Let me start by saying that I love the profession of Jewelcrafting, I've got 375 skill in it myself and I'm super excited about the future. I've collected some of the common questions people have come to me with, as well as some obvious FAQ-style questions to make a makeshift guide for Jewelcrafting. I would like to add to this guide as well as do more Jewelcrafting research, but I need your help! I'm compiling a list of all the Jewelcrafting recipes, the materials required, the items produced, and where to find everything. All the recipes, and spreadsheet can be found at www.mpsgames.com

Where do I start?
Apprentice through Artisan Jewelcrafting may ONLY be trained in Silvermoon City (Horde) and The Exodar (Alliance). This is of course subject to change, but at the moment plan on a trip to those cities. Master Jewelcrafting may be trained at Thrallmar (Horde) and Honor Hold (Alliance) in Hellfire Peninsula.

What do you need for Jewelcrafting?
Primarily, ore and gems. There are a few that use alchemy mats, a few that use enchanting mats, and a few that use assorted mob drops, but nothing in such quantity that it would merit taking a second profession other than mining.

Where can I use Jewelcrafting?
Anywhere, there are no fixed resources required (like a Forge or Moonwell). Most Jewelcrafting items require a Jeweler's Kit to produce, this is a trade item you can buy from nearly any Trade Goods vendor for 8s.

What can I make with Jewelcrafting?
As the flavor text specifies, you will learn how to cut precious gems and craft jewelry. Specifically, Jewelcrafting allows you to make rings, necklaces, trinkets, a few crowns, and socketable gems. This is a very unique profession in that it produces two types of gains, new gear for accessory slots and augmentation of existing gear. It's a hybrid between a production profession like tailoring and the service profession of enchanting.

How good are these accessories?
The obvious shining point of Jewelcrafting accessories is that accessories are traditionally rare to characters below level 30, so being able to create accessories customized for characters leveling up is wonderful. Past level 30, the Jewelcrafting gear is vastly outpaced by dungeon loot. Past 30, Jewelcrafting items seem to be at roughly a "quest reward" level, and as of yet there are no "ringers" that would warrant taking off dungeon loot for. I imagine this may be addressed at launch via rare designs and just more designs in general. Endgame Jewelcrafting is not about accessories though, it's all about the gems!

Which classes benefit most from Jewelcrafting?
Since accessories can be used by anyone, and there are gem cuts to augment virtually every stat, all classes benefit most from Jewelcrafting. There are necklaces with high attack power, rings with armor and defense, trinkets with mana regeneration, socketed gems with crit rating. This really is a unique profession in that it doesn't seem biased toward any class or role.

Which professions work well with Jewelcrafting?
I would strongly recommend picking up Mining if you plan on Jewelcrafting. The reason is threefold. First, it's cheaper. :) Second, your materials may be in short supply due to the greater demand and lesser portability of ore versus bars, and you can't do much with bars (I imagine the ore market will boost when the expansion is released, but overall the demand for bars comes from many sources, the demand for ore is exclusively on Jewelcrafting). Third, by mining you will find gems naturally on the nodes while mining in ADDITION to the gems you will get when you Prospect all of that ore, not to mention stones for statues.

If not mining, I might recommend Enchanting, as nearly everything you can produce as a Jewelcrafter is of at least Uncommon rarity, and in many cases isn't worth selling on the Auction House due to oversaturation. Since very little of it is Soulbound however, there's not much difference if you simply stick Enchanting on an alt.

What should I skill up on?
There are two major standbys for leveling Jewelcrafting, Stone Statues and Trade Goods. Those practically worthless stones that drop from mining nodes are converted into Stone Statues for a cheap Renew (10 hp/s for 15s at the Rough level up to 50 hp/s for 15s at the Dense level) and cheap Jewelcrafting levels. Trade Goods are mats required for some of your Jewelcrafting recipes that are made from base metals, very similar to the clothcrafting or engineering schema in that at the "Copper" level you use the "Delicate Copper Wire" trade good in almost everything you do, and it uses 2 Copper Bars. So this is an item you can make for cheap skill that you will use to gain more skill, and is one of the only times in Jewelcrafting that Bars will be more important than Ore. :)

What should I stockpile now to level Jewelcrafting?
Given new recipe information, I would strongly encourage potential jewelcrafters to stockpile both Copper (at least 200) and Thorium Ore and Thorium-related gems. This will get you only to 300, at 300 you will need Outland materials pretty much in exclusivity.

How high can I get with materials from Azeroth?
310, this is pretty much the same for all other professions as far as I've seen.

What is Prospecting?
Prospecting is a skill that can be trained at level 20 Jewelcrafting from any Jewelcrafting vendor. It grants the Prospecting ability in your ability book. In game text: Prospecting 2 sec cast Search 5 ore of a base metal for precious gems. This will destroy the ore in the process. The function is incredibly similar to Disenchant, it kills the ore but has a chance at returning materials used in your profession. In this case, gems.

