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Prospecting in 3.1

By on Jun 14, 2009 in Jewelcrafting

Jade Dagger Pendant

Taking a look back at pre-3.1 Prospecting/DE, which has become a very popular topic, we can see that it was highly profitable when gems/enchanting materials worth a lot. Now in 3.1, we can see that [Saronite Ore] has retained it’s average price of 17-20g per stack, while [Eternal Earth] has skyrocketed to around 10g each. We had actually had given up on prospecting until recently, when our supply of gems and enchanting materials were running out from personal use. Prices in our economy have started to recovered to a health amount from the whole 3.1 speculation/stockpile business. So we decided to take a look into prospecting and disenchanting again, but mostly we needed more [Dream Shard]‘s for our own enchants.

Prospecting Results

600 (30 Stacks @ 18g each) [Saronite Ore] 540g

Total Spent on Ore: 540g

Estimated Worth: 1140g

As you can see, prospecting can still be profitable, especially if cut gems are still holding their value. Even though we were a bit unlucky [Scarlet Ruby], we still net a nice 600g profit, which is scary how close it is to the estimated amount from the JC/DE spreadsheet. Each green quality gem was just given a value of 1g each, they may go for a bit more on your economy uncut. A common question is what to do with all the leftover [Dark Jade] and [Shadow Crystal] since these are the colors that don’t have a green item that can be crafted with reasonable amounts of materials. There are a few ways to profit from them aside from just selling them in their raw form.

Green/Purple Uncommon Gems

Craft Focusing Lens - These may not sell in huge quantities, but if you are Prospecting in small amounts, this may be a decent option. They go for about 3g each so it is still more profitable than selling them for 1g each.

Cut them into green quality gems – This is very market specific since for most economies, people are not purchasing green quality gems or their perfect cuts.

Craft [Jade Dagger Pendant] – This item requires an [Eternal Earth], 2 [Dark Jade], and 2 [Huge Citrine]. So assuming 10g earth and 1g gems, the opportunity cost of this item is about 14g. If shards are worth a lot more, than this would be a great way to produce cheap [Dream Shard]‘s for personal use or for sale on the AH especially if you are having trouble liquidating [Dark Jade].

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Oligopoly is a millionaire in various MMO economies is the founder/web administrator of Warcraft Econ and Diablo3Professions.com. He is one of the original gold cap WoW players. Launched in 2008, WarcraftEcon.net is one the longest running gold blogs and resources out there. We bring you news about the World of Warcraft economy, discuss strategies on making insane amounts of gold, and how to hit the gold cap. Enjoy your stay here!
  • http://ooc.array0.com SaladFork

    You forgot to mention the option, but I cut Dark Jade and Shadow Crystal into green quality gems for vendoring purposes. You get 50s per cut gem, and 1g per perfect cut gem. Since they don’t sell at all on the auction house on my server, this is the best option I came up with.

    Also, I came up with a formula for this Prospecting/Jewelcrafting/Enchanting method that a lot of people are using and posted it on Elitist Jerks. Using known values for the cost of various items (eternal earths, enchanting mats, cut gems, ore), one can calculate the expected value of one stack of Saronite Ore, allowing you to accurately predict profit.

    I’m planning on making a blog post about the formula myself, but perhaps you’ll find it helpful:
    http://elitistjerks.com/f15/t38127-icy_art_making_gold/p29/#post1133854

    It’s nothing complicated and uses nothing more than the concept of Expected Value, but I (and a few friends) have found it helpful in the past to determine how profitable this method is.

  • http://ooc.array0.com SaladFork

    Silly lack of an edit function — just noticed you mentioned the formula in your previous post. Nonetheless, I am planning on making a blog post about it sooner or later, and create a PHP script/page that should be pretty user-friendly for those hoping to take advantage of the formula but are daunted by the unfriendliness of the formula and/or the Google spreadsheet. I’ll let you know when it’s up.

    I’m also hoping to take this formula further and help you figure out at what point gems become BAD to sell, to help you answer questions such as “Although Twilight Opals used to be worth 40g for me, is it still a profit for me to sell them at 15g?” (btw: the answer is almost always yes). Feel free to suggest any ideas, :D

  • taco

    This is totally unrelated but someone wants to pay 50k gold for an ashes alar mount: http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=9520916021&sid=1

    I don’t know about anyone else but I would pay 100k gold but I don’t think it will ever go on sale. Any one else?

