Join 50 million other WoW players on that bandwagon… heheh. Well if you’re brave enough to fight with all the other folks who’ll be taking this tradeskill, it helps to be prepared. Also be mindful that it could be quite difficult to sell your wares, as there will typically be many more players making jewelry than buyers.
Like so many others, this craft relies heavily on Mining. You don’t have to be a miner to craft Jewelry, but you will need large amounts of ores, bars, and gems. If you have another toon to provide you with materials, that works fine. If not I highly recommend taking mining as your second tradeskill. Otherwise the cost to you will be extremely high, considering the number of gems and ore required just to hit 300 skill. Also, if you plan to take this craft all the way to 375 I strongly suggest you use a toon that you are going to level to 70. Otherwise you’ll miss out on quite a few faction-based recipes that you’ll be unable to buy. From 350-375 the only way to get new recipes is from faction vendors in the Outlands or rare/epic drops from the auction house. So be aware that this could be a serious limitation for a level 40 or 50 character
I’ve compiled a shopping list for those who want help calculating the materials to power-level Jewelcrafting. If you’d like to use my list to help with the skill progression, you can view it here
Cheap WoW WOTLK Classic Gold
Now that you’re ready to take on Jewelcrafting, the first thing you need to do is locate a trainer. For Alliance the trainer can be found in The Exodar, the Draenar city on Azuremyst Isle. To get there you need to travel to Auberdine and take the new boat that departs from the unused dock. This will land you on Azuremyst Isle right near the entrance to The Exodar. For Horde, I’ve heard that their trainer is located in the Royal Exchange area of Silvermoon city. Ask a guard to mark your map for the Jewelcrafting trainer if you have any trouble locating your trainer.
Please Note! This guide was written before a revamp of the skill point progression for Jewelcrafting. As a result, some of the recipes may remain viable longer than I have indicated. If this is the case, feel free to play out a given item until it turns yellow on you. Any extra points you squeek out in the earlier phases will save materials during the final push to 300.
The first few recipes you’ll get will include one for Copper Wire and this is the first recipe you’ll want to start using. Make at least 20 of these, you’re going to need them later anyway. If you’re using my ingredient list, go ahead and make 30 of these for subsequent recipes. After that you can make Rough Stone Statues until you reach 35-40 skill. FYI – all stone statues are Bind on Pickup. Don’t make any more than you need to grind skill points cheaply, you won’t be able to sell them. I’ll leave it up to you to decide how much is reasonable to make in relation to the other ingredients you’ve collected.
You also get Prospecting at 20, so feel free to prospect some copper ore if you are lacking gems. Prospecting does not give skill points at any level, so you can only use it to acquire gems. Prospecting works much like Disenchanting, in that you destroy raw ore to “prospect” the gems from it. Each prospecting action consumes five pieces of ore — smelted bars cannot be used for this! You should get at least one gem per prospect, but occasionally you can get two or more gems. The chart below has all the various gems that are typically prospected from various types of ore:
Ore | Resulting Gems |
---|---|
Copper | Malachite, Shadowgem, Tigerseye |
Tin | Shadowgem, Moss Agate, Lesser Moonstone, Jade |
Iron | Lesser Moonstone, Citrine, Jade, Aquamarine |
Mithril | Aquamarine, Star Ruby, Citrine |
Thorium | Star Ruby, Blue Sapphire, Large Opal, Azerothian Diamond, Huge Emerald, Arcane Crystal |
Fel Iron | Flame Spessarite, Blood Garnet, Deep Peridot, Shadow Draenite, Golden Draenite, Azure Moonstone |
Rare Gems (found in Fel Iron or Adamantite) |
Living Ruby, Talasite, Star of Elune, Noble Topaz, Dawnstone, Nightseye |
At this point you should be at about 40 in Jewelcrafting, so you should be able to make the Malachite Pendant or the Tigerseye Band. Both of these will be yellow at 50 skill, so go with whichever you have the gems to make. At 50 skill you can learn the recipe for Coarse Stone Statues as well as Bronze Settings. Anyone familiar with mining knows how expensive coarse stone can be, and since we need bronze settings anyway it’s just easier to use that for skill points now. Go ahead and make at least 20 of them, the recipe will turn yellow at 70. If you’re following my shopping list, you’ll see that eventually we’ll need 40-50 bronze settings, so if you want to crank them out now you can do that. Just make sure you skip over the recipes you don’t need as a result of any skill points you get beyond 70. And don’t forget to learn Journeyman jewelcrafting from the trainer, so you’re ready for the next round of recipes.
