Gold Capped: WoW Prospector for profitable prospecting
by Basil Berntsen 
Feb 24th 2011 at 5:00PM
Prospecting is something jewelcrafters can do to turn ore into raw gems. It takes 8 seconds of pure casting time to prospect a stack of ore, as well as whatever time it takes you to look all the gems out of the four loot windows that entails. It can't be legally automated, so that makes prospecting the semi-porous membrane between the ore and raw gem markets. Without this barrier, the relationship between the prices of ore and raw gems would be more like the ore and bars in which unless you have a small market with no active miner auctioneers, the price of bars isn't usually much more than the ore that went into making it.
As it is, you may often find the price of ore is much lower than the gems you get from prospecting it are worth, even if you just sell them raw on the auction house. The reason for this is that mining ore is hard enough, and many times, miners will just throw their wares into the AH and rely on the market to snap up any ore below the price where prospecting is profitable. Also, unless these miners happen to be (or have) jewelcrafters, they may not exactly know what their ore represents in terms of raw gem money. Enter Wow Prospector, which allows you to input the price per ore and for the raw gems, then output whether it's worth prospecting.
Okay, you got me. I've talked about these guys before. It was long enough ago, though, that it's definitely worth another look (and yes, it's updated for Cataclysm ores). Calculating the value of prospected ore is fairly simple if you know the specifics of how the raw gems drop, but it's a little annoying to do by hand. That's why many AH players use addons like Ore Crusher or spreadsheets like the Stormspire Ore Shuffling spreadsheet. There's an investment of time for these options, which are certainly worth it if you take that time. If, however, you want to know whether you can profitably prospect Elementium ore, you can get away with the simple approach. Wow Prospector is nothing if not simple.
I can handle simple
While it would be nice if the mod started pulling the data for your realm from something like The Undermine Journal, what it has now is certainly fine. You simply have to know how much each raw gem is worth to you. The UJ can give you a market value for selling it raw, or if you have some special value, you can just use that instead. Here are the reasons I don't just use the market value for the raws:
- Sometimes I plan on making too many for that market value to remain accurate for long.
- If I am exposed to the price of certain high-demand gems, I'll consider the increased profits from cutting them when I consider the price of the ore. For example, I have hundreds of yellow uncut Cataclysm gems, but I sell every red that crosses my path. This means I'm willing to buy ore slightly more expensively, because right now, I'm paying whatever the AH charges me for uncut reds.
- You can vendor cut gems. This is a big deal for Cataclysm gems, as the much more common green gems are worth considerably more than the much rarer blue-quality gems.
Maximize your profits with more advice from Gold Capped, plus the author's Call to Auction podcast. Do you have questions about selling, reselling and building your financial empire on the auction house? Basil is taking your questions at basil@wowinsider.com.Filed under: Economy, Gold Capped
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
JC_Icefox Feb 24th 2011 5:13PM
So, a riddle for the Lex Luthor of Azeroth, the Bill Gates Warren Buffett love child of Stormwind AH as it were.
You have enough money to buy an Old God and wrap him in Deathwings autographed body plates. What do you -do- with it all?
Wulf Feb 24th 2011 5:32PM
My banker just happens to be Worgenbuffet (two 'T''s would not fit) of .
Wulf Feb 24th 2011 5:33PM
Damn HTML tags ate my guild. {Barkshire Halfastray}
Hollow Leviathan Feb 24th 2011 5:59PM
What do I do with it all: Buy TCG mounts off the AH to bolster my collection.
Basil Berntsen Feb 24th 2011 6:16PM
What do you do with your conquest and valor points? You spend them on blue or purple pixels. I spend my gold "points" on BoE gear for my raider, as well as anything else that strikes my fancy. If I want to test the effectiveness of the darkmoon card for hunters, I buy one and test it. If I want to see whether a flag carrier or arena teammate can ride in the sidecar of my bike, I buy one. If I wanted to, I could attend a gdkp and use my gold to acquire even harder to acquire purple pixels.
Assuming you acknowledge that the game is a large feedback loop designed to keep you working for things that have no impact outside the world you earned them in, then the only question is whether mine is as fun for me as yours is for you.
I can tell you that I've never regretted spending all the time I've spent in front of the AH. The people I've met, the things it's taught me, and the fun I've had doesn't come with a sense of emptiness you seem to be implying. Part of this is that since there are so many people who do the exact thing I do, and the statement "It's lonely at the top" is inaccurate.
