Prospecting Spreadsheet for Titanium, Saronite, and Cobalt

By Oligopoly on Sep 03, 2009 in Jewelcrafting

Ever wanted to know know if prospecting ore is profitable on your economy based on mathematical probability? Well Ashton Kind, AkA Delcitina of Stormscale US has been working on a prospecting, JC/DE spreadsheet for us at Warcraft Econ. He has even offered to answer any questions/concerns/requests at ashtonbekind at gmail.com

By using probability rates of prospects and disenchants, you can figure out easily if prospecting is profitable on your server by inputting your own prices and quantity. We tried plugging in our own number from a previous prospecting article and we came pretty close to the spreadsheet’s estimates. The number obviously won’t be exact due to chance and probability of getting specific gems or enchanting materials. So use this as a guide to figure out profit margins on your economy.

Download: (Updated for 3.3)

Prospecting Spreadsheet (.xls)
- Download location #1 (hosted on our forums)
- Download Location #2 (hosted on Warcraftecon.net)

How to Use Tabs:

Material Costs - This first tab is where you can input your prices for Ore, Gems, and Enchanting materials. For ore prices, use cost per stack .
Craft&DE – The second tab estimates how profitable crafting and disenchanting the level 70 green jewelery. This assumes you are buying the gems and eternal earth instead of prospecting.
Shadowmight/Stoneguard – The third tab estimates how profitable crafting and disenchanting [Shadowmight Ring] and [Stoneguard Band] is. Both these rings are crafted Jewelcrafting BOE’s and just use eternals as their crafting materials.
Titanium Ore – Use this tab if you are prospecting [Titanium Ore]. Input how many stacks you plan on prospecting and to the right, you will see your Total Investment, Sell Value, Net Profit, and Percent Profit. Remember 100% profit means doubling your investment.
Saronite Ore – Use this tab if you are prospecting [Sarontie Ore]
Cobalt Ore – Use this tab if you are prospecting [Cobalt Ore]
Reference – The last tab shows your average profit per craft and cost per prospect.

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About the Author

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://www.ummm.com Mike

i downloaded this and excel wont let me edit it
Zerohour

Excellent spreadsheet. Within reason it confirms what I believe to be a boon to my own efforts, and confirms that on my server the Titanium Prospecting system cannot break even until the price of ore drops to 245g per stack. Gives me something to watch for and time to profit in between this time.
Sprakk

For me, it seems that E8 on the reference page doesn’t have the correct formula, instead has a flat 4.45 value. It should be ‘=e4+e5+e6′
http://www.warcraftecon.net Warcraftecon

@ Mike – It should be working, the direct link is: ( http://warcraftecon.net/ProspectingGuide.xls ). This is a 2003 Excel file.
http://warcraftecon Ashton Kind

About that cell on E8 in the reference tab, you are absolutely right, and that is an incredibly important calculation for EVERY scenario. I will be reuploading the corrected version to the website admin ASAP, and hopefully he will post the corrected version shortly. My sincerest apologies.
http://www.warcraftecon.net Warcraftecon

Ok the spreadsheet has been updated on the server. One thing to note though, it looks like you may have to save it to your computer then use it from there if you want to edit the sheet. If you open it from the browser, you may get a “read-only” message.
Hagu

Thanks!

I downloaded it and tried to open it with Numbers and it said the file was encrypted.

BTW, Pproprietary, thick-client apps are so last millennium.
Chris

Ive made a spreadsheet for prospecting saronite ores including disenchanting the rings from JC but this looks very intresting. Thnx in advance.
Feist

Any chance of updating this to reflect cobalt ore->bar->Horned Cobalt Helm/Notched Cobalt Waraxe for Disenchant?