Assuming you move on at 70 skill, next you should make 10 Elegant Silver Rings. They only require 1 silver bar each, so they’re pretty resource efficient. After that comes the Simple Pearl Ring which should take you to 90 skill. Next you can make the Gloom Band to get to 100. The next recipe to do is the Ring of Silver Might, which uses only 2 silver bars. Now you should be at 110 skill and you can learn the recipe for the Heavy Stone Statues. It goes yellow fairly quickly but these are still cheap points by comparison, so you may as well crank out at least ten of them.
At 120 skill you have some options. You can either make Heavy Jade Rings or the Ring of Twilight Shadows. They both stay orange until 130, so you can go with whichever one is easier for you. At 130 you could keep cranking out the Heavy Jade Ring, it actually goes orange at 135, or you can move on to another duo of recipes. My ingredient list assumes you’re moving on… and you get another choice here. You have both the Amulet of the Moon which is a vendor recipe you can purchase in Darnassus or The Exodar. This is pretty easy to grab if you are hanging out with the Jewelcrafting trainer in The Exodar, because the vendor is right in front of her 😉 If you don’t want to make the moonstone necklace, you can make Barbaric Iron Collars instead. Either one of these recipes should see you to 140 skill. After that you can make either the Pendant of the Agate Shield or Heavy Iron Knuckles and that should get you to 150. If you haven’t already, make sure you learn Expert Jewelcrafting from your trainer now.
When you are at 150 in Jewelcrafting you’ll be able to move on to Mithril jewelry and the first recipe you get is for Mithril Filigree. There are several other recipes available at 150 skill, but they are all vendor recipes and not particularly useful for grinding. If you want to purchase them, feel free to do so but I won’t be including them in my guide. For now, go ahead and make at least 20 mithril filigree. If you’re following my shopping list, you’ll need at least 30 filigree, so feel free to go all the way to 180 with this recipe. You can also make some Solid Stone Statues if you like, but it’s not required for skill points. At 180 skill you have several recipes you can choose from including the Jade Pendant of Blasting and the Engraved Truesilver Ring. You could also make the Jade Eye but that one didn’t seem terribly cheap as a grinding recipe to me. Any of these will take you to 190 though, so go with whatever suits your bank (or pocketbook).
From 190-200 you can make the Jade Eye, the Engraved Truesilver Ring, or the Citrine Ring of Rapid Healing. At 200 skill you can continue making citrine rings. Once you make it to 210 there’s really only one reasonable option: the Aquamarine Signet. Unless of course you want to make the Citrine Pendant of Golden Healing, but since that recipe is a loot drop I’ve skipped it in my shopping list. At 220 you should switch from the aquamarine signet to the Aquamarine Pendant of the Warrior, which should easily get you to 225.
At 225 make sure you’ve learned Artisan Jewelcrafting already and get the recipe for Dense Stone Statues. There’s no need to make this unless you want to since you can also start making Thorium Settings now. You’ll probably want to make at least 20 of these, 30 if you’re following my shopping list. Unfortunately this recipe turns yellow at 235, but since you’ll need the settings anyway you might as well keep going. My shopping list assumes that between the dense statues and thorium settings you’re able to get to 240 skill. For the 240-250 window you get two options, the Red Ring of Destruction or the Ruby Pendant of Fire. I’m sure you’re probably wondering why I bother including the ring since it uses more materials. Well if you happen to have leftover citrines, this can use them up. Also the red ring has different stats that might be more desirable to shoppers, so that might weigh in your decision.
From 250 to 265 it’s kind of a no-brainer for me. Well, you can eek another 5-10 points from the ruby twins, but I liked the materials for the Truesilver Healing Ring much better. If you prefer to keep making ruby items, the ring goes yellow at 255 and the necklace at 260. So you’ll still have to make a few truesilver rings to get to the next tier, but it’s up to you and whatever materials you have on hand.
At 265 we start to hit a pretty ugly area that will be tough for some people to get through. Large quantities of high end gems are needed now. If you don’t have them you’ll have to prospect thorium ore to get them. I went through 15-20 stacks of thorium ore to collect the gems needed for this phase. If you don’t have the ones on my list, you probably should count on prospecting 1 stack of ore for each gem you’re missing. I don’t mean to say that you only get gems 50% of the time, but sometimes you’ll end up with the wrong one and you need to cover your bases. Also if you can avoid doing any crafting until after you prospect enough ore, that will help quite a bit in determining the recipe progression. I was prospecting as I went, which certainly complicated my life (Oh, a diamond! I’ll make a diamond ring now…) and made it more difficult to progress cleanly through the recipes.
