Cataclysm Day Five: Getting to the good stuff

Today was a pretty productive day, being the first weekend of the expansion. I honestly expected things to turn out a bit differently than they did, but I'm definitely surprised and encouraged by the results.

Jewelcrafting - It's about time!

Finally got around to not neglecting my JCer, which implicitly meant spending some time on my miner this morning. This is all very anecdotal (although, what isn't in a blog?) but I've found that, at least for my server, farming in Hyjal is completely and utterly worthless.

On a 310% speed mount I found myself picking up less than a stack of Obsidium Ore in an entire loop around Hyjal. I think I found the times I was beaten to an node or seeing one despawn to occur probably twice the time I actually found one. This was probably compounded by the fact that it was the weekend. Really unpleased 100% with how the results here turned out.

What's an enterprising young 450 JCer to do? Go mine elementium, of course! Take your pick between Deepholm and Uldum - both present pretty attractive options. I'd honestly start in either and be prepared to switch to the other if you notice high competition. I actually started out in Uldum in the morning, and had surprisingly good success in Deepholm during peak hours while doing some casual questing at the same time. The real trick here, which saved me probably a good 2 hours, and gained me a ton of gold, was farming elementium instead of obsidium. Found a friendly JCer in my guild to prospect the ore for me - and after a modest tip I found myself swimming in not only the greens I needed, but a surplus of blue gems to be used later on.

Once your miner is at 500 skill or above, I absolutely encourage employing this strategy. Right now I don't see any value in farming obsidium - with the competition in Hyjal you'd need the ore to be valued 3-4 times the price on my server to make it worthwhile.

Was able to push up to 485 JCing today, which meant starting the dailies, finally. I also sold two Nightstone Chokers for ungodly amounts, 1200g and 840g. You'll definitely want to try selling these at a premium. I was able to collect 2 blues out of 10 total crafted, so the potential for profit here is pretty good.

The green necklaces also sell fairly well, but at a lower rate (50g on my server for anything with a decent stat combo). Undesirable combos (Spi/stam anyone?) can be sent to your enchanter for some shuffling goodness. So, to recap, my JC strategy:

• Farm elementium, not obsidium. If your miner isn't 82, go to Uldum. If you're 82, go to Deepholm.
• Sell your good nightstone chokers and hessonite bands
• DE your crap jewelry
• Sell perfect uncommon cuts - hold on to the standard ones while their market price is far, far too low
• Buyout all cut gems below vendor price (9g)

I'm still undecided on how I want to employ my token usage. I'll have the option of my first cut come Monday, right before the server reset which means some potential small amounts of gear coming in as the high-end and medium guilds go through their tuesday pushes. I might snag a recipe if I find a high demand/low supply cut, but I can just as easily see myself amassing tokens and waiting out to see how the early meta/epic jewelery market looks as well. It's a calculated gamble either way - and hopefully in a couple hundred days or so I'll have them all regardless!

Other observations

Some real quick tips and notes from the other professions I began working on today:

• Enchanting: This seems a bit more balanced in terms of essence/dust now. You should be able to get up to around 475-480 just from your quest rewards alone if you're 85. Make sure to enchant everything onto vellums and not gear. I'd advise saving every single scroll for at least a month. Right now most of these are going for 10-20g on server, and I can't imagine them going any lower.
• Inscription: Depending on herb prices there's some significant potential for profit by buying herbs, milling and selling Blackfallow ink to levelers while keeping the Inferno ink for yourself for later. This is a fairly foolproof way to "print" free inks if the prices are right on your server. This is obviously a bit risky though so I'd start off at low volumes until you know your ink will sell. No better time to test than on the weekend!

That's it for day five! Looking forward to the rest of this weekend and seeing what the first "reset" of the expansion brings us.