jewelcrafting
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Upcoming alchemy and jewelcrafting changes
Rygarius has just announced some upcoming changes to the alchemy and jewelcrafting professions. Based on player feedback, alchemy recipes will now require more herbs (and no meat or fish) and jewelcrafting recipes will require less herbs (and more ore). Rygarius We're giving a heads up on adjustments being made based on player feedback over the amount of herbs used in recipes by Alchemy and Jewelcrafting. The adjustment will increase the amount of herbs an Alchemist needs and decrease the herb costs for Jewelcrafters. Overview of Changes: Alchemy Combat potion recipes no longer requires Crescent Oil and meat/fish, and will require herbs instead. Flask recipes will use more herbs, increasing the number of herbs needed from one type of herb to two. Jewelcrafting Tier 1 gem recipes will require more ore and less herbs. Tier 2 gem recipes will no longer require herbs and instead require a tier 1 gem. In summary, these changes are not active yet. But once the change is active, Alchemists will need more herbs, and Jewelcrafting will need less. source
The puzzling problem of professions in endgame
I have a confession to make: There are five jewelcrafting mounts and one engineering mount that were introduced with Mists of Pandaria, and I have yet to make any of them. I have a tailor at max level tailoring, but she hasn't made a single Royal Satchel. I have a leatherworker who hasn't even touched any of the patterns introduced this expansion. In fact, the only things I seem to be making with any kind of regularity are cut gems, and glyphs for my alts. Why? Because the return on investment for any one of the mounts introduced is too low. I don't have the gold to randomly fling at things like mounts that will be used once or twice and then forgotten about. As for the tailor, the pattern for the Royal Satchel is locked behind the absolute, hands down, worst reputation grind in the new expansion -- and there's no way to get around that. I either have to log on every single day to grind out dailies that give an absolute pittance of reputation, or try to solo Warbringers, which is next-to-impossible for several classes. In short, none of these things are worth my time or gold. As a result, the majority of my professions have been completely unused for the majority of the expansion. And I have a sneaking suspicion I am far from the only one, here.
Warlords of Draenor: No primary stat gems
Technical Game Designer Chadd "Celestalon" Nervig has been tweeting recently about the changes to gems coming in Warlords. We already knew via his previous tweets that gem sockets on gear are very likely to appear by random bonus in the upcoming expansion, but what he's clarified today is that primary stats, so strength, intellect and agility, will no longer be gem-able: @Ady_Mx There are no more primary stat gems. Only secondary stat gems. - Celestalon (@Celestalon) December 29, 2013 This, as he also mentioned, relates to the gear changes in Warlords meaning that gear needs to be usable cross spec. Gems won't change between specs, so they would need to be secondaries only. He has also confirmed that tertiary stats won't be gemmed. What does this mean for Jewelcrafters going forward? Red gems with primary stats have always been the strongest sellers as demand for them is so high. It's possible that it will result in more even prices across the secondary stats, but we'll just have to wait and see. And while Celestalon hasn't confirmed this, it seems likely that primary stat enchants offering +intellect, +strength or +agility might also disappear, resulting in necessary changes for some profession bonuses. With the new gear system, secondary stat enchants, which are already the vast majority of enchants, make the most sense. As far as tertiaries go, he does mention that movement speed may remain on boots, but no further information was offered.
Will fewer gems and enchants in Warlords of Draenor affect profession profitability?
One of the pieces of news to come out of BlizzCon relating to itemization in Warlords of Draenor was there would be fewer pieces of gear with gem sockets, and that not as many items would have enchants available for them. The concern from jewelcrafters and enchanters is that their professions won't be able to make them gold anymore. Community Manager Lore chimed in with their intentions for the change, and how your actual income shouldn't change if all goes to plan. Lore We do want to slim down on the overall number of gems and enchants you'll need to put on your gear. That's primarily a quality of life change. We want to make it less of a hassle to be able to equip a new item. That said, we don't think these changes have to mean that e.g. Jewelcrafting will no longer be a decent source of income. We could -- and this is purely a hypothetical example -- make the best gems rarer, which would drive prices up and increase profit margins. If you can make just as much gold (comparatively) off of one gem in Warlords as you can selling three in Mists, that'll help substantially. source I actually think it will end up being more of a rough transition for the buyers than the sellers. The buyers won't be used to paying all this extra gold for their gems and enchants, but they're going to have to get used to it because the sellers will have less to sell and crafting each one will cost more. To make up for the smaller toolbox, Blizzard could even add things such as epic gear patterns, pets, mounts, and maybe even some toys to put in our toy boxes. Gems and enchants will always be the backbone of these professions, but adding a few extra perks like that would help keep them interesting (and profitable) going forward.
