jewelcrafting notes

Well as mentioned my JC is now 420. What a long painful slog!

Here are some of the notes from memory during it.

The guide from wowprofessions: Not that great. Typically i would make the suggested number of settings items (ie mithril filigri) and have 20 left over, meaning i burned a stack of ore). My suggestion is only make half of what it says, and don't use the recipe once it's green. Also get a glove enchant for gatherer (+5 mining skill), if you can (need to be 60 to use it)

1-300: This is just a horrid horrid grind. Get through it, just get through it. Copper and tin are not so tough, but the common gems from these ore are not really used. Shadowgem was my friend (and apparently everyone elses; sells for several gold each). Expect to pay 5g per skillup up to 15g.

You really should have mining leveling at the same time, its the only way without going flat broke. Silver, gold, truesilver ore is your friend. You can smelt these for mining skillups (along with other ore), making them quite valuable. Silver routinely goes for 4g per ore. You may just decide to skill up mining through just tin/iron ore instead of going the route of silver ore smelting.

Mithril: Once you get to mithril you can get half of your skillups through smelting mithril and truesilver. Do it. I noted that through this I didn't need that much more mithril ore. Or if you want to actually make money, just get mine skillups through mithril nodes, make 30 filigriess then prospect the rest of the ore until you have enough gems to get past this part. Most reliable place for mithril? The bug hives in tanaris

Thorium: Goes pretty quickly. Go grab 3 stacks of ore from AH and when you hit 250 mining, smelt it all. You'll need it or close to it. Then run around winterspring hitting the rich and small nodes. You'll get enough ore to get through this level. Star rubys are more common and somewhat cheaper on AH. Figure out the AH prices of the gems and make the cheapest item you can. For example azerothian diamonds sold for 20g each on AH, but star ruby sells for 12g. Sell the diamonds, buy rubies.

300-375. This was pretty easy. Fly around hellfire for a while to get to 325 mining, gather all the feliron you can. Smelt some for skillups. prospect the rest for common gems. At 325 you can get adamantite ore from nagard (best place) or from zangamarsh (which is a mix of fel iron and adamantite). Don't worry about mining skillups, i went from 300 to 400 in outlands in a few hours. Keep prosepcting until you have enough. I think i used 10 stacks of adamantite. You could just buy it on AH (15g each stack). Oh, big tip: Black diamonds which drops from MC and BRD are extremely cheap on AH, usually. I leveled about 20 levels using them and it cost less than a gold per skillup. Sell all your cut uncommon gems to the vendor. Don't bother with rare gems, you can sell them on AH or give them to a guildie.

375-420. Here I cheated and took stocks of uncommon northend gems from the gbank. After about 3 stacks of gems I got to 420, where I called it quits. I'll skill up more once I can fly around nortrhend and gather ore. Somewhere in here I became eligable for the JC daily quest, so I've been trying to do that.