Abbadon Feb 24th 2011 8:55PM
I have to echo HL and Basil...
I have six TCG mounts (including the swift spectral tiger) as well as 4/5 of the Shadowmourne rewards thanks to the AH. My main raids and earns his epics, but my alts get their own personal shopping sprees... I'll craft and buy them each several epics to make their heroic lives easier.
Sir Broose Feb 24th 2011 10:59PM
I don't think the question implies emptiness. Maybe I'm wrong, and you pegged the insinuation behind it, but that didn't occur to me when I read it. I've been kind of curious, myself. Especially last week when you mentioned buying the tabard of the lightbringer and then regretting it. I thought, why regret it? If you really have that much gold and the ability to make that much more, what, exactly, do you spend it on, if you'll feel buyers remorse when you do splurge.
I would love to hear how WoW whales spend their fortunes. I would get a big kick out of the stories, I think.
(cutaia) Feb 24th 2011 5:20PM
Do you know of any great tutorials for Trade Skill Master, featured last time? I've been playing with it and it seems really powerful, but I'll be damned if I can figure everything out...
Basil Berntsen Feb 24th 2011 6:16PM
The best ones so far are Zoxy's and the JMTC guide. They were both linked, and if I find more, I'll email them to you. Watch this space, though ;)
Orkchop Feb 24th 2011 7:04PM
I'll have to check them out, too, when I have time. You made it sound really awesome, but, man is it intimidating looking.
Didn't you say on Call to Auction that it took you, like, an hour to set it up?
Abbadon Feb 24th 2011 8:59PM
If you were already using APM, TSM will import your settings. That definitely gave me a big head start in the way of learning the setup.
Roar Feb 24th 2011 5:26PM
do you think the xmute factor of raw gems out ways the cut vendor cost of green quality gems? i currently prospect cut then send all greens to my alch to make metas
Basil Berntsen Feb 24th 2011 6:17PM
Absolutely, I do too. If the price for metas ever floored though, I'd go back to cutting them and vendoring them.
Pyromelter Feb 24th 2011 7:08PM
Depending on the time and place, selling raw meta gems might be the way to go. Probably not at the moment, but I remember in wrath, using my alchemist to transmute earthsiege diamonds and selling them raw, because the cut diamonds were often less expensive than the raw ones (due to people using meta gems to level up to max JC at that time).
Especially if you are xmuting a lot of those gems, selling raw could definitely be a way to go, as in my experience there seems to be a lot more jc'ers out there than there are alchemists who do a lot of transmuting. YMMV.
Pyromelter Feb 24th 2011 7:10PM
Derp, I also meant to say that there isn't a huge incentive for people to level their JC'ing up to 525 right now, but once epic gems hit the market, there will be. It's likely that similar to wrath, most JC's will be using meta gems to level their jc'ing up the last 10-15 skill points or so, so when the patch comes that introduces epic gems, you may find selling raw shadowspirit diamonds more profitable than cut ones.
Aaron Feb 25th 2011 8:18AM
Yeah I caught on to that little trick the other night as well. Good stuff. =D
Symbolsix Feb 24th 2011 5:30PM
I'm deeply interested in this sort of calculation, as a jewel crafter whose main activity consists of logging in, restocking, and posting using APM once a day.
What I've always wondered is how the community gets its information about drop rates (in general and in prospecting in particular). Does this addon just use a wowhead.com like database of average results from prospecting actions? If so, is it vulnerable to the same sort of failures wowhead is?
I know a bit about probability and math stat, so I'd really like to know the underlying distributions my prospecting results are following.
Basil Berntsen Feb 24th 2011 6:19PM
Wowhead is one, and there are posted accounts of large enough sample sizes at the launch of every expansion that it becomes glaringly obvious what kind of yield you can get from prospecting. I will probably eventually find time to explain exactly how it works, but for now, you can use places like wow prospector or those spreadsheets/addons I linked. They have the math for the breakdown of prospecting built in.
velarya Feb 24th 2011 5:49PM
can someone explain to why green quality gems are still vendoring for nearly twice as much as blue quality gems?
dj.clayden Mar 6th 2011 5:05PM
My best guess is that due to green gems being used to make blue gems (via transmuting), this vendor cost (9g for a cut green gem) is in place to give them a minimum value, which in turn prevents the market being flooded by cheap transmuted blue gems. Blue gems don't need this as they have higher value due to both the increased rarity (from prospecting) and the inherent value given to them in terms of transmute mats.