Gold Capped: Sha Crystals are about to get a lot cheaper
WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aims to show you how to make gold on the Auction House. Check out Basil's gold making podcast, Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! I hope you don't have too many Sha Crystals saved up for this upcoming patch. The 5.4 PTR has new epic craftable PvP gear on it which will likely disenchant into them, and some of these pieces will take very few materials. Six Bolts of Windwool Cloth, for example, will make you a nice disenchantable purple cape. The Sha Crystal from this can be turned into two Ethereal Shards, each of which can make three Mysterious Essences. Right now, the vast majority of enchanting materials are made through disenchanting gear crafted by tailoring or jewelcrafting. Jewelcrafters turn green quality gems into rings and amulets which DE into a lot of dust and a few essences. Tailors make blue PvP gear that disenchants into shards. Sha Crystals are only made on the daily cooldown that enchanters get, or through disenchanting epic gear obtained in other ways than crafting. Patch 5.4 will change everything. These methods will still work, but it'll get you more materials per bolt of cloth if you use the new recipes. Each purple Crystal will be able to be broken down into two blue Shards, which can be broken down into 6 green Essences. This new way will make more enchanting materials per cloth than the existing ways.
A beginner's guide to WoW's crafting professions
We've talked about WoW's gathering professions, but now that you know gathering, it's time to talk about what to do with the materials you've gathered: craft. World of Warcraft has eight different crafting professions -- alchemy, blacksmithing, enchanting, engineering, leatherworking, tailoring, jewelcrafting, and inscription -- which means that a wannabe crafter has plenty of options. So follow along as we walk you through your WoW crafting choices. Alchemy What does it do? Allows you to create a variety of potions, elixirs, and flasks, as well as transmuting certain items into other items. Most of an alchemist's skills involve providing buffs for anyone using their brews: potions provide an immediate benefit (like restoring your health), elixirs provide buffs for an extended period of time, and flasks provide buffs that last through death. Do I need any gear? Crafting potions will require herbs and different types of vials. Do I get any extras? Alchemists have access to the passive ability Mixology, which doubles the duration and increases the effect of flasks and elixirs they use. High level alchemists have access to a number of useful trinkets and, if they also study Archaeology, can learn to transform into a Sandstone Drake. Why take alchemy? It's definitely useful to be able to make your own potions: you'll find you're never lacking for them. And paired with herbalism to gather herbs, you'll be entirely self-sufficient. However, you might also take alchemy purely out of interest in high-level trinkets or the Sandstone Drake.
Patch 5.2's jewelcrafting changes and how to profit
There are going to be some new important recipes in 5.2 for Jewelcrafters: a "prism" style daily cooldown Serpent's Heart, and a no-cooldown recipe that allows you to craft the uncut meta gems, Primal Diamonds, out of gems and Spirits of Harmony. Kaliope reports that both recipes are world drops in Pandaria on the PTR, and shouldn't take long to farm. Serpent's Prism would have been a better name While the profession is better designed than ever (with much less waste for shufflers and far fewer items ending up at the vendor), the Serpent's Eyes that you get while prospecting Mists ore tend to pile up. They're used to make the 450 crafted jewelry, but the market for that isn't nearly as large as the supply of Serpent's Eyes. Many people end up making these into blues and disenchanting them so they're not wasted. Now that all JCs will have the option of turning three Serpent's Eyes into a prism every day, that will provide an outlet for the Eyes that may be more profitable than the 450 blues. So far, only a few Prisms have been opened, but they seem to award a random blue gem, just like prisms from expansions past. Since it's on a daily cooldown, it's unlikely to be able to push down the price of blue gems much. Is it worth using Spirits of Harmony? The new Primal Diamond recipe has no cooldown, but requires Spirits of Harmony which are their own sort of cooldown. One criticism of Jewelcrafting has been that JCs have nothing except research and extremely low-liquidity mini-pets to spend their Spirits of Harmony on. Jewelcrafters generate Spirits as quickly as any other character, and in theory, it'd be nice to have a JC option to use them on. Especially seeing as how anyone doing daily research will have almost certainly finished learning all their cuts by now.
