With the Burning Crusade expansion, World of Warcraft players have the ability to use Jewelcrafting to create rings, necklaces, crowns, and other items which were previously only available as quest rewards or loot drops. You can also use item socketing in much the same way as it is used in Diablo II to create new armor. Members of the Jewelcrafting profession, or Jewelcrafters, carve gems to prepare them for insertion into socketed items. The addition of these jewels creates bonus enhancements to armor, based on the type of jewel used. While Jewelcrafters are the primary source of usable jewels in these items, some dangerous monsters also drop gems that can be used in this way.
Socketed items can have gems installed by any character, but they cannot be altered aside from putting the gems into them. Sockets cannot be added to, changed, or removed from any item. Once a jewel has been obtained from a Jewelcrafter, it can be socketed by shift-right-clicking the desired item and dropping the jewel into the socket in the window that pops up. After placing the jewel, simply click the "Socket Gems" button to create the new item. While you can replace an old jewel with a new one, this destroys the old jewel completely.
Jewelcrafters should pair their primary profession of Jewelcrafting with Mining to enable them to acquire raw materials more easily. With these materials, such as metal ores, a Jewelcrafter can create rings and other jewelry for sale. At low levels, these are simply Copper Rings, but other items are quickly available. A Jeweler's Kit is also required initially, but this can be acquired for 8 silver at the Jewelcrafting supply vendor. Making items available to your Jewelcrafting characters will improve their skills by a point per item as well as earning experience. Items that are displayed in green test in the Jewelcrafting menu are worth less experience and you may have to make several of them to acquire a skill point. Yellow or orange text items are more difficult and worth correspondingly more in skill development. At a certain level, particular items will stop bringing experience when made, and more difficult items will have to be created to produce the same effect. A common strategy is to find an item which uses a small amount of readily available materials and grind up skills by making many of it. This way, you can stockpile component items such as Delicate Copper Wire and Bronze Settings for later use while improving your skill. Until the higher levels, Jewelcrafting is mostly about creating jewelry and small trinkets.
At skill level 20, you can learn Prospecting from the Jewelcrafting trainer. In addition to your Mining skill, this will allow you to extract gems from the ore you have mined. This is advantageous, since other Miners don't have this ability. It also increases the chance of obtaining gems for jewelry. Prospecting can be taken without having the Mining skill, but your Jewelcrafting skill must be the same as the minimum skill level for mining particular piece of ore in order to prospect it. You will need 5 of any type of ore in order to use Prospecting on it. After reaching skill level 300 in Jewelcrafting, you will be able to cut special gems found in the Outland. This requires the use of a Simple Grinder, again purchased from the Jewelcrafting supplies vendor. The Grinder costs 2 gold and fifty silver. Cutting these gems permits them to be used in socketed armor. Anyone can socket already cut gems, so if you don't need them for your personal gear, you can sell them to other players.
Each type of gem in World of Warcraft is categorized by color. Different colors of gem provide different abilities when used in socketed items. Any colored gem will fit into any colored socket, but if you match the colors of the gem and socket, a bonus is activated. Primary colored gems, such as red, yellow, and blue will only match the socket for their specific color. Secondary colored gems - green, orange, and purple - will match either of the two colored sockets that make up their color. A purple gem would thus be matchable with a red or blue colored socket. Meta gems come with an additional bonus, but have special color requirements for activation, so players may choose to forfeit a socket bonus in order to obtain the meta bonus instead.
The cut of a gem affects what bonus it gives. Cutting a Blood Garnet into a Teardrop Blood Garnet gives +13 to Healing Spells, whereas creating a Bright Blood Garnet gives +12 to Attack Power. Each color of gem has uncommon and rare forms that can be cut according to different patterns learned from vendors. Uncommon patterns can be learned at Jewelcrafting skill level 300 to 325, and rare patterns are learnable at skill level 350. Cuts for meta gems are learnable at a higher skill level than those for regular gems, around skill level 365. They will only fit into meta sockets that are available only on high level items. Some meta gems will also be dropped by bosses or created by alchemists. Boss drop meta slot jewels can't be crafted.
For many Jewelcrafters, the goal is to grind their skill up to 300 as quickly as possible. This is best done by creating many of the items made from easy, readily available materials. What path you use to reach this goal will depend on what materials you have on hand, and how much space you have in your inventory. In many cases, making more of an item with yellow text will provide "free" skill points since it is a required component for other items. Doing these early in the game allows you to use them later as well as to get the skill points for making them.
