Cardinal Ruby Quest, Part 2

I'm sure many of you finished up the Cardinal Ruby quest this weekend, as did I.  One thing we learned for those who are still working on it, is that Lizzy does not take your gems from you.  This means you can transmute any gem you like, not just the cheap junk.  The second thing we learned is that the quest is counting the act of transmutation, not the resulting product.  As we've discussed in our comment area, Tranmute procs do not give you a leg up for this quest.  No matter what happens, the quest will take five days to finish.  We also learned that the quest is a tad buggy, so be sure all of your transmutes get counted.  If you run into a problem, contact a GM asap!



Once you turn in your quest, you'll probably have to wait until the sixth day to make your first Cardinal Ruby.  Bummer, right?  That means yesterday was the first official day when the Auction House would start filling up with transmuted gems.  I'm assuming by now that the Emblem/Honor action has died down, surely those who planned to buy gems that way have already done so.  Which means that the main source of gems will now be Jewelcrafters and Alchemists.

Jewelcrafters cannot control which gems they get from prospecting (or icy prisms).  If you want a guaranteed result, you'll need an Alchemist.  I would not be surprised to see Alchemists start selling their gem transmutes much the way Miners sell their Titansteel CDs.  I know I have zero intention of sharing my CD any time soon.  But for someone who doesn't have a cabal of toons to upgrade, they might be willing to barter their services.

It will be interesting to see how all this plays out and we'll be keeping our eyes on the action.  In a couple more weeks we'll see if we can come up with some new stats for our "Most Popular" page.  Then we'll have an idea of how epic gems are affecting the overall gem market.
Posted by Kaliope at Monday, August 10, 2009
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2 comments:

  1. Thanks for the article. I had always assumed the major source of gems was going to be Titanium. But that could be just wishful thinking since I had a couple of tabs of it on patch day.

    While people should have used up their HK/stone keeper shards/badges by now, each of your toons can get a couple of epics every week from wandering around with the children in WG. (oops, a bit snide even for me and I find WG not as bad as most PvP.)

    I guess that CR is the transmute to do, at least for transmutation alchemists. But it is currently not absolutely clear - if the CR and say dreadstone are selling for about the same and the mats are cheaper for the dread, then ...

    Right now, you can transmute 18+50=68g into a 188g CR which for non-TM is not as good a deal as transmuting 2+8g=10g into a 150g dreadstone. YMMV and prices are always changing, and currently than means down. `
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  2. I'm sure folks will continue to use their Honor Points for epic gems, but I would think the glut from that is nearing an end. Surely folks who PVP will eventually want to use the bulk of their point for gear, not gems. Casual PVPers are more likely to continue using their points purely for gem buys, but they are less likely to rack up 75k honor/week. I wouldn't expect there to be a significant number of players farming HP to facilitate gem farming.

    Titanium sounded great, but in practice not so much. You get a lot of greens and some blues, but the epic gem rate is like 25%. I know a couple folks in my guild who prospected 3-5 stacks and got zero epic gems. I wouldn't be surprised if enough people get turned off by the random and/or bad luck factor that prospecting Titanium loses favor with a healthy percentage of JCs. In fact, you could almost argue that smelting titansteel is a better use of Titanium in terms of return on investment.

    The upside is that the lesser gems are holding their own pretty well at the moment. I have yet to sell any rubies, so many JCs focused on those cuts that I haven't bothered to post mine. On the other hand, I've sold several Dreadstone/Eye of Zul for higher prices than the Rubies were listed for because the recipes I used had fewer listings. As a result I was able to get a better price for my epics without resorting to painful price slashing. I think your logic on the transmute situation is sound, since there is more equilibrium across the epic gem flavors, some Alchemists may prefer to transmute "lesser" gems in favor of higher profit.
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