When I posted my leveling guide for Alchemy a few days ago something kinda surprising happened.
It got comments.
Not that you wonderful folks don’t comment often, you do. It’s just that the content of the post was not one that I expected to generate much response.
Thanks… Seriously, it’s nice to know folks appreciate the work that goes into some of this stuff.
Well, in these comments a valid point was brought up. Is it possible to level Alchemy essentially for free?
Good question. I decided to try and answer it.
Yesterday I went to the auction house and bought the shopping list in that post with about an extra 15-20% of each item. The only exception was the dark jade, huge citrine, and eternal fires for the earthseige diamond transmutes. I already had more than enough of them sitting in the bank on my Jewelcrafter.
All total I spent just over 950G on that list of mats. If you include the value of the transmute mats it would have cost me roughly 1250-1300G to buy it all. This was without waiting for good deals to show up in the auction house, just taking the cheapest of what was available.
Yes, I dropped over 1000G on an experiment for my readers…. what of it?
After my spending spree I sat down for the rather tedious semi-afk process of leveling. Roughly three hours later I parked Drupadi for the night. In that time she had gone from nothing to 425 Alchemy and had the mats on her to push to 435 with stacks of stuff left over.
I decided that since I was planning to specialise in transmutation it would make a good bit of sense to go ahead and do that before I did transmutes to finish leveling. With the help of many donations of outlands primals from my guild, the wonderful Sidhe Devils, I will be finishing my transmute master quest right after I log in today. I’ll finish leveling up right after that.
Then comes the fun part, selling all the stuff.
As of now I shuttled all the stuff I made off to an alt that usually spends his time cooling his heels in Darnassus. It may take a while to get it all through the auction house, so I figured I could separate it like this and see how much I really get back from selling all my leftovers.
Will I make the 1400G I need to make his pay for itself?
Only time will tell.
Filed under: World of Warcraft | Tagged: leveling, professions |
Dechion's Place 
Congrats, I powerleveled Alchemy on one of my toons. As yourself, I didn’t wait for good deals I just bought the mats at the Auction House. The gems, I create from Transmutes always sell. Currently on Bronzebeard, Dreadstone does very well. The blue gem needed (Autumn’s glow I believe) doesn’t cost that much on the Bronzebeard servers Auction house, when they are priced low (11 gold) I buy them out and keep in the bank. I transmute daily, well at least when I play WOW.
Alchemy is certainly worth powerleveling up to the gem xmute levels if nothing else, but I’ll be interested in seeing whether or not you get your cash back.
I personally find that the mats are more expensive than the results for the most part of advancing any profession, unless some major game function changes (intro of dual spec was incredibly lucrative for the prepared Inscriptionist) kick in.
But at any rate now that you’re high enough to xmute gems, you’ll be rockin. On our realm it costs under 35-40g to buy the epic gem xmute mats and each xmuted gem sells for at least 150. Cut? Even more.
Mmmm, profits.
Valdesta
My WoW Blog
I have no doubt I will make my money back on the transmutes, in fact having a Jewelcrafter is one of the reasons I leveled Alchemy. It looks like they will work well together.
As for making back what I invested… I figure I will take about a 50% loss on the stuff I crafted leveling, but we shall see.
The problem I find with leveling craft professions is that, until you’re around 300 or so and can make high-end merchandise, most of the craftables have steeply diminishing returns. As a for instance: The Golden Dragon Ring JCing recipe. GDR gives a moderate +hit and +def buff that is very nice for leveling warriors and the occasional Pally or Hunter. The mats for said ring are 2 gold bars, 2 delicate copper wire, and one Jade. Flat-out buying these off the AH will run you about 12G on my old server, give or take. The ring itself sells for less than 1G. Not efficient.
Alchemy, however, doesn’t really follow the same rules as other professions because even the lower-level potions and elixirs are always in demand and always sell well. Unlike other professions, Alchemy seems to be a moneymaker from the word go.
@Kusamoto
I completely agree. Hell, I don’t even want to talk about how expensive it was to level Engineering. It felt like I spent a couple days simply bleeding money with nothing coming back in.
With the Alchemy though, I am hoping to see at least a partial return on my investment. I know I can make it back over about a week with epic gem Xmutes for sure.
At any rate, all the stuff I crafted is in the Auction House already. I’ll just have to see how well it all sells.
[…] response to the comments on that post he decided to put his money where his keyboard was and see just how much it would end up […]