Jewelcrafting Overview

I am going to talk about the basics of jewelcrafting.

The first thing about jewelcrafting that is important is realizing that only your red gems really matter. When I was doing jewelcrafting actively, my reds would carry my entire inventory.

Why are reds so good? Every healer and every dps wants all or nearly all red gems. They are optimal. The only exception is when you can get a +20 bonus to your primary stat from a socket bonus.

Thus there are three cuts that are really good. +40 Int (brilliant), +40 Agi (delicate), and +40 Str (bold). Brilliant is the most important because every healer and every caster dps wants it. That means all 3 mage specs, all 3 warlock, 2 shaman specs, 1 paladin, 2 druid, and all 3 priests—or 14 specs. Delicate has 3 hunter, 3 rogue, 2 druid, and 1 shaman or 9 specs. Bold only has 2 dk, 2 warrior, and 1 paladin or 5 specs. It takes 9 days to get all three main cuts.

Purples and oranges still sell for those socket bonuses. Unfortunately, it is less clear cut what you want. Haste/Int (reckless) is really good, but some classes might want spirit/int or master/int or even hit/int. Of course hybrid str and agi gems are all good. I would get one of each color and then alternate until I built a good list.

I've had an awful time selling greens, yellows, and blues. Sometimes you can sell the tank oriented cuts here. Pure stamina, stamina/dodge, stamina/mastery, and pure mastery are all cuts that might sell. These often go for next to nothing and sometimes aren't even worth posting.

All the same things we've done with glyphs can be down with gems. I would make a different group for red (your high sellers) and then orange and yellow. Finally, I'd make one for blues, greens, and yellows.

So let's talk about how to get gems. You can make a macro, just like we did for milling herbs, merely change mill with prospect. If your server prices are favorable, then you can buy it and prospect through it. It is more costly to relist gems though. I recommend only posting 1-3 at a time and then posting more when you are undercut. The jewelcrafting market has huge undercutters and you'll only optimize your profit while watching it constantly. Constant vigilance is exhausting though.

You'll get common and rare gems. Let's talk about commons first because there's really not much to say about rares.

Carnelians are your bread and butter. These are great because with an alchemist you can transmute 3 of them and 3 heartblossom into an inferno ruby. There's no cool down on it and you get a 15 percent proc rate with a transmuter spec. If your prices are favorable, you can even buy the carnelians raw and transmute them. If you end up like me, keeping red gems in stock is your greatest challenge.

Jaspers (green), nightstones (purple), and zephrites (blue) are used in the daily. Zephrites can only be used on the daily—there's no other use besides leveling your skill up on them. I have stacks and stacks of these I can't get rid of.

Jaspers and nightstones can allow you to make jewelry as do hessonites (orange) and alicities (yellow), you can make jewelry. You'll rarely get a blue piece and always a green if you didn't get a blue. The greens are utterly worthless, but you can disenchant them into dust or if your are lucky essences. The blues might sell for several hundred gold each! If your server economy is depressed, you can turn them into heavenly shards. Furthermore, if your guild has the perk that allows for extra mats, this really generates large amounts of materials. If you are adventurous you can use this to full your enchanting business. (I'd highly recommend some enchants like 50 int to cloak, 40 int to offhand, the drop bracer enchants, or 15 stat enchants to chest.)

When I was doing this actively ore was only 30 to 40 gold a stack (but reds were only 50 each). These days I see ore for as high as 150 to 200 gold a stack and reds for 300 gold. I haven't dabbled it much lately, but I believe this could be extremely profitable, though it almost demands an enchanter and alchemist to make it really work. If you lack an alchemist, you can make carnelian spikes, which commonly de into 2-3 essences. This isn't ideal by any means, but it gives you a way to use them efficiently.

This was just a brief overview of how to make money with jewelcrafting. Hopefully this helps that are learning the trade.  Jewelcrafting requires heavy watching of the market, but you can quickly entry into it since it only takes 3 days to get the best cut.  It is very casual friendly.  In theory you could even manually put your auctions up or use a mod like auctionator--it would require little work.