Here’s a debut post from Tykot. – Gravity

Across all the guides and strategies I read, not to mention peeking at Ensidia’s armory profiles, Jewelcrafting stands out as the obvious #1 profession.  Not just for DKs, but for any class in general since it couples stellar PVE bonuses with premium moneymaking potential.  But despite JC being the most recommended profession for DKs, I found little content educating fledgling DKs on how to really maximize the profession.

The obvious: JC-only gems, Monarch Crab, Ruby Hare

The less obvious: how to make money using JC.

Personally, I find that the economic game is interwoven with the PVE game.  The more money you make the better your position to acquire gear upgrades.  My BC guild was trapped in SSC/TK level content for a stretch, but I had the gold to purchase BT-crafted gear and epic-gems because I spent time learning the profession ropes.   And as a new character approaching 80, money is as much a concern of mine as anything.  Cold-weather flying: 1000 gold.  Dual-specialization: 1000 gold.  Epic flying: 5000 gold.  Oh yeah, gear?  Readily available epics for…. you guessed it, lots of gold!

If you’re rolling a DK today you must have a L55 character already.  Most of you have a L70 from BC, or perhaps a L80 now.  I mention this because JC has synergies with Alchemy, Enchanting, and Mining.  And since you’re committing to JC, you can’t possibly maximize your outlets unless you use an alt to take up the others.  Normally, I wouldn’t dare suggest you roll an alt just for this purpose, but DKs must have an alt 55+, so use it if you can.

The System

Prospecting Saronite Ore and Converting the Byproduct

There are guides across the internet that provide subsets of this information, but I never found one spot with it all collected together involving the 3 professions (Alchemy, Enchanting, Jewelcrafting), nor one spot that mentioned all of the outlets I use as I turn product over.

If you prospect Saronite Ore, you’ll receive a smattering of green-quality and blue-quality gems.  There are three reasonable outlets for these gems.

Jewelcrafting Only

Sell Cut Green-Quality Gems

You won’t have the recipes to cut the blue-qualities initially, but you can vendor-train enough relevant green-quality recipes to cut them.  Pricing as always is server specific, but there is at least some demand for these gems, especially red-colored since that provides strong offensive bonuses for most classes, and when people are leveling up they don’t necessarily want to fill gem slots with pricier blue-quality gems.  Initially, try cutting 25% of your red-colored into a few different cuts and see what happens.  I would recommend Runed, Bold, Delicate, and Bright to begin with.

My usual return per cut green-quality gem: 6G

Sell Raw Blue-Quality Gems

This one kind of hurts.  It’s tough to sell them raw because you know you’re losing out on profit you could be making by cutting them.  But many of the blue-quality recipes would cost you your daily tokens.  You need to decide for yourself if you’d rather buy 1 or 2 cuts for each blue-quality, or save your tokens for epic-quality recipes.  I recommend checking the AH and seeing what the pricing differences are between raw and cut blue-quality gems.

If you decide not to purchase a few blue-quality cuts, like myself, then you can still make great money selling raw.  Scarlet Ruby in particular fetches a lot since it’s used by both DPS casters and healing classes, not to mention it’s a conversion material for Transmute: Cardinal Ruby.

My usual return per raw blue-quality gem: 15G

Sell Cut Blue-Quality Gems

Obviously, you can charge a premium for cut gems.  People like to hit the AH and get exactly what they want, now, without needing to ask someone else to finish a process like cutting.  Right now the only blue-quality recipe I’ve invested in is Solid Sky Sapphire, and I find that it’s been very worth it to me.  A raw Sky Sapphire sells for 6G on my server, but the Solid cut sells for 25-50G.

My usual return per cut blue-quality gem: 25G

Jewelcrafting & Enchanting (Disenchanting)

An advantage of this route is the the Auction House does not charge a deposit on enchanting mats, so you can post a ton of them, or undercut to your hearts desire to quickly bankroll your next prospecting run.  If you’re not much into Algebra, brace yourself (okay, it’s not that bad!)

Keep reading for income-generating strategies.