The Art of Wushu: Gathering and crafting
Life skills are the central point of Age of Wushu's player economy. All useful equipment, food, and most of the useful consumables are only available through crafting, and equipment requires lengthy production chains and an injection of tradable silver in order to make it effective. This process is fairly daunting to a new player, and even experienced players go for a long time without taking advantage of the many advantages present from trade and crafting. In Age of Wushu, life skills represent a character's day job. You'll go to work gathering materials to sell or to craft into goods to sell, and then use the money from those sales to purchase things other people make and food to sustain yourself. Because we have a limited amount of space, this column will focus on production skills and production chains so that you can make the best choice about which type of goods you want to craft.
Does everything have to be fun?
When I was talking about reforging recently, one of the talking points for the discussion was that reforging isn't fun. This got me thinking: does it have to be fun? Reforging, enchanting and gemming my gear isn't something I do because I find those activities to be fun, it's something I do to be better at doing the things I do find to be fun (which is to say, killing monsters in Azeroth's various locales) and I'm okay with not especially enjoying everything. This doesn't mean I want them to be painful or tedious. But while I am endlessly delighted by transmogrification, I don't think I need to feel the same obsessive joy in arrange my stats that I do in picking out new looks. In fact, I think it might actually detract from the game and the parts I do enjoy if reforging was compelling gameplay instead of a means to an end. That's because the name of the game, having a lot of options to gameplay, can only sustain so much interest before it becomes overwhelming. Everyone has a threshold of interest they can sustain. Some of us can do enough content in a week that valor caps seem restrictive, while others of us can barely even cap valor in a week. Some of us love alts, others can barely manage to keep one character going. These differences are what has led World of Warcraft to become a game with the dichotomy of enormous choice in terms of what content we can choose yet restrictions on how much benefit you can get from it, to make it more optional. Into this mixture, elements of the game that are neither astonishingly enjoyable nor game-breakingly tedious serve an important function. They provide leavening. They create breaks between the peaks and valleys of the game experience - the crushing disappointments of nights spent wiping, or bosses who refuse to drop your desired item and the dizzy elation of a close arena match swinging in your favor, a first boss kill for your guild. There's an old saying that if everything is special, then nothing is, and one could argue that if the entire game strives to be fun at all times you'll soon come to lose out that sense of fun.
The economics of perfect gem cuts
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Check out Basil's re-reboot of Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! This expansion is the first one where "perfect" cuts (which are about a 10% proc rate when you're cutting a green quality gem) are blue quality, and even though they have different names, they have identical stats as blue quality gems. People still don't generally know this, and will sometimes skip over the perfect cuts when they're gemming new gear, but over time it will become more commonly known that there's no difference between socketing, for example, a Perfect Delicate Pandarian Garnet or a Delicate Primordial Ruby. If you're an enchanter, you may have noticed that the price for the common materials has gone way down, and if you're a jewelcrafter, you're probably wondering what to do with all the green quality gems you get from prospecting, as well as potentially looking wistfully at the profit margins on some of the really desirable research blue cuts.
Lichborne: Level 90 primary professions for death knights
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. This week, we'll cover the personal benefits of the primary professions for death knights at level 90. Many of the perks and benefits are the same as they've been at levels 85 and 90, but there's stronger versions, of course, and a couple other changes that are worth covering. This guide will focus primarily on the self-buffs and bind on pickup rewards, though many professions will, of course, have its own BoE things that all death knights will want to make use of, so consider that when you pick your professions.
