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Non-crafter's Guide to Jewelcrafting (WoW)

	Jewelcrafting (Primary Profession)
	Ingredients • Quests • Recipes(AJEAM) • Trainers

The exciting new profession with the Burning Crusade expansion has a lot of people confused still. What does it do? How does it work?

There are plenty of guides for jewelcrafting...for would-be jewelcrafters. This guide is for anyone who does *NOT* cut gems, so they can understand the ins and outs of the trade to get what they need. This is not a guide for how to be a jewelcrafter.

What is jewelcrafting for?

In the expansion - and only in the expansion - are items with "sockets". These sockets can have gems inserted into them that add various bonuses. If you have a socketable item, you can shift-right click it to enter a special screen that lets you add gems you might have.

Jewelcrafting additionally creates select rings, necklaces, and trinkets. This is a secondary aspect to the trade, although the gems for socket items do not start until a skill of 300. Up until then, the jewelry is all jewelcrafting makes.

Are there different gems?

Every socket has a color associated with it: red, yellow, blue, or sometimes the special meta socket. The only gems that can be found anywhere in Outland are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, and a few rare special gems that are meant to go in specific sockets. You do not have to match the socket colors. More on that later.

Each gem has a few different ways that you can cut it, which give different bonuses. For example, A Blood Garnet, which is a red gem, can have a strength bonus, extra agility, +healing, +spell damage, or attack power. A Golden Draenite, which is a yellow gem, can be cut to give defense, crit rating, hit rating, intellect, or spell crit rating.

Each of those bonuses are separate, but any one of them can be created from the same basic gem.

If there are only red, yellow and blue sockets, what are the orange, green and purple gems for?

The three secondary colors are combinations of two primary colors. In your sockets, they count as both colors, and they have a bonus identical (but half as strong) as one of the attributes available on their two parent colors. For example, the basic orange gem, Flame Spessarite, can have a combination of one red bonus and one yellow bonus. This could be a combined strength and crit rating bonus, or spell damage and spell crit, or healing and intellect. Most meaningful combinations are available.

The hybrid gems are very helpful for when you actually want to match the socket colors, but you have preference for a difference color's gems. Most non-tanks like red gems, so if you have a blue socket, you might use a purple (blue+red) gem to fill that slot.

So where do I get a gem?

If you mine, you can potentially get uncut gems the old-fashioned way. Otherwise, you're going to need to get lucky looting chests or buy them out of the auction house. Obviously, if you have an uncut gem, you're going to need to seek the help of a Jewelcrafter. So if you're going to buy from the AH, you might just as easily get a cut gem rather than the raw version.

There are also some "cut" gems sold at select vendors. You'll find Gem Vendors in a couple places in Outland that have low-quality versions of a few of the gems a Jewelcrafter could make. Also, some of the quartermasters offer gems as a reward for arena points or spirit shards or the like.

If you want to know where jewelcrafters get gems, since they would be in such short supply, JC'ers have a skill called Prospecting that lets them destroy 5 pieces of ore to look through it for gems. They typically get one gem for each prospect, but can sometimes get up to three. Jewelcrafter can also create Brilliant Glass by combining lower quality gems to get a better gem.

Are there different levels of gems?

Yes. In addition to the low-quality gems from the Gem Vendors, there are three levels of gem cuts that jewelcrafters can fashion. Each color has one gem that is green text, one that is blue and one that is purple. I will refer to these as uncommon, rare and epic. All have the same exact patterns with the same exact bonuses (except there are a few that are Rare and Epic only,) with the only difference being how big a bonus they give.

The uncommon gems patterns are either vendor-bought or reputation rewards, with only a couple of dropped recipes, and are almost always the result of a prospect, so there should be a decent number of these on the AH. The rare gems are harder to find, require a higher skill to cut (350), and almost every single one of the 30+ patterns is a drop or a reputation reward.

Since version 2.4, the epic gems have become much more abundant. They drop from mobs in Black Temple, Mount Hyjal, or Magtheridon, and can also be bought for 15 Badges of Justice from the Shattered Sun Alchemy lab. If they are available on the Auction House, expect to pay a lot for them.

If you are still leveling to 70, you will probably want to seek out the green (uncommon) gems for your items. Once you start picking up items that are more permanent, the blue items are often a better investment. Don't invest in purple gems unless you're made of money or have an item that is not going to get upgraded for a long time.

Wait, I'm confused. Are we talking about two different kinds of colors here?

Sorry, yes.

The gems have an actual literal color that they are. If you were to look at a Living Ruby, it would be red. However, if you mouse over that same Living Ruby, the text "Living Ruby" would be in blue because it's considered a rare gem. Although the rest of this guide will stick to using the terms Uncommon, Rare, and Epic rather than Green, Blue, and Purple, be aware that some players do still call them by their item quality colors, just as they would for normal gear.

What are the gems called?

The gems, by color, are:

Thankfully, you can actually seek out gems by their colors at the auction house now. This wasn't always the case.

But you don't actually have to match the socket colors?

Correct. Only if you want the socket bonus.

What's a socket bonus?

Every socketed item has a "Socket Bonus" that is a reward for matching the colors of the sockets correctly. If you are a warlock that cares about damage over time spells, and the 3 spell crit bonus for filling in a yellow socket and blue socket isn't as important to you as the +spell damage from red gems, you might just add two Runed Blood Garnets instead.

There are only two reasons to match colors. One is the socket bonus. The other is for meta gem requirements.

What are meta gems and meta sockets?

Some select items, especially head gear, have sockets called "Meta Sockets." These are for special gems, and you can NOT put other gems in those. Meta gems are very rare -- in fact, they can't be mined or found in chests, and most have to be transmuted by an alchemist. As a result meta gems can be very expensive.

The bonuses they give are much stronger than a standard gem. For example, a Bracing Earthstorm Diamond adds +26 healing and -2% threat generation. Compare this to a Teardrop Living Ruby that just adds +18 healing. Meta gems quite often give a 'unique' bonus (such as Stun Resist or increased run speed) that normal gem cannot reproduce.

There's one slight catch: meta gems have additional requirements. Most of them are along the lines of "Must have 2 yellow gems and 1 red gem" or "Must have more Blue gems than Red gems." If you see one of these requirements, it means across ALL of your gear and not just that item.

OK, enough already. What bonuses can I get from all these gems?

How to read this chart:

All gems consist of the gem name with a prefix. For example, Flashing Living Ruby is a Living Ruby that has been cut with the "Flashing" pattern that gives it a parry rating bonus. Bonuses will be shown for uncommon/rare/epic quality gems when available.

And now for Meta Gems,

Metagems are split into two big categories, Earthstorm and Skyfire.

The main difference between the two types are the material required to create them, however Skyfire Metas tend to be offensive in nature, while Earthstorm usually make much more defensive metas.

What else do I need to know?

• The list above just contains the jewelcrafter-made gems. Some PvP rewards are a little different, heroic dungeon bosses may drop their own epic gems, and enchanters can make a few "orbs" that fit in any color (besides meta) and give a few points to all resistances. Jewelcrafter can also create some BoP gems, that only they can use.
• To make an Earthstorm Diamond or Skyfire Diamond takes a Transmute from an alchemist that uses a bunch of uncommon gems and primals. Alchemists also make Mercurial Stones for the jewelcrafter, which lets them make use of some of the slag they get from prospecting adamantite ore.
• When you actually want a gem made, all you need is the actual gem. There are no other materials involved in the combine.

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