Back to the shuffle

NOTE: I found a screenshot of the vendor that sells crafting mats for justice points. Check it out here. Note that the sack of herbs is a stack of a random cata level herb. As always don't get what you need, get the most valuable.


Since everybody seems to be giving their take on the new "obsidium shuffle" I suppose it's my turn. However I keep seeing people missing a few key points that I want to bring to light. The main thing is the sale price of raw common gems. Plain and simple gems fresh from the prospecting. But first here's the low down on how the shuffle works.

First you buy a ton of ore and prospect it. You cut and AH the rare gem with your most profitable cuts. And by using the common gems for assorted other things, the rare gems are pure profit. Here’s all of the things you can do with them.

3x of each color = 2 meta gems
2x any color = DE green JC jewelry = 1-2 dust
2x any color rare proc = blue JC jewelry to auction off
3x red gems for carnelian spikes to de = 2-3 greater celestial essences
Turn the DE’d mats into scrolls or sell them as is.
Cut and vendor common gems for 9g

Using my server’s prices where the ore is at 100g/stack. You will usually get on average from a single stack 1 rare gem and 5 common gems. You of course can only get 4 commons but I've found that to be quite rare and luck is not usually in my favor with these kinds of things. At that price a single common gem sold on the AH for 18g almost entirely covers the cost of prospecting. Anything more than that is profit.

First there's the choice to vendor the cut gems if for some reason obsidium ore is insanely low. I read on another gold blogger's post that 54g is the lowest that the ore should be sold for as that's the average price of the cut common gems you'd get from a vendor. For the life of me I can't remember where, I think I found the link on Cold's blog. Ok enough of me rambling and failing at memory.

After that you can turn the commons into meta gems. The xmute requires 3 of each color common gem and max alchemy to do and always gives you 2 meta gems and has no CD at all. Currently metas are getting anywhere from 20g to 200g profit depending on the cut. They can also be sold raw if you don't have the cuts learned yet. Or you can stokpile them all for when the new BoU recipes are released with the patch which every single DPS class should be looking for. Personally I'm trying to find a good balance between selling raw meta gems and hording some for the patch. Since common are worth 18g each on average, a meta costs 180g to make before mastery comes into play. This price is important to keep in mind when deciding what to do with all of the commons.

Other than metas you can do what I'm currently experimenting with and that's just selling the common gems raw. At 20g a piece (18ish after AH cut) that pays for the 5 ore you bought to prospect it, a loss of something like a single golden coin or less from the AH cut. However gems can dip down to 15 but more often than not they're in the 30ish range for a few. Namely the ones used in the JC power leveling guide on wow professions like hessonites. That combined with the blue, purple, and greens for JC dailys you more than make you money back from selling raw common gems. The odd rare gem you get here and there is an easy 100g of pure profit after you cut and sell it.

And lastly are the carnellian spikes that I mentioned before to DE. Even after a sharp decline in the price of essences, this is still pure profit. So the potential profits on average from each method after paying 80g for 1 stack of obsidium are as follows:

5 non blue or green gems sold raw, 140g
or
1 rare gem and 3 non blue or green commons, 190g
or
1 random common and 3x carnellian turned into spikes = 2 greater celestial essence, 150g
or
3x of all colors turned into a meta, 360g


The obvious problem with the above is that you never know what colors of gems that you'll get. That's the only thing that makes turning them into metas sketchy. But the ability to do more than just vendor them is very alluring. Being able to fuel the meta gem market and enchanting market at the same time is just great.

Then there is the JC made jewelry for DE and sale purposes. For me I only make alicite necks because the raw gems don't sell much at all so there's nothing else I can do with such an abundance of them. Unfortunately this is only recouping a loss as 40g for a necklace for me turns into 20g in dust. Sometimes you can proc a rare quality neck that can fetch upwards of 100g but only if it has desirable stats on it. I tend to shy away from counting on luck.

The other necks and rings are also at a large loss of profit when DE'd because purples are almost always 25g and up, the same with greens. So those I recommend selling raw or using in meta gems. The main point I'm trying to make here is explore all of your options before going off what anybody says, regardless of how well they're doing with it. YMMV plays a large roll in everything.

Usually though I seem to get a ton of one color and I'll sell down to a multiple of 3 since metas and spikes need 3 gems. After that if I have a bunch of carnelians still but am low on celestials I'll make the spikes. This prospecting game is all about balance this time around and not luck nearly as much since you're basically promised a profit with each click. How has your luck been with prospecting?


Thanks for stopping by!