So assuming you’re armed with the proper gems now, at 265 you can make either the Simple Opal Ring or the Diamond Focus Band. The opal ring turns yellow at 280, so make sure you use up all your opals before you dip into your other gems. If you end up with some sapphires, you can also make Sapphire Signets until 285 skill. The diamond rings last until 290, so don’t make any of those until the other two gems are gone. Once you hit 285 you can make Glowing Thorium Bands or Onslaught Rings. Between those two you should be able to get to 290 skill when they both turn yellow. Now you can make either the Living Emerald Pendant or the Emerald Lion Ring and those will take you to 300.
Now it’s time for you to head to Honor Hold and meet your next trainer! For Alliance this is Tatiana, who can be found by the fireplace inside the Honor Hold Inn. Horde crafters can find their Kalaen inside the inn at Thrallmar. These new trainers are a bit different than typical trainers, because they also sell recipes, so be sure you purchase any new recipes that become available to you. At this stage you will predominantly gain skill points by cutting “green” gems. Most of those gems will be acquired by prospecting fel iron or adamantite. It is possible to raise your skill to 335 or 340 in this manner, so don’t be afraid to cut as many gems as you can. Sadly, cutting gems will not take you all the way through 375, so be prepared to buy some actual jewelry recipes as well.
Somewhere around 335-340 your gem cutting recipes will cease to produce skill points. Now you should move on to one of the jewelry recipes you learned from your trainer, the Thick Adamantite Necklace or the Heavy Adamantite Ring. Both of these recipes require Mercurial Adamantite, which is made from the Adamantite Powder that you receive from Prospecting and combined with a Primal Earth. You should have plenty of both if you’ve been mining and prospecting adamantite ore for green gems. You’ll notice that all of the trainer recipes turn yellow before you reach 350. You can either keep making them and hope you continue to get skill points most of the time, or purchase a recipe from the Auction House to fill in the gaps.
Once you reach 350 skill, the blue gem-cutting recipes will be available to you, which is where the true money-making lies for Jewelcrafters. Unfortunately, it’s also very much of a “spend money to make money” situation. Depending on your server’s economy, these recipes can average 200-500 gold each. My suggestion would be to look for good deals and buy when you see a recipe at the low end of the range. Also, focus on high-demand cuts such as +attack power, +spell damage, etc. With any luck, you’ve already collected a small stash of blue gems from your previous prospecting efforts, so try to find a recipe to use with the gems you have. It won’t take long for you to earn your money back and then some, since each gem can be sold for 30-75 gold apiece. In general, you’ll want to keep an eye on prices for uncut and cut gems to see which gems are more valuable and which cuts are more prized by buyers. Each server is different, so become familiar with yours.
You may think you’ve got it made now, and to a certain extent you do. Jewelcrafters don’t have the same leveling problems that most other professions have, it’s fairly easy for us to collect the materials for our 350+ recipes, unlike others who are forced to farm 4-5 primals for each item they make. However, the last 10-15 points will not be achieved through cutting recipes unless you’ve been able to get one of the meta gem cuts. If not, you can either purchase new jewelry recipes on the auction, farm one of the static drop recipes or use a faction-based recipe. Most of the faction recipes and static drop recipes require primals, which are not fun to gather. If you spend the money to buy a recipe from the Auction House, the majority of them have simpler component requirements. So there’s a bit of a trade-off between higher recipe cost + lower mats or lower recipe cost + higher mats. The decision is yours…
Good Luck!
Skill Range | Recipe |
---|---|
1-30 | Copper Wires |
31-40 | Rough Stone Statues |
41-50 | Malachite Pendant or Tigerseye Band |
50-70 | Bronze Setting or Coarse Stone Statue |
70-80 | Elegant Silver Ring |
80-90 | Simple Pearl Ring |
90-100 | Gloom Band |
100-110 | Ring of Silver Might |
110-120 | Heavy Stone Statue |
120-130 | Heavy Jade Ring or Ring of Twilight Shadows |
130-140 | Amulet of the Moon or Barbaric Iron Collar |
140-150 | Pendant of the Agate Shield or Heavy Iron Knuckles |
150-180 | Mithril Filigree or Solid Stone Statue |
180-190 | Jade Pendant of Blasting or Engraved Truesilver Ring |
190-200 | Engraved Truesilver Ring or Citrine Ring of Rapid Healing |
200-210 | Citrine Ring of Rapid Healing |
210-220 | Aquamarine Signet |
220-225 | Aquamarine Pendant of the Warrior |
225-240 | Thorium Setting or Dense Stone Statue |
240-250 | Red Ring of Destruction or Ruby Pendant of Fire |
250-265 | Truesilver Healing Ring |
265-275 | Simple Opal Ring or Diamond Focus Band |
275-285 | Sapphire Signet or Diamond Focus Band |
285-290 | Onslaught Ring or Glowing Thorium Band |
290-300 | Living Emerald Pendant or Emerald Lion Ring |