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Posts with tag jewelcrafting

Mists of Pandaria Beta: New jewelcrafting panther mount models

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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!

Filed under: Mists of Pandaria

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?

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Filed under: Economy, Gold Capped

Gold Capped: This is the wrong way to do epic gems

boxes vendor
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.

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Filed under: Economy, Gold Capped

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.

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Filed under: Economy, Gold Capped

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!




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!

Filed under: News items, Cataclysm

Gold Capped: Epic gems in patch 4.3

pyrite ore price graph
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.

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Filed under: Economy, Gold Capped

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.

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Filed under: Economy, Gold Capped

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.

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Filed under: Economy, Gold Capped

The OverAchiever: Mountain O' Mounts from professions

Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. Today, we are convinced that archaeology's RNG won't apply to us.

There are a number of interesting (and by interesting, perhaps I mean "occasionally very expensive and likely to drive you insane via RNG-laden accessibility") mounts available from professions, though for some of them, you'll have to be a practitioner in good standing before you'll ever be able to learn them.

Regrettably, I am the bearer of some very bad news this week concerning the Vial of the Sands for all those of you who like circumventing the highest costs in the game.

Also read:

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Filed under: Achievements, The Overachiever

Patch 4.2 PTR: Uncut green gems vendor price reduced

Blizzard has already reduced the vendor price for cut green gems (presumably to reduce jewelcrafters' propensity for vendoring the majority of every prospected stack of ore). While they left the uncut gems at 5g, it became much more profitable to shuffle all possible colors of gems into enchanting mats and blue jewlery.

Well, the latest testing from the patch 4.2 PTR has reduced the price of uncut gems, too. On the live realms, they vendor for 100g a stack, leaving a decent vendor floor price for ore. Once this change goes live, they will be worth 50s each or 10g a stack. This should indeed have the desired effect of causing fewer of these to end up vendored for inflationary vendor money, with the potentially undesirable effect of making mining less profitable.

Assuming you're transmuting, disenchanting, or otherwise making good use of 5 of the 6 colors of uncommon gems, this will likely not change your life much. You will make 10g instead of 100g when you vendor a stack of the borderline useless Zephyrite, but most of your money will be coming from the other activities. Also, you can still occasionally sell these to other jewelcrafters for their daily.

Bottom line, though, is that the new "floor" price of Elementium Ore and Obsidium Ore is basically gone now. There are no more guaranteed sales, and if you flood a market (like enchanting mats) by processing thousands of stacks of ore, you can't count on any vendor based fallback to at least get you your money back.

The news is already rolling out for the upcoming WoW Patch 4.2! Preview the new Firelands raid, marvel at the new legendary staff, and get the inside scoop on new quest hubs -- plus new Tier 12 armor!

Filed under: News items, Economy

Patch 4.2 brings quality-of-life changes for jewelcrafting

One of the things I'm looking forward to the most in patch 4.2 is the addition of a couple of nice things for jewelcrafters. First, cut gems will now stack. I can't tell you how happy this makes me -- while most people never carry more than a gem or two of the same type, as someone who sells them, I frequently have to make five or more trips between the mail and auction house in order to repost my expired auctions. Now if Blizzard would just make blue rings stack, I'd be a happy camper.

The other thing that reeks of awesome is the brand spanking new JC bag. Every expansion seems to bring with it new profession bags, and Blizzard seems to randomly leave certain ones out. This time, we get the Luxurious Silk Gem Bag. Combined with the ability to stack cut gems, we're in business.

These will both be particularly welcome changes once epic gems are launched, eventually doubling the number of different types of items gem sellers keep in their bags. Personally, I'm hoping that this change is in preparation for the imminent launch of epic gems in 4.2; however, I've logged into the PTR and prospected some pyrite each build and as yet have not seen anything new.

The news is already rolling out for the upcoming WoW Patch 4.2! Preview the new Firelands raid, marvel at the new legendary staff, and get the inside scoop on new quest hubs -- plus new Tier 12 armor!