Might be interesting to see how that affects the profitability of cobalt.
Ashton

If you need an unencrypted or different format, please email me and I’ll see what I can do.
Raddik

Many thanks,

Yesterday I checked my server prices and put them on the spreadsheet, putting the lowest value on what I sell and the highest on what I buy (that is the way to avoid surprises xD), and I ended with a “Saronite Ore” tab telling me that I will have a 144% profit!!!! That’s huge… so I bought about 1.000g of Saronite Ore stacks (13g per stack on my server)… at 00:30 I put 250 Arcane Dust on the AH and this morning at 08:30 they we’re ALL sold!! O_O (Yes, I was undercutting all the people and having a 144% profit…incredible).
The only bad thing is that, for now, I only can sell the Enchanting material and do very few blue gems, because my Jewelcrafter is level 65!!! Yesterday went to Borean Tundra and leveled Jewelcrafting from 350 to 444 just doing level 70 jewelry.
On a side note: It was A PAIN to prospect 76 stacks of Saronite (300 clicks!!! with the macro…) and It was a MAJOR PAINT to disenchat all those many items… but well, I suposse that it’s ok.

For all of you that want to know what GEM to do with your uncutted gems, you can go to
https://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/gamestats/gamestats.html?en,auctionsold
And see, wich is the better selling gem, and go for it.

Again, many thanks for the spreadsheet, and sorry for my “english” xD.
Zerohour

@Raddik – congrats! Saronite prospecting can seem like a pain, however, whenever I am faced with 60-200 stacks of Saronite I think about all the gold I am making with each push of a button. This positive thinking makes it very tolerable. My macro is even named “Make Gold”.

This is far better than having to endure grinding mobs, dailies, or even flying around looking for herb/mine nodes while competing with others which nets you 100g an hour.
http://onelikelystory.wordpress.com/ Twan

Not worth it on DH it seems.
Kermonk

Heh, as with most spreadsheets, totally incomprehensible.
http://www.warcraftecon.net Warcraftecon

@ Hagu – What’s a thick-client app?

@ Raddik – Thanks for the success story, glad it worked out for you!

@ Kermonk – Once you get used to using it, it becomes pretty easy.
http://www.wowconfidential.com WoWConfidential

Very nice, it’d be awesome if someone developed an addon version of this.

Just like Lil’Sparkies workshop, that can find out all the values of the current lowest priced materials/items, and auctioneer enchantrix that knows the value of deing items and the value based on probability of materials.
Jurandr

Very nice spreadsheet. Opened for me in OpenOffice with no issues at all and I’d say it was pretty accurate for my server.
BW

I take it the price per stack is the 100% price listed in auctioneer.
http://www.warcraftecon.net Warcraftecon

@BW – Either use that or just check what stacks of ore is going for on the auction house.
Triv

Any shot I can get a copy that is Google Docs compatible. It claims it’s pw protected when i try to upload it.
Mike

Anyone have the updated drop rates for disenchanting stuff for infinite dust?
Delcitna

Alright everyone – the p/w for the form is “Rockfleece”

From what i hear the dust rates have been increased by ~1 across the board, so just change the following:

Under the reference tab:
C4 WAS 1.5 – Change to 2.5

C13 WAS 3.5 Change to 4.5

I will submit an updated version when i get a chance
jurandr

Thanks for posting that password… It’s been driving me nuts. All the prices have gone crazy since that hotfix and I haven’t been able to get accurate calculations since the sheet had the wrong references.
http://. Kreddeh

I must say, lovely spreadsheet, sadly on my server Infinite dust goes for 40~ stack and every single thing in the sheet is -% profit.
Helen

love this spreadsheet, any chance on updating it for new DE values?
Enigma

one problem, i’d like to set a different value for every small gem, most of them are worthless and sell near vendor value, but Chalcedony goes for as much as 10g each on my Server

i can only set prices for Dark Jade and Shadow Crystal, but not for Chalcedony.

any chance you might fix that?
Delcitina

Most certainly – Once the new website is completely up and running, I will get one that accomodates your needs – just throw me a PM on the forums , or however the main website works – User name will be ‘Delcitina’
Twan

As ore fluctuates I am still using this, many thanks!