Introduction
This is part 1 of my Legion Jewelcrafting guide. In part 1 I will introduce the main advantages of Jewelcrafting from a money-making point of view and the main types of end-products. The core money-making portion of Jewelcrafting is prospecting and I will give you my prospecting spreadsheet that I personally use to make my buy decisions.
Jewelcrafting is highly profitable, with several advantages from a gold-making point of view.
My TSM_Accounting sales look like this for my Jewelcrafting-group, this does not include profit from shuffling uncommon gems into obliterum and enchanting materials, but all sales for rare gems, rings, necks, Sangrite and epic gems. I have spent slightly more than this on ore, as I dumped gold into leveling Jewelcrafting at about a 6-7k loss per necklace. My current profit margin on epic gems is around 3-5k gold per, so I expect to make this back within a week or two.
Advantages:
- Large number of potential end-products
- End-products are consumed and popular
- fairly High capital requirements (Felslate)
- Maxing your profit is kind of boring (lots of crafting)
Disadvantages
- Maxing your profit is kind of boring
- Requires lots of reposting
- Biggest profits are gated behind 800 skill and Blood of Sargeras availability
The main moneymaking process in jewelcrafting is and will always be prospecting. This takes time and requires you to risk your capital, and as such only people who are serious about making money will do this on a large scale.
Jewelcrafting has a very diverse amount of end products. You can sell gems raw, cut them, sell them as jewelry (rings primarily as necks are dumped from all the people crafting them to get 800 or disenchant rings from uncommon gems, obliterate uncommon gems or create epic gems.
To ease your decision making for Jewelcrafting I have created a comprehensive spreadsheet.
You fill in the prices from your realm on all relevant inputs and outputs and choose which end-products it should disregard if you dont have access to them and it will tell you the expected value of selling raw gems as well as the expected value of the best possible use of your gems.
Buying Ore
Buying ore at the right price is the most important part of Jewelcrafting. I would personally suggest buying at prices that guarantee profit if you just sell the gems raw, as it will ensure that you do not get burned. I strongly suggest making a tradechat macro for buying ore as you will regularily get takers even if your asking price is below MV. Apart from that just keep checking the Auction House regularily and know your buy limits. Remember to check the mobile app when you can, if you are away from the computer.
I have included my macro below, just switch to whatever thresholds you prefer, the first price is felslate, while the second item linked is Leystone Ore. For a slightly more in-depth guide on how to make trade chat macros look at my post here.
/run SendChatMessage(format("Buying %s 30g per %s 10g per any amount COD or trade", select(2,GetItemInfo(123919)), select(2,GetItemInfo(123918))), CHANNEL,nil,GetChannelName("Trade - City"))
Prospecting and end-products
Prospecting gives three types of items, and I will go through the major uses of each and tell you what I’m primarily using them for:
Rare Gems
Rare gems are the main part of the value from prospecting. As my post here shows you get 17,5% rares per prospect for felslate and 5% rares per prospect for Leystone Ore.
If you prospect large quantities (which you should) the best use of rares will be to diversify into all profitable markets.
Bloods of Sargeras can usually be used very effectively with Jewelcrafting as both epic and cut rare gems require them. This means that supply for these items is limited compared to uncut gems. I very strongly suggest using the Boon of the Bloodseeker from Wardens Revered to increase the amounts of blood you get. Particularly Epic gems have large potential, although it is decreasing daily as more people hit 800 skill.
Rings can also be profitable, although this can be heavily influenced by your recipe lvl. Lvl 3 might be necessary to craft them profitably at this point, but the spreadsheet will tell you exactly.
I sell a ton of Rare gems in all possible forms. I use almost all my Bloods to craft Epic gems (and i spent a ton of them leveling to 800). The majority of my gems are sold raw, but i have sold some rings earlier. As i dont have rank 3 ilvl 815 recipes, I have mostly stopped crafting these as I am not gonna be competitive until i get them.
Uncommon gems
Uncommon gems can be cut and sold as cheap replacements for rare cuts, they can also be sold uncut, but generally the best profit from these will be to craft the rings, if you have recipe lvl 3. Rank 3 takes 2 of either Azsunite, Skystone, Deep Amber or Queen’s Opal and 1 Chaotic Spinel. They can either be obliterated or disenchanted or sold on the AH directly. I have found that disenchanting gives access to very cheap leylights and Arkhanas and I’ve even been buying them heavily from the AH and trade. One quick Note is that sangrite has extremely low value as far as i can tell. I just sell mine uncut on the AH to get rid of them.
Gem Chips
Gem chips are guaranteed every time you prospect. They are used to craft the Nightborne Delicacy Platter (+375 Mastery food). If you have access to the recipe i suggest crafting it yourself. Otherwise sell them on the AH, or look up the biggest seller of the buff food on TUJ or Wowuction and contact him to sell your chips directly.
I’ll be coming out with part 2 of my jewelcrafting guide on friday which includes my TSM groups and operations for rare gems, and goes a bit more in depth into recipes.
Have any questions or comments, leave them below!
Hey quick question, I am using a copy of your jewelcrafting spreadsheet and in the blue/teal cells of the input sheet, I don’t know what the values are coming from because all I see is =Value_Felslate. What is that Value_Felslate anyway?
Value_Felslate is the expected value of the gems from prospecting 1 felslate. It is defined in cell L22 in the worksheet prospecting rates and Values. That worksheet also contains my assumed values for drop rates etc. Similarly the value for leystone and for raw values are defined in that worksheet.
I’ve downloaded your latest spreadsheet and you’ve done an excellent job, great work on implementing the TSM data import. Thanks so much for this.
You’re welcome! Glad you like it!
Just wondering, is mass prospecting worth it? I never seem to get more than 5 of the rare gems at a time, where regularly I get 2-5 with regular prospecting
It does not matter for the overall yield whether you mass prospect or use regular prospecting. It will give the same amount of gems on average. It is quite rare that you get more than 5 gems per mass prospect so don’t worry about it.
I made a useful edit of my copy of your spreadsheet where I have a tab that grabs the current values of the items from TSM. I will backshare a copy when I make it a little more “Universal”/without my API key everywhere.
I downloaded your xls spreadsheet. When I opened it up there was only the get pricing data button. unlike your example there was no refresh data button. I originally tried the google document sheet but it won’t let me make any changes such as inputting my TSM API key or server etc. I thought that when it opened up in google spreadsheet that I could just use it. Is there something I need to do to download it?
You need to make a cooy of the google sheet as the linked version is the master version. Go to file and click make a cooy.
For the xls version the refresh button has been removed and combined into one button that downloads or refreshes the data depending on how the sheet currently is populated.