Gold Capped: Shuffling Ore in Mists of Pandaria
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Check out Basil's re-reboot of Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! What's my favorite part of the expansion so far? The way that Blizzard has reworked the Jewelcrafting, Enchanting, and Alchemy professions to more efficiently support the "shuffle". That's a cute little name we auctioneers give to a fairly complicated business that takes ore and turns it into cut gems and enchanting scrolls. In every expansion where this has been possible, there's been a ton of waste. It's great to be able to make gold by combining profession synergy, but vendoring stacks of, for example, green quality gems feels like a waste. How to do the MoP shuffle While the business seems complicated to outsiders, it's actually a lot simpler than it looks. Let's break it down:
Mists of Pandaria Beta: New jewelcrafting panther mount models
MMO-Champion has unearthed the new models for the four new jewelcrafting panther mounts -- the Sapphire, Emerald, Ruby, and Dawnstone Panthers. Each new mount can be learned on its own and ridden, or a jewelcrafter can take one of each and combine them into a new mount, the Jeweled Onyx Panther. We are anticipating the cost of these panthers to be very high. Also, they totally look like Voltron. Since Mists of Pandaria will be forcing players to use their ground mounts for a great deal of the content, having awesome land mounts available will set new cool standards for hanging out at your new favorite bank or Auction House. These new models look really cool, with bright colors that really stand out. I'm really loving the Mists of Pandaria art direction -- this whole expansion looks unlike anything Blizzard has ever done, and it's a gamble that's paying off so far. It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
The post-patch 4.3 rare gem market
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him, tweeting him at @foxvanallen, or sacrificing your first-born to him. And be sure to catch the return of Basil and Fox's podcast, Call to Auction! Some things in life never change. Heart will always be the best band of all time. Tyler will always be dangerously underweight. And gem prices will always spike after a new content patch, often by 100% or more. The best way to profit off of (relatively) short-lived price increases is to stockpile ahead of time. While it's clearly too late for that, there are still plenty of opportunities to profit off the rare gem market before demand dies down. It's not too late. Regardless of whether or not you're a jewelcrafter, you've probably noticed that the market is going crazy. The red gems everyone wants are scarce enough to result in doubled (or even tripled) prices. And because people aren't gemming red because of the cost, more folks are buying orange, purple, and to some extent even blue, green, and yellow gems. Why? Socket bonuses are pretty attractive, and if you're expecting to have a piece of gear for only a week or two, why spend 300 gold, especially when you can get a decent boost out of a gem that costs a tenth of that?
Gold Capped: This is the wrong way to do epic gems
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! Epic gems are here, and they're designed differently than we're used to. To be specific, they're designed without fairness baked in, which is somewhat of a new feeling for people who weren't around buying epic gems in The Burning Crusade. Fairness is actually the wrong word for this. Life isn't fair, and neither is WoW. Instead, I'll talk about balance. Blizzard has gone to great lengths to ensure that the game remains fun for as many people as possible by trying to avoid changes that suddenly disadvantage an arbitrary subset of players or shift the desirability of choices made a long time ago. Balanced changes don't force competitive PvP and raiding group to play the gold-making game to be on a level footing with the competition. They also don't provide a tangible itemization difference between the profession perks of different crafting professions.
Gold Capped: The epic gem market in patch 4.3
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the auction house. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him, tweeting him at @foxvanallen, or by participating in your city's Fox Van Allen 5K Walk to Support Leg Tension (details coming). We've known for quite some time that epic gems would be coming with patch 4.3. It was obvious extrapolation. It's the last major patch of this expansion, and we didn't have access to them yet. The last major question was how we'd learn the cuts, and just yesterday, we got major news on that front: Patch 4.3 is bringing new jewelcrafting vendors loaded with epic cut patterns. Each of the patterns can be bought for five Illustrious Jewelcrafter's Tokens -- yes, a work week's worth of dailies. More thrifty folks can roll the dice and buy a Tome of Burning Jewels to learn a random cut, as that method will only set you back four tokens. Without a doubt, this new vendor will have a tremendous impact on the jewelcrafting profession -- and, with any luck, a tremendous positive impact on your in-game bank account as well.
