Taking Up Jewelcrafting

Now that Bandin has effectively reached best in slot (for a non-raider) status for his healing gear and is only two items away from best in slot for his tanking gear (we won't go in to how bad his newly minted dps gear is), I've been looking for a way to get just a little more juice out of his stats and gear.

When Bandin first came to be I took up mining and engineering as his professions because I though engineering would be fun. It had some cool gadgets and quality of life things that would make playing in a more individual atmosphere a little easier and more fun. To be honest, I had a good time with engineering, but in the end I grew a little bored with it.

Then the Blizzard developers decided to revamp how the glyph system works in game and I became intrigued by all that the inscription profession could do. I liked the idea of being able to create glyphs for my own characters and those of friends so we didn't have to pay crazy auction house prices anymore. I also liked that it had a special set of shoulder enchantments that were better than anything else in the game that I could use for Bandin on all of his gear sets.

So, off I went to level herbalism and learn everything there is to know in the inscriptionist's toolkit. It took a really long time to finally gather all of the glyph recipes because I had to do daily research and then I had to earn the gold to buy about 40 Book of Glyph Mastery from the auction house over time. Those things originally started at about 150 gold each, but quickly rose up into the 1200 gold range after the expansion took hold of everyone trying to level new professions.

It was only two weeks ago that I finally managed to complete my glyph recipes and so now I'm ready for the next profession challenge (ignoring that I have neglected archaeology completely). I did some research and discovered that it truly is more beneficial to performance to have two crafting professions instead of one crafting and one gathering profession. While it is more convenient to maintain a profession if you have the matching gathering, you get another 80 or so of an important stat if you go double-crafting instead.

Therefore, I just recently dropped herbalism on Bandin and I am using my trusty alt death knight, Segovax, to provide him with piles of ore to prospect and find gems with to level jewelcrafting. Not only will Bandin benefit from the extra intellect, strength and mastery from the jewelcrafter-only gems, but it will be beneficial to my future alts and those of my two guildmates as well.

Now, I just need to make sure I don't blow through all of my gold trying to power level through the profession. It's so much cheaper to gather it all myself.