WoW Jewelcrafting Gold Guide, Part 1: Prospecting

Introduction

Welcome to my blog on World of Warcraft gold secrets! To start things off, here is part 1 of a 3 part series: Jewelcrafting Gold Guide. I have been playing a Jewelcrafter since the profession was introduced with WoW: The Burning Crusade expansion back in 2007. It has made me huge amounts of gold the entire time and now I am sharing the method with you.

You probably know that prospecting is the way to get jewels to cut to level your jewelcrafting skill, but did you know that prospecting alone can make you rich? Never mind the cutting, which just adds to the profit!

Prospecting

Using nothing except prospecting I routinely make 300, 500 even 700 gold per day for 10 minutes work. The key is to buy ore as cheaply as possible, and you can routinely double or even triple your gold just from selling the raw gems. At level 70 I paid 25g each for stacks of Adamantite Ore. At level 80 the price point has not changed much, still 25-30g, and I prospect Saronite Ore instead for the new Wrath of the Lich King gems. Cobalt Ore (like Fel Iron Ore before it in Burning Crusade) is not as likely to yield blue quality gems. You do need to have Wrath of the Lich King expansion installed to prospect the Saronite, as 400 skill is required and the Jewelcrafting trainers are found in the new Northrend area.

Usually there will be 10-30 stacks of ore at this cheaper price, every day I look at the Auction House. I buy it all, prospect it and cut a few each of the popular gems to sell (this is optional, we will explore better ways to profit from the gems in part 2 of my Jewelcrafting Gold Guide.)

Uncut gems

The uncut blue gems in red and orange, like Scarlet Ruby and Monarch Topaz almost always sell because they are used for maximizing Damage per Second and Heal per Second output in many different cuts (although if you can get good patterns for these colors and cut them yourself, all the better!) In my experience these are more likely to sell than any other rare gems, with Yellow (Autumn's Glow) a close third. These gems alone will bring you out ahead in profit on the stacks of ore you bought, and we haven't even monetized the green gems yet!

For green quality gems, cut a few of the Bloodstones into Runed Bloodstone and Delicate Bloodstone - these are bread and butter gems that will be used by players as long as they are raiding for better gear and need "stopgap" gems to fill slots. The rest of the green gems will be used for better purposes than cuts!

Macro and conclusion

As a bonus, here is the macro I use to make prospecting a little less tedious. Hit escape key, then click Macros and click New to make a new macro. Put these two lines into the macro box:

/cast Prospecting
/use Saronite Ore

That will automate the process of clicking on the ore stack for you. Drag your new macro to an ability bar and you are good to go - now you can hit one key on your keyboard over and over instead of clicking the skill, then the bag slots to get the Prospecting done.

In part 2 of my Jewelcrafting Gold Guide, I will talk about the absolute fastest way to make gold from this skill - faster than prospecting, even! It is like falling out of a tree. Part 3 will go a little more in depth for those who enjoy making the most of their professions, with a method to diversify and increase your gold income from the byproducts of Jewelcrafting. So stay tuned!

Related articles:

WoW Jewelcrafting Gold Guide, Part 2: Dailies