Knowledge points are hard to come by, particularly for alts, so today we’re going to look at a fairly low knowledge build I’ve been doing on my alt jewelcrafter, focused on prospecting.
Build and stats
I did most of my prospecting with this build. I have maxed out the prospecting node as well as the base node in the Enterprising tree. I also have some points in the jewelers toolset mastery and a couple of inspiration points. This build is very far from optimized, and that’s a good thing, because it can help us pin point the right way to continue. Right now I have more than enough bonus stats from inspiration to reach the q3 breakpoint for quality 2 ore, which is the most important potential breakpoint. If I focus on generic skill nodes and spend some gold leveling my skill I might reach the threshold for guaranteed quality 3, but this would only really impact the value of illimited diamonds, as the lower quality gems are pretty much all the same.
Stats
I rocked the first 14k ore with 20% inspiration. I did about 15000 to 20 000 of the ores with Sagacious Incense, for +2% Inspiration, which put me at 22%. You can see the full breakdown of what I got. I prospected all the serevite ore I got from resourcefulness, so I ended up prospecting a bit more than 40 000. I also prospected the Prismatic ore I got at the end and I tracked those results separately.
Did I make a profit?
At current market values I ended up with materials worth 540 000 gold, which does not include prospecting the prismatic ore. I’ve not sold them yet, but I do expect them to sell fairly quickly for the most part. If this sells then I just made 200 000. I did not do any processing of materials (although I kept all the q3 rare gems as I can use those in my own cuts). Now one thing to keep in mind here is that I bought my ore cheaper than the current value. If I had bought my ore at the current price I would have just broken even essentially, which means you would more inspiration than I have to make a profit. Luckily that inspiration is relatively readily available through better profession equipment and the Inspiration node. A very significant portion of your profit is coming from quality 3 Illimited diamonds. I got 10 of them, which represents 300 000 of the value of my gems.
Consumables
Prospecting large amounts of ore is really slow. You absolutely want to speed it up, and you likely want to use Sagacious Incense to increase your rank 3 rate. I suggest combining the q3 incense with a q3 Phial of Quick Hands. This is about 1000 gold extra per 30 minutes, but it speeds you up and gets you more gold from your ore.
Min maxing
Inspiration is the key to this, which means you need to get it everywhere you can. Maxing Brilliant Baubling and Saving slivers in the Jeweler’s Toolset mastery tree is the way to go, alongside the prospecting node. The base build with max inspiration requires 75 knowledge, which may require one extra weekly setup to reach depending on your rep bonuses. It’s also possible to reach the required skill to guarantee quality 3 gems with quality 3 ore. This may be more profitable, depending on the price of illimited gems.
Simple profit check
If you want a simple calculator for profit you can compare the price of the ore and the price of illimited gems. This simple spreadsheet will tell you what the expected value of the illimited diamonds you get is, if that is equal to or more than the price of the ore it is go time. For me the value of the diamonds was roughly 80% of the value I got, which means you can expect about 20% if the diamonds are breaking even. At current prices on EU you would need about 29% inspiration to break even on the diamonds with rank 2 ore.