Guest post by Stede from Venture, LLT
I’ve been promising my readers a guide for nearly two weeks. During that time, I’ve been posting on topics that have finally culminated in what I hope will become a worthwhile resource for the community. Enjoy.
Part I – Preliminaries
IA – Preface
IB – Intro
Part II – Theory
IIA – Ore
IIB – Gems
IIC – Minimizing Waste
IID – Crafted Jewelry
Part III – Execution
IIIA – Buying
IIIB – Selling
IIIC – Shuffling
IIID – Keeping it Together
Part IV – Wrapping Up
This guide is written mainly for top-level Jewelcrafters who want to get the most out of their business. I’ll be presuming prior knowledge of how Jewelcrafting works, and that you know how to use add-ons to list your wares. I’ve tried to avoid math wherever possible. I feel this is more easily demonstrated & understood when working with a spreadsheet than reading a wall of text & numbers. I recommend using my take on Sterling’s spreadsheet, which you can download and play with here.
If you’ve read my blog, you’ve heard me talk about PIE – the amount of gold people are willing to spend on your server today. It changes every day, and it moves between market segments based on demand. We don’t directly influence demand; we profit off it. To make gold, the avid auctioneer will research where PIE is going, leverage diversity to follow it there, position himself for the sale, and then rely on a bit of luck to snag it.
I put the key words in green and bold. I won’t drag you through a lecture on economic philosophy, but if you’re into that sort of thing, checkout a few of my blog posts.
Jewelcrafting is primarily an enhancement profession. It provides a way to add stats to gear. We all understand the importance of enchants, gems, flasks, and food – a little bit here and there adds up to a noticeable difference. In this guide, you’ll probably find a lot of stuff you already know, but there will be that little bit here & there that add up to a big difference.
The blood of every non-gathering profession is materials. For jewelcrafters this is primarily ore. In previous expansions, jewelcrafters also relied on bars to craft settings, but now settings are bought from an npc. Bars are used only in crafting higher level jewelry (which also uses volatiles and Chimera’s Eye).
Gems hardly drop off nodes in Cataclysm, though I think I have seen it happen (could have been a Red-Bull-induced delusion, though). So, ore is your best, and almost always, cheapest source of gems. Let’s have a quick look at the average yield rates from prospecting at stack of each type:
Obsidium: 6 uncommon gems, 1/3 rare gem
Elementium: 4 uncommon gems, 1 rare gem
Pyrite: 4 uncommon gems, 2 rare gems, 8 volatile earth
So, what can you make with this stuff? From a basic perspective, rare gems can be cut and sold on the AH and crafted into higher level jewelry. Uncommon gems can be sold raw, cut and vendored, and crafted into lower level jewelry.
Throwing a couple professions into the mix adds a couple options. With access to an alchemist, you can transmute uncommon gems into meta gems, and with access to an enchanter, you can disenchant the low level jewelry into enchanting mats. Diversity is good.
Now, let’s break this down a bit further so we’re all on the same page here. There are a handful of main uses for raw uncommon gems:
