Ever since Junior year of college, Geology has had a special place in my heart, so when I was recently faced with the following problem I felt a tug on the old heart strings:
How much Ore do I need to obtain 525 Jewel Crafting?
Unlike obtaining 525 Mining or Blacksmithing, this isn't a straight forward question. Not every 5 ore prospected yield the correct gems, not every gem cut gives you a skill up. So a proper answer to this question requires more than a single list, it requires… Maths.
I want to know:
- Minimum amount of ore required (easy)
- Statistically Average amount of ore required (more difficult)
- 90% percentile amount of ore required (FUN!)
I consider an answer which provide numbers for all 3: correct.
Best Answer
Just for the sake of completeness, I'm going to take Chris' profession guide link and reduce it to ore amounts. That'll at least give you the "minimum" amount.
Absolute Minimum
The technical absolute minimum is 0 ore, as you'd just buy all the bars/gems you need from the auction house and you'd never deal with ore at all.
Minimim w/ Mining
This answer will include the minimum figured assuming you only mine for bars and dust and that all gems come from the auction house.
Minimum w/ Mining & Prospecting
This answer assumes that you'd obtain each gem from the common ore most likely to drop it via prospecting based on figures on Wowhead. However, I also assumed no gems dropped during mining, which means these values won't be the absolute minimum.
Quick Average: Mining & Prospecting
For the purposes of this answer, I assume that everything you do will skill you a point in Jewelcrafting, but I incorporate the average percentage drop of gems from the ore that is most likely to drop that gem.
For obsidium ore, the figure is the same as the minimum. Assuming each gem has an equal chance to drop, you'll be obtaining the gems in equal numbers. Since you need 3 of each of them for the transmutes, the percentage that you'll get a gem you need is 100% until you've gotten enough of that gem for all the transmutes you'd need.
Quick 90th Percentile
With the absence of data points from actual instances or simulations, I cheated on this one. My calculation for the 90th percentile was (([AVG]-[MIN])+[AVG]*.9)+[BAR], where
It's not perfect, and it also assumes that you always skill when crafting things with jewelcrafting. The same caveat applies to Obsidium in this answer as it does in the quick average.
True Average & 90th Percentile
It quickly gets too complicated for me to want to bother attempting this in a completely legitimate fashion. One would have to make sure they had enough base inventory to accomplish both feats which results in a trickle-back effect where you have to go back and make older stuff again at times. That's best left for either a simulation program or someone with free time and a burning desire to snag your bounty. :)
For anyone interested in doing that, good luck. Also, so it doesn't get missed, Raven Dreamer posted the skill up formula he found for the percent chance you will skill up on a yellow or green recipe as a comment to the original question:
"Grey skill" and "yellow skill" are the numbers at which the recipe turns grey or yellow respectively.