Enchanting and Alchemy on the same character?Follow

Hello everyone. I just dinged 525 on Jewelcrafting and Mining. Now I wanted to make gold and I had no clue how because im pretty new to WoW, so I watched a couple of videos and read a little. Found out that I have to do dailies to be able to buy Designs to create Blue and Purples gems. But then I found out that you are able to make money just by Prospecting -> Disenchanting/Alchemy -> Sell. I do not want to ask other players all the time.

I have planned to create a Mage because I just love their armors and I have not tested DPS:ing yet, only tanking and healing. As I want to make much money I was thinking to take both professions Enchanting and Alchemy on my mage, instead of creating two separate characters, one with Enchanting+Tailoring and one with Alchemy+Herbalism. So simply I am wondering what you think I should choose. I do know that Enchanting is extremely good to have with Jewelcrafting when makin money, but to max everything it would be nice with Alchemy too.

As far as I understand, Alchemy have a skill you use on the Gems, does this skill require any special materials from Herbalism that will be hard to get or expensive to buy?

- Much thankfull if you sort this out for me, thank you!

JC has not been the golden goose I was led to expect. My real concern with two crafting professions is that buying all your mats would get really expensive. On my server main, herbs are generally pricier than metal or gems, even at low levels.

If you aren't making money with Jewelcrafting, you either aren't doing it right or entering the wrong time in the expansion.

Also, buying all of your mats doesn't get that expensive when it comes to having two crafting professions if you've built up some starter capital ahead of time. You may plunk down 10,000g at a time for materials to curb any RNG, but you'll make 4 to 5 times your initial investment in most cases.

That said, if you aren't already in on the shuffle, I think it's crazy to think it's going to be reliable come MoP. Gem Transmutes now need Spirit of Harmony which we don't know how rare they will be. Also there are I think two jewelry patterns that require four uncommon gems of only two colors to make items. The shuffle made bank as you pretty much could use everything but Zephyrites to turn into enchanting materials usually with 1 or 2 uncommon gems to make an item. Despite this, get as many professions on your server across multiple toons as possible. The more options you have, the more money you can make.

When doing your first or second character's professions, do yourself a favor and do not pick a profession that you do not have the main gathering profession for.

For example, if you want Alchemy, don't take it unless you have an Herbalist on the same server. The price for mats out of the AH are simply out of this world, especially for lower-level junk (it doesn't get any better higher level either, not even for Northrend junk). They will gouge you for 40, 60+ gold per stack of herbs that'd take you 2-3 min to collect once you got to the area in which they are found.

So, here's my recommendations:

If you want Enchanting, get Tailoring as the other spec -- they go well together. Cloth is fairly easy to get, especially Wrath+ due to the Cloth Gathering skill that you learn. Disenchanting your tailored goods yields enchanting materials which will cut costs from leveling/doing enchanting.

Seriously consider leveling a Miner for your Jewelcrafter if you don't already have one, and if you want Alchemy, do an Herbalist as I said above. Take advantage of racials if you can -- if you're Horde, I suggest making a Tauren herbalist, either a druid or a paladin if you enjoy those classes (Paladin for mount speed/stun ability, Druid so that you can pick herbs in flight form).

Also, for your questions:

Alchemy is more about making potions than it is making jewels. Making jewels is something they JUST added in Cataclysm; we have no current proof (that I know of yet) that they will do this again in MoP. Also, Truegold is something alchemists do.

As for making gems, yes, you need herbs. Which herbs depends on the gems, and yes they are expensive. It takes 3 herbs per gem.

To be honest, if you're an Alchemist/Jewelcrafter...

1). Where are you getting the raw green-quality gems from? Buying them? Prospecting them? If you're buying your ore, you're taking a huge hit to your profits right there. You'd do better as a miner, prospecting your own ore.

2). Where would you get the herbs? I've seen Heartblossoms for example, going for 120g+ for twenty. That's a mere 8 gems for 120g in just herbs. Add the cost of your ore ontop of that and it isn't hard to see why you're losing money. BUT, if you had an HERBALIST, you could spend 5-10 min in Deepholm and get those same 20 Heartblossoms for free. I think 5-10min is worth 120g, don't you? Spend about an hour a week in there and you'd have stacks upon stacks of the crap.

There's a reason why people take gathering professions -- they yield insane money compared to any sort of production craft. Anymore, I find that production crafts are best used for enhancements (blacksmiths' glove/bracer sockets, JC's gems, enchanters' ring enchants, etc) and making things for my own use than anything.

Edit: I am speaking about current economy, not the economy as it was earlier in the expansion, btw. Earlier in the expansion, I didn't see herbs going for 100+ gold a stack; they usually went for 30-40g. Not sure what's driving the herb prices up so damn high, but meh. Late expansion is always horrible for attempting to make money by crafting.

Edit 2: Given the Account-Wide achievement system and how players will get achievements for X number of classes leveled and X number of crafts leveled, "the shuffle" and other similar tactics might not work as well due to more competition as more people will be tempted to level extra characters and extra crafts. I wouldn't count on relying upon this to make you money in MoP.

Edited, Jun 9th 2012 9:54pm by Lyrailis

My apologies, I had forgotten about the late-Wrath epic gem xmutes, and yes there were Metas in TBC.

Now, I've read somewhere that there will be gem x-mutes in MoP, but even so...

Having Mining and Herbalism to compliment your Alchemy and Jewelcrafting skills is a nice thing to have, strongly advise the OP get a second character (get a DK if you don't already have one; they start at 55 and are easy-peasy to play) and level Mining/Herb on that character to at least shave some of the costs off your professions.

Except when bots are glutting the market and you would have made more by spending your time doing dailies.

It's actually quite simple. The gatherers can charge what the crafters will pay...what the market will bear. I've sold copper ore for 30-40g a stack most every time I've rerolled on a new server. And I don't mean I listed it at that, I mean I've sold it to someone else, usually within the first listing. It's not the gatherers being ridiculous, it's that the crafters will buy it for some reason.

Now, on my main, I craft exclusively. JC and Enchanting. I don't farm ore. To me it's always been simple. Farm the ore I need for ~45 minutes to an hour, or pay 50-80g a stack, craft my stuff, list it and make double what I spent in about 10 minutes(5 of which I spend tabbed out around here). You know when I stopped making money? When ore prices dropped down to just over vendor because of a glut in supply due to a few enterprising entrepreneurs(or bots), due to the low costs driving a lot of folks to glut the crafted goods market. I'm not sure if the market is still glutted since I barely play, but it's always been that way for me. Reasonably high costs to gather are a serious craft merchant's friend, in my experience.

That is the almost ironic beauty of the wow market. On one hand people complain like crazy about the horrendous price of stuff like ore and the such. On the other people buy said items for said "horrendous" prices. -shrug- Go with the flow and teach others to not support it. Eventually things will settle down to whatever the market will handle.

The one thing I hate are the people who see ore selling for 20-25g a stack and puts up several pages of 5-10g stacks, followed by several others undercutting him. Those people really gut a market and make it difficult to sell stuff. (hence why I am sitting on 9 stacks of iron ore, I refuse to sell them for 2g a stack to stay competitive)

Find a JC to prospect them for you, the gems are probably worth a lot more.

Edit: Boom, 800 awesome posts since early 2004


Edited, Jun 11th 2012 7:17pm by Vorkosigan