[frozendevl]

Way to copy and paste this off the WoW forums. WoW-Europe.com Forums -> Jewelcrafting - a guide to profit

Thanks for posting this, I was looking at the JC recipe prices and I knew this had to be old, the prices are much higher (on my server anyway).

[12alex3]

Wow Soooo Many Words!

[TehGoggles]

Haha, Thanks for this. +Rep

And Bookmarked.

[Fantomass]

thanks great guide.

[Syncness]

... He copied it.. God Damn.

Epic fail.

WoW-Europe.com Forums -> Jewelcrafting - a guide to profit

AGAIN

[TehGoggles]

... He copied it.. God Damn.

Epic fail.

WoW-Europe.com Forums -> Jewelcrafting - a guide to profit

AGAIN

Not many people here go there, plus, I've never seen it here before. Sure, he should have given credit, but it's still a good guide

[The Maffyx]

... He copied it.. God Damn.

Epic fail.

WoW-Europe.com Forums -> Jewelcrafting - a guide to profit

AGAIN

Yes we know, I said this above...

[mandenjonas1]

well what if wow-rurope had copied it from him? or maby it was also him who postet it there.
+rep anyway

[The Maffyx]

well what if wow-rurope had copied it from him? or maby it was also him who postet it there.
+rep anyway

If he posted it there he probably would have said that it was his, and he probably would have the same name, very rarely does someone do this.