Jewelcrafting Gets Some New Toys
Jewelcrafting, Dragon’s Eyes and Epics, Oh My!
Just wanted to say a quick word about the Jewelcrafting changes incoming. I took Ailis over to the PTR and spent quite a bit of time running around Azeroth figuring out where everything was sold and how to attain it all. Here’s what I found out about the new Epic Gems incoming when the patch drops.
Right now, on the PTR, you can get Epic Gems in one of four ways:
- Emblems of Heroism (20 for the primary colors – 10 for the combination colors)
- 10,000 Honor Points
- Alchemy Transmutes
- Prospecting Titanium Ore
Seeing is how Emblems of Heroism are going to be unattainable after the Patch unless you downgrade your Emblems of Conquest to Emblems of Valor to Emblems of Heroism, I recommend grinding as many Heroics and 10-mans as you can until the Patch drops (and keep grinding them afterwards for Emblems of Conquest but that’s a different matter). If you PvP and want to use your honor on the gems, hitting the honor cap will net you 7 Epic gems with 5K honor leftover.
If you are an alchemist, start stocking up on all rare quality gems and eternals, as those are the ingredients (in various combos) for all the transmutes. As my DK copied over before I switched her to alchemy on the live servers, I do not know if there’s a CD on the transmutes. Update: Yes, the same 20 hour CD for transmutes applies to the new gem transmutes. Sorry, guys.
As far as Titanium Ore is concerned, I prospected 2.5 stacks and received 2 Epics, 1 Rare, 8 Common, and 9 Titanium Dust. I was fairly pleased with the haul with the exception of the Comon quality gems. Seeing is how Titanium nodes are rare spawns, I don’t think you should get Common gems from the prospects. Just my opinion on the matter since you get those gems from Saronite and Cobalt already and really are mainly prospecting the Titanium for dust and Epic gems. If they’re going to allow for Common gems to come from Titanium, I would like an increase in spawns for the nodes.
Update: Tested again with 22 stacks and received 19 Epics, 20 Rare, 114 Common and 55 Titanium Dust. So, it would seem you will get the highest spawns of Common gems followed by a fairly even split of Rare and Epic gems.
The Epic gem designs are sold by Timothy Jones, the gentleman who gives you the daily. There are 8 pages of designs, each costing 4 JC tokens apiece, so start saving if you haven’t already. To help combat the sheer quantity of JC tokens you need, he also offers a repeatable (not daily) quest of 10 Titanium Dust turn-ins. For every 10 dust, you get 1 token. Needless to say, stock up on Titanium Ore if you can.
Finally Dragon’s Eyes have, indeed, been buffed (by about 7 points or so each) and their prismatic quality removed. As of right now on the PTR, I did not receive any tokens to make up for the loss of my socket bonuses and my gems were still in my gear, so I don’t know what Blizzard is, in fact, intending on that. The Dragon’s Eye designs have been moved to their respective color category in your tradeskill book, once again reducing the Prismatic section to the tears.
So, a few awesome changes incoming. It’ll be really interesting to watch how the economy reacts to the new influx of gem cuts and who will actually be purchasing them.