Filed under: Economy, Cataclysm

Cooldown removed on Icy Prism

An undocumented change that probably occurred in patch 4.1 is that the Icy Prism, a source for rare and epic Wrath of the Lich King-era gems, no longer has a cooldown. The highest stat gems that can be inserted into gear with an ilevel lower than 300 (which means all pre-Cataclysm gear) are Wrath gems, and this is likely now the cheapest way to get them.

The main way currently to get Wrath gems is to prospect Wrath ores, usually Saronite. Prospecting a stack will yield an average of about one blue-quality gem, and while other ores may look more attractive, I've had trouble finding them in volume. Now that the cooldown has been removed, any jewelcrafter can make an Icy Prism with nothing more than a Frozen Orb and a couple of cheap Wrath green gems. Each prism will yield a couple of blue-quality gems, rarely a Dragon's Eye, and even more rarely, an epic gem.

The Dragon's Eyes don't look like they'll be usable for much, but considering the price of Frozen Orbs, the blue and epic gems certainly look like they're worth making the prisms for. One thing to note: The prisms are unique, so you need to open one before you can make another. If, like me, you had stockpiled almost a thousand Frozen Orbs in Wrath just in case they ever became worth anything, this means a lot of clicking.

WoW Patch 4.1 is live, and WoW Insider has all the latest news for you -- from guides of the revamped Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub to new valor point mechanics and new archaeology items.

Patch 4.1: Lowered gem vendor prices spell end of Obsidium Shuffle

The latest patch on the PTR has some dire news for miners. MMO-Champion posted that the vendor price for a cut green-quality Cataclysm gem has been reduced from 9g to 75s. It's not yet in the patch notes, and I can't log into the PTR to grab a screenshot, but it's in the data files and will likely go live with patch 4.1.

Why is this change dire news for miners? Right now, the price for all Cataclysm ores is largely based on the fact that no matter what, you can vendor cut green gems for 9g. For example, Obsidium Ore has a price floor based on green gems only of 54g. Players who can prospect Obsidium can safely spend all their money on any amount of ore below that cost, and they will get a no-risk return on this "shuffle." Add in the fact that a lot of green-quality gems can be made into items that value those gems at considerably more than 9g each, and you have a very profitable and risk-free way to make money.

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Filed under: Economy, Cataclysm

Gold Capped: Can you ever have too many alchemists?

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!

I got an email from Kaefera that got me thinking:

I have recently been leveling 9x level 75 characters on my server, to completely abuse professions and make some serious cash. I'm currently giving each of them alchemy, I have 4 transmute specced alchemists so far, currently growing at a rate of an alchemist a week.

My question to you is more of a suggestion, what would you suggest to grab as a secondary profession on each of them? I would like something similar to my Truegold, where I can log on once a day on each character, craft/do whatever in 5 minutes, then move to the next.

So this is something I've heard before, but more in Wrath of the Lich King, when alchemist cooldowns represented a very serious amount of gold per day. The reasoning was (and is) that if you level a bunch of alchemists, you can log in once a day to each character to use their cooldowns and make disgusting amounts of gold with virtually no effort. The question is, does this still work well enough to justify the investment?

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Filed under: Economy, Gold Capped

Gold Capped: How to do the jewelcrafting shuffle

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!

You've bought your ore at a discount, you've prospected it all, and now you're trying to decide how to make your money back. Like in Wrath of the Lich King, we have the ability to process all of these raw gems in some way in order to make more money. This is usually called a "shuffle"; it amounts to common sense and knowing what the gems can be used for.

Let's start with the basics. Each of the three modern ores prospects slightly differently.
  • Obsidium Ore prospects into six green-quality gems per stack and a residual number of blue-quality gems.
  • Elementium Ore prospects four green-quality gems per stack and one blue-quality gem.
  • Pyrite Ore prospects into four green-quality gems, one and a half blue-quality gems, and an average of eight Volatile Earths per stack.

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Filed under: Economy, Cataclysm, Gold Capped

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