Been Awhile!

I don't know if any of my readers even read this anymore! Clearly, I unfortunately do not update this site anymore. I stopped playing WoW about a month ago; just lost interest. I'm going to leave this site up -- hopefully it can help some people!

I am currently playing Everquest 2, on the Lucan D'Lere server. My character's name is Jherdarr.

Happy WoWing!

Jewelcrafting Guide, part 2

Okay, so here's part 2 of my jewelcrafting guide. First of all, let me say this: Jewelcrafting lets you cut gems, and make jewelry. I will be focusing on the gems, because it is the best way to make money from the profession.

Pretty simple rules for Jewelcrafting. First, get to 350+ as soon as possible. (Search my blog, I linked to a good guide some time ago. Or Google it.) Once you are at 350, the fun begins. But first, I have bad news: trained cuts and vendor recipe cuts don't sell for a huge deal. Sure, they sell, and you don't have anything else to do with your raw gems, except for sell uncut ones to other jewelcrafters. So, you can make some money by selling those unremarkable gems.

Now, the REAL Jewelcrafting moneymaker comes from cutting gems from dropped recipes. Unfortunately, that means you have to be lucky enough to get one, or have the stomach to buy one. These things can cost from 200 to 500 gold, depending on the recipe. Now, unlike some professions that have lots of cooldowns, in Jewelcrafting only cutting a Meta gem causes a cooldown, and it's only for one hour, and doesn't keep you from cutting non-Meta gems. So, once you get a good recipe (or recipes), you'll be able to buy an uncut blue gem or purple gem, cut it, and resell it at quite a nice profit. Try that with alchemy transmutes!

Jewelcrafting is fairly cheap to level up, but yes, it does require some investment in the end. It takes money to make money, people! But any time someone upgrades their gear with something with sockets (which is most good gear), they need new gems for it. There is ALWAYS a market for good gems, and if you bite the bullet and buy/find a great recipe, you'll rake it in.

Now, which recipes? First of all, in the course of your adventuring in Outlands, you're going to get rep with various factions, and some of them sell recipes! Here are a few to watch for.

• Design: Insightful Earthstorm Diamond (Sha'tar Friendly)
  
• Design: Blood of Amber (Sha'tar Revered)
• Design: Falling Star (Lower City Revered)

These are all bind on pickup. So, you can make them for yourself, but not to sell. Still, it's nice to have a gem or two hardly anyone ever sees!

Quick primer on gems. Which color gems can have which stats:

• Red: strength, agility, +damage and healing, +healing, attack power, dodge, parry
• Blue: stamina, spirit, mana per 5, spell penetration
• Yellow: intellect, hit, crit, spell crit, defense, resilience, spell hit

Now that we have that established. The most common gems you'll be cutting will be blue quality gems. The different types of raw, uncut blue gems are:

• Noble Topaz (orange)
• Dawnstone (yellow)
• Living ruby (red)
• Star of Elune (blue)
• Nightseye (purple)
• Talasite (green)

Keep in mind, a green quality RAW gem can be cut into a blue quality CUT gem! But they generally have a higher quality counterpart, which is cut from a blue quality raw gem.

You can also craft meta gems from Earthstorm Diamonds and Skyfire Diamonds, which are made by Alchemists. But these are expensive to make, and not as efficient or as easily sold as the blue ones, in my opinion.

For a complete list of ALL gems, with stats on mouseover, go here.
And for a handy graph of what gems have what stats, go here.

Now, market value will vary some, but some gems are clearly useful for many classes, and so are worth more. General rule of thumb seems to be gems with multiple stat bonuses are better than ones that focus on a single stat (with the exception stamina). I've decided to turn that into a third post, due out soon. Really, the problem is that with all the different classes, builds, and gear sets, almost EVERY gem has a place, and a certain degree of demand. But I will try to go over the most commonly bought ones.

Christmas Break

Hi everyone. I've decided to take a little break from World of Warcraft over Christmas. I need to let the monotony of it all fade from my mind! So, I won't be updating much for a month or so. Please enjoy the information I've already put on the site, and I'll be back in the new year or before, I hope! (Or if I happen on something unbelievable and must share it with you.)

Jewelcrafting Guide, part 1

This is part one of a guide about how to make money using Jewelcrafting. I'm going to copy a bit from a previous post I made!

First of all, the most straightforward way to make money with Jewelcrafting is to prospect ore and sell what you get. Following is a list with the necessary skill levels:

• Adamantite Ore - 325 Skill
• Fel Iron Ore - 275 Skill
• Thorium Ore - 250 Skill
• Mithril Ore - 175 Skill
• Iron Ore - 125 Skill
• Tin Ore - 50 Skill
• Copper Ore - 1 Skill

If you're a miner, save the high-end ore you mine. If you need to, buy it from the Auction House. Once your Jewelcrafting his 275, you can prospect Fel Iron Ore, and once it hits 315, you can prospect Adamantite Ore. Prospecting means you use the ore in order to look for gems in it. Gem drop rates have gotten a boost lately, which is nice, though it knocked prices down. The process is simple: get ore, prospect gems, hope for a blue, sell uncut gems. Even if you have to buy the ore, you might be able to easily make up the profit by selling the gems. Check your Auction House prices on gems before you do this! If they're really low, you might want to wait for the market to go back up.

Really, this is a fairly straightforward thing, but it requires some work from you. Focus on prospecting ore that has the best chance to yield whatever gems (especially blue) are selling the best. On my server, that tends to be Noble Topaz (about 50g a pop, uncut), but it will probably vary.

Conceivably, if the prices are right, you could turn a profit from simply buying a stack of 20 ore, prospecting the entire stack, and selling what you get. Experiment!

My next post will focus on cutting gems, and which are the most profitable.

Finished!

At last, I am on break from school! I am on vacation from now until after New Year's! So, I can post again! Ahh, no more stress. =)

Yes, Sherretz (see comment from previous post), there is money to be made from Jewelcrafting! In fact, I'll get to work on a mini-guide very soon, and hopefully have it posted in short order! =)

Reader Submissions

Got a great tip you don't mind sharing for the greater good? If you do, send it to me at jonathan.lee.san@gmail.com!

This is my 101st post on this blog, and to be honest, I'm hitting a bit of a wall for above average ways to get gold! Or maybe it's post-exam stress, I don't know. I'll try to get back in the saddle asap!

So in the mean time, if you feel like sending me one to put on the blog, I'll give you whatever kind of credit you want, so everyone will know who did it!

More Delays

Okay, here we go again. I've got 2 huge projects due tomorrow, so I won't have time to post tonight. Hopefully, I'll be able to post tomorrow or Wednesday. After that, my schedule will have finally died down for awhile! Bear with me.