What gems can be found with Prospecting?
From all testing so far, you can get any gem that is naturally found on the node of that ore type (eg Shadowgem from Copper, Citrine from Mithril, Azeorthian Diamond from Thorium, Flame Spessarite from Fel Iron)

Are there any restrictions to Prospecting?
Two actually. First of all, as the description states you can only search ore of a base metal. This excludes noble metals such as Silver, Gold, Truesilver, Eternium, and Khorium (any ore with "green" rarity), this ALSO excludes "special" metals such as Dark Iron, Lesser Bloodstone, Indurium, et cetera. Second, you must have Jewelcrafting skill roughly equivalent to the mining skill required to mine that ore (eg 175 for Mithril, 300 for Fel Iron, 350 for Adamantite)

I have a ton of gems, now what?
Below 300 Jewelcrafting skill, gems are only used as part of jewelry creations, and although you will need a lot of gems to skill up, they don't really take value until past 300. Past 300, the Outland-exclusive gems can be "cut" into gems that can be added to socketable equipment.

Aren't socketable gems just portable enchants?
Gems are "portable" in the sense that a Jewelcrafter can cut a gem and sell it on the Auction House, but they have restrictions too. Gems can't be added to gear that does not have pre-existing sockets, enchants can be.

Can you socket AND enchant an item?
Yes, sockets are seperate from enchantments, you can use both on the same piece of gear. =)

Can you change gems in an item?
Yes, works just like enchantments. This means that your old "enchantment" (gem) is lost, but you can put a new one in no problem.

Can I stand in Orgrimmar all day cutting gems for people to make money?
EDIT: Yes. So far, ONLY meta gems have a cooldown on gem cutting, this cooldown is 1 hour and it does NOT affect the cutting of other Uncommon and Rare gems.

How do I cut gems?
Gem cutting requires a gem, a recipe for the specific "cut" of gem you're aiming for, and a Simple Grinder, which is just a trade item found on nearly any trade goods vendor for 2g50s.

What does specific cut mean?
As mentioned in the Jewelcrafting preview, there is more than one way to cut each type of gem. For example, a Golden Draenite can be cut Brilliant (+6 Intellect), Gleaming (+6 Spell Critical Rating), Thick (+6 Defense Rating), Rigit (+6 Hit Rating), or Smooth (+6 Critical Strike Rating), and these are just the ones we know of so far. Every cut requires a different recipe, so you can imagine already how many potential recipes there are!

Where do I find these recipes?
In the alpha, a small selection of gem cutting recipes have been placed on the Master Jewelcrafters in Thrallmar and Honor Hold. In the release, these recipes are designed to be world drops. I imagine some of them will be vendor-bought, but the vast majority of gem cuts will be found in the world. Additionally,

World of Warcraft is one of the most popular video games in the world with over 7.5 million players from countries around the globe. The game, often abbreviated as WoW, is considered an MMORPG - a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. MMORPGs have become very popular because you play them on your home PC, but you get to interact with characters/people from all over the world who are playing the game at the same time!

Now is a great time to start playing World of Warcraft, mainly because the price of the game is now less than half of what it cost when it originally came out. Most stores have it for $19.99. An expansion to the game - the Burning Crusade - is coming out 1/16/07 and will allow players to create new races of characters, get new professions, and explore new lands.

So....how do you play the game? or, more importantly, how do you excel at it? It's easy to learn how to play World of Warcraft if you follow my success tips below.

I won't go into a detailed explanation of the instruction manual - you can read that when you get the game - but I will give you some hints, tips, and strategies that will enable you to get the most out of WoW. There's a lot going on in the game, and it helps to have some sort of guide to rely on to steer you in the right direction!

5 Tips to WoW Success - How to Play World of Warcraft the RIGHT way!

1. Quests are more important to leveling than grinding.

Some people like to create a character and then just go out and hack and slash on things until they level up. Great idea, but it will take you a heck of a lot longer to get to level 60 (or 70 in the Burning Crusade) than everyone else. In two of the best leveling guides out there, they use 90/10 and 80/20 questing to grinding. If the experts do it that way, so should you.

2. Plan your route.

If you just randomly accept quests, do them, turn them in, find another quest, lather, rinse, repeat, you will be wasting way too much valuable time! Many times you can get several quests that all have goals in the same area of the world so you can do them all at once instead of running back and forth. A good guide will have your entire route mapped out.

3. Loot everything.

Loot everything you kill. Then sell everything you don't need. At first, you'll need as much money as possible, and this is really the only way to get it. Hopefully, you'll find more bags to store more things so you don't have to continually run to a vendor to sell off your backpack items.

4. Don't reinvent the wheel.

Some people want the "full experience" and want to just figure things out for themselves. The rest of us just want to be able to level up quickly and get to the REALLY fun parts of the game. Websites like www.thottbot.com and wow.allakhazam.com have posts about every single quest including coordinates and strategies that work.

5. Have fun!

Part of the fun comes in exploring and discovering new things. Look around! Look at the detail in the buildings, landscapes, and sky. If you're too worried about just getting to the next level, you won't enjoy the game as much. Of course, part of having fun is not running around like a chicken with your head cut off wondering what to do next. Following a good guide is ESSENTIAL, but don't forget why we're playing the game in the first place!

About the Author

Max Lethal is the owner of video-game-guides.com which has reviews of the top World of Warcraft guides to leveling quickly, earning lots of gold, mastering the game, and even just how to play World of Warcraft.