    Wow gems are really overpriced on your server. On my server most blue gems except the scarlet are less than 20g. There are several farmers running in the market and there are always at least 200+ stacks on the AH at all times.

  • Allah

    Anyone can help, chinese farmers just flood the marker, they ruin everything. How to sell anything? they just undercut each 5minutes, sitting in front of ah 24/7. Selling everythin what is sellin good, it is their job ye, to sell gold later, but this is game.. im fed up omg

  • http://www.warcraftecon.net Warcraftecon

    @ SaladFork – I had read your post on EJ a few months back as I was doing some research on this topic. The post and spreadsheet was very informative.

  • Emoir

    Be careful – those two BOP items you mentioned are useless. They only become small dream shards. I doubt that a small dream shard is worth more than an Eternal Earth in any server.

  • http://magerlydifferent.blogspot.com Cathy

    In the early stages of Lich I created alot of those rings and got them D/E’d primarily for dust for me, my husband and daugther. I’ll have to re-visit that again as I’m uncertain how the market is now for alot of the JC/enchanting stuff.

    Thanks:)

  • Anonymous

    Saladfork, on your EJ post, could you also post the links to where you found B and G (and maybe I,C,D for completeness but that’s just laziness on my part)?

    Because I can only find: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=36912#prospecting

  • Wiggin

    Don’t forget the chance to prospect thorium. Thorium ore, on my server at least, fluctuates, but is usually around 28g a stack. When it drops to 20g, I buy everything, prospect, and slowly trickle it onto the AH, 3-5 of each gem at a time. Most recently I got lucky with a batch of huge emeralds, azerothian diamonds and large opals, each going for 15-25g a pop. I am looking at potentially tripling my initial investment.

  • http://www.warcraftecon.net Warcraftecon

    @ Emoir – Thanks for catching that.

  • http://ooc.array0.com SaladFork

    @Anonymous – No problem. Let’s calculate how many blue gems we can expect per prospect. At the time of THIS posting, Wowhead has seen 609505 total prospects. And from these, it’s seen 25221 Monarch Topazes, 25154 Scarlet Rubies, 24906 Sky Sapphires, 24536 Forest Emeralds, 24445 Autumn’s Glows, and 24251 Twilight Opals. By adding up how many TOTAL rare gems it’s seen, we get (25221 + 25154 + 24906 + 24536 + 24445 + 24251) 148513. So in 609505 prospects, we can expect to get 148513 total rare gems.

    Simple division (148513 gems / 609505 prospects = ? gems / 1 prospect) tells us that we can expect 0.244 rare gems per prospect. This number is the B variable — the number of rare gems per prospect — used in the formula (due to statistical noise, you can see a 0.002 variance from the number I obtained in my original post).

    I used the same approach to find G, I, C, and D. It is important to note, however, that as someone mentions a few posts or so below mine, you need to multiple the expected value of Infinite Dust / Lesser Cosmic Essence by the average number you get per disenchant (1.5) if you’re using it in the formula.

  • Anonymous

    Thanks, I understand now.

    What about the Scarlet Ruby? Out of 609505 prospects, there were 25254 observations of either one or two scarlet rubies? Are the odds of getting one the same as getting two?

  • http://ooc.array0.com SaladFork

    @Anonymous – It is assumed the 1-2 on Scarlet Rubies was a bug or glitch of some sort in the recording add-on. Significant empirical testing by Elitist Jerks leads one to believe that it is impossible to get two blue gems in one prospect — including two scarlet rubies.

  • taco

    Actually, the chances of getting 2 blue gems do occur but not very often. The chances of getting 2 scarlet also occur once in a blue moon. I’m pretty sure that I have managed to get it twice so far in my JC career. I also prospect between 100-300 stacks a week which might explain it.

  • http://www.warcraftecon.net Warcraftecon

    @ Taco – I have only seen a few times where I recieved 2 blue gems in one prospect, but it is very rare. The prospecting for this post yielded 2 Monarch Topaz at once.

  • Archangel

    Same As SaladFork, I prospect large amounts of ore. At least 100 stacks per session. I get 3-4 prospects when I receive 2 blue gems per prospect. Rare yes, impossible, no.