Patch 4.3 PTR: New jewelcrafting vendors and recipes
Hey jewelcrafters, if you're wondering where exactly you're going to learn to cut all those new epic gems we're getting in patch 4.3, you can rest easy. Two new jewelcrafting vendors have been added on the PTR. For Alliance, you'll find Farrah Facet at the trainers in Stormwind, for Horde, you can find Taryssa Lazuria in the jewelcrafting hut. Currently the huts on the PTR in Orgrimmar are overrun with piles of Ethereal junk, leaving poor Taryssa literally buried under a pile of crates, but she is there. New epic gems include Queen's Garnet, Lightstone, Deepholm Iolite, Lava Coral, Shadow Spinel, and Elven Peridot. There's a twist with these jewelcrafting recipes, however. Each recipe costs five jewelcrafting tokens, compared to the three required for rare gem cuts. On top of that, the vendors sell the Tome of Burning Jewels, which will teach you a random Cataclysm epic gem recipe. The cost for the tome is only four tokens, so savvy jewelcrafters can spend their tokens on the cuts they need immediately, and then just purchase the Tome to save on token costs when they no longer care what recipe they are getting. Check out the gallery below for screenshots of all epic recipes, and thank you to The Godmother from Alt:Ernative for sending in the tip! %Gallery-136599% Brace yourselves for what could be some of most exciting updates to the game recently with patch 4.3. Review the official patch notes, and then dig into what's ahead: new item storage options, cross-realm raiding, cosmetic armor skinning and your chance to battle the mighty Deathwing -- from astride his back!
Gold Capped: Epic gems in patch 4.3
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! Epic gems will come in patch 4.3. They'll not be prospectable from Pyrite or anything else -- instead they will drop from geodes on raid bosses. This may not be the final design, but it's what Blizzard has decided so far. The people who need the gems most are going to be the source for the uncut gems, and the quantity available will be very low. Every time I've talked about this before, I've hedged my bets that Blizzard might drastically change the design for epic gems compared to the last expansion. As things turn out, it did, and we're going back to a design reminiscent of epic gems in The Burning Crusade, which were mostly available to raiders. Everyone who stockpiled Pyrite now has to decide what to do with it.
Gold Capped: Is prospecting still worth it?
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the auction house. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him or tweeting him at @foxvanallen. The jewelcrafting shuffle used to be an incredibly lucrative way to make money. It was simple: You went to the Auction House, bought out the stock of ore, and then hit your prospecting key as fast as you could. You'd craft what was profitable to craft; you'd vendor the raw gems that weren't otherwise useful. And because the vendor value of the raw gems was almost always more than the value of the Elementium or Obsidium Ore prospected to get those gems, we had a no-lose situation. A jewelcrafter's risk was 0; the profit potential limited only by the amount of time you had to waste doing the "shuffle." Of course, that was prior to patch 4.2. After the patch, each green gem (for example, Zephyrite) saw its vendor value slashed to a mere 50 silver. The days of the jewelcrafting shuffle were over. But still, the days of profitable jewelcrafting still live on. This past week, my Gold Capped tag-team partner Basil opined that patch 4.3 will bring epic gems. He's probably right, but that doesn't mean you have to bide your time, stockpiling Pyrite Ore until patch 4.3 to make some serious money as a JC. Let's take a second look at the old jewelcrafting shuffle and see if we can still find profit hiding in the jewelcrafting profession.
Gold Capped: Stockpiling for patch 4.2
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aims to show you how to make money on the auction house. Email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! Patch 4.2 is going to bring with it a whole new tier of craftable gear, all of it better than the current craftable gear. The ilvl378 gear all takes Living Embers, which are purchasable for valor points and drop from Firelands raid bosses, but the ilvl365 stuff only takes Chaos Orbs. One way or another, everyone is going to be wanting to get this stuff crafted, and that means there's an opportunity for gold makers. If you can gather or buy the materials, crafting these and selling them on the auction house will likely be a brisk business. If you can't, though, you can still stockpile the mats now (while they're cheaper) and sell them after the patch. Let's look at the different tradeskills that will be seeing some heavier than normal demand.