20 Days of Gold Making - Day Six.

Nev from Auction House Addict has created a community project for the gold makers among us 20 Days of Gold Making You can find a list of all of the participants in this blog post at AH addict.

The question for today is;

"Which market has made you the most gold over the years?"

Cataclysm Gem, guild bank.

Jewelcrafting has always been a huge part of my gold making. During Cataclysm I put a lot of time and effort into the gem market. I was lucky enough to be on a medium population server with very little competition.

I started off selling gems during Wrath of the Lich King expansion. Every time I had excess honour I would purchase gems from the vendor in Dalaran and cut them into popular cuts.  I eventually started picking up uncut gems from the auction house to cut and resell for profit.

During Cataclysm I was heavily invested into the Obsidium Shuffle. This involved buying Obsidium or Elementium ore - prospecting the ore which yielded blue quality gems as well as green quality gems. The blue gems were cut into popular cuts and the green gems were used to craft jewelery to be disenchanted and made into scrolls.

With the release of Mists of Pandaria the gem market changed. In previous expansions learning recipes to cut gems were obtained via daily quests which rewarded tokens, allowing you to purchase the cuts you wanted. MoP introduced a new system which gave jewelcrafters a daily cooldown for each colour of blue quality MoP gem.

Using three uncut blue quality gems (Primordial Ruby for example) rewards you with an item called Facets of Research. Within this item will be two pre cut Primordial Rubies and you will learn a new randomly selected pattern for Primordial Ruby. You also have the option to learn blue quality cuts by using three Spirit of Harmonys' this method doesn't have a cool down.

This meant that for a good few months at the beginning of the expansion uncut gems were often more expensive than cut gems. As people needed them both for research as well as the new Jewelcrafting Panther mounts. The demand for uncut gems seems to have settled down a lot in the past month or two so the prices have dropped and with content being released at a higher rate than previous expansions the gem market is still thriving.

Mists also changed the way that Perfect cut gems worked. Previously, cutting green gems in Cataclysm had the chance to give you a Perfect cut. These gems had an additional five stats compared to an ordinary green cut gems and five less than a blue quality cut. Green gems in general have always been considered garbage but could provide a cheaper alternative if you knew you would receive an upgrade very soon.

Cutting green quality Mists of Pandaria gems still gives you the chance to proc a perfect gem however they're now blue quality and have the same amount of stats as a typical blue quality MoP gem.

You can often buy uncut green quality gems for very little in order to mass craft them into popular cuts hoping for perfect cuts.

WoWPopular is a great resource for finding out which cuts to start with if you're new to Jewelcrafting. They list the most popular gems and enchants for every class and spec.

The Undermine Journal also provides a fantastic breakdown for gems for your server. Under Crafted > Jewelcrafting. Make sure to read the text underneath "The Gems Array" to fully understand what the charts are showing you.

The Undermine Journal (EU)
The Undermine Journal (US)

I love the Gem market, partially because it's always been good to me and because it's the profession of my main.  It's just her thing.