The old goldmaking staple and king of prospecting is back in Dragonflight. Let’s take a look at how it is shaping up. Spoiler: There are some massive changes.
Recipe types
jewelcrafters have a lot of recipe categories as you can see from the screenshot. I’m most excited about gems, the gear and profession equipment. We also see the return of an Icy Prism like cooldown system where you can turn uncommon gems into rare gems.
Huge gem changes
Gems are getting a huge change in Dragonflight, with the return of a much greater variety. Gems can now combine two secondary stats, in both equal measure and in uneven splits. Sockets are of course a big question, if sockets are as rare as they have been then it is unlikely gems will see significant demand or prices, you can get up to three sockets on your necklace from a jewelcrafting enchant, but outside of that I have not had time to look it up. The other question is of course the price of ore and availability of higher quality base gems. There’s also unique-equipped epic quality gems, that require a lot of materials, and is an interesting return to how Jewelcrafting worked in Legion and BfA.
Prospecting potential
Prospecting has it’s own nodes, and you will definitely want to max out these. You can reach max quality prospecting for the highest quality ore with about 65-70 knowledge depending on if you have the jewelcrafting racial bonus and profession equipment. This is surprising considering most other intermediate materials rely on inspiration, but it’s good news for prospectors. The prospecting yield is down to wrath like levels, with 5 draconium ore yielding from 1-3 gems usually.
Gear
As a jewelcrafter you can craft rings, necklaces and trinkets. The new Idol trinkets are very intriguing, but their sale rate will depend completely on balancing. The effects scale with the number of sockets you have and gems of a specific type, so it’s still way too early to tell how good they will be. They are quite interesting though.
Reagents
Jewelcrafters can craft a good amount of reagents, some they use themselves and some for other professions. Unlike alloys from blacksmithing, you can consistently reach max quality crafting with these. For that you will want to max out nodes in the Enterprising tree, particularly Extravagancies.
Knowledge break points
The break points we aim for are all very similar to what we’ve seen with blacksmithing and Leatherworking and tailoring in terms of recipe difficulty. One interesting difference however is the lower knowledge requirement at the top end. You can max out even the hardest gear recipes with a quite bit less knowledge investment than the other gear professions. This might lead to JC crafted gear having increased demand as you can more easily guarantee max mythic ilvl with the primal infusion.
Optimal knowledge points strategy
I think there are multiple builds available for jewelcrafters. You can focus on trinkets or rings or necklaces for gear, prospecting, or gem cuts. All three have their arguments, but for gems and prospecting you will have to focus your points early. In particular being first to market with significant quantities of quality 3, both in terms of materials and cut gems can be very lucrative, but the huge profits will be shortlived.
If you want to go into gear the end-nodes give the largest skill boost per knowledge, if you want to focus on materials, prospecting and gems I would suggest maxing out base nodes, in particular the generic node, as well as the base nodes in the respective trees. I’m not going to give specific builds, as I think the best choice for jewelcrafting will be to stay flexible and jump on whatever looks profitable when the expansion comes out.
Notable recipes
Below is a list of the recipes that most excite me, alongside some quick notes on how you would go about profiting from them, as well as their source. This includes recipes from all sources.