With the release of the Burning Crusade expansion pack, World of Warcraft players can now learn a new profession : Jewelcrafting will give you the ability to create necklaces with high attack power, crowns, rings with armor and defense, and other items which were beforehand only available as loot drops or rewards for quests. As a Master Jewelcrafter you will have the ability to enhance attributes in certain areas of your armor by cutting gems to socket into slots in your armour the better the jewel used the better the enhancement.

Any socketed item can have a gem installed in it by anyone, but cannot be changed apart from placing the gem into them. Sockets cannot be removed, added to or changed from any piece of gear. Once you have got a jewel from a Jewelcrafter, all you have to do to socket it is shift and right click the item you want and drop the jewel into the socket. After putting in the jewel, simply click the Socket Gems button to make the new item. You can swap an old jewel with a new one but in doing so you will destroy the old jewel.

Like most other skills, you will need to pair up your profession with a second skill. In the case of it you will need your second skill to be Mining as this will enable you as a Jewelcrafter to get hold of the raw materials you need more easily. With the materials, like metal ore, they can make jewelry to sell. At low levels, they are simple things like Copper Rings, but other things will become quickly available. To start off with you will have to get hold of a Jeweler's Kit, you can get this for 8s at a vendor. Making things available to your Jewelcrafting character will enhance their skills. Making the items that are in your catalogue in green text yield experience at a low rate so it might take more than two items to get a skill point whereas making items that are in yellow or orange will credit you with a point per item as well as earning more experience. The most common strategy is to find an item which uses a small amount of easily available materials and grind up skills by making lots of it. In this way, you will be able to hoard component items such as Delicate Bronze Settings and Copper Wire for later while increasing your skill. Until the higher levels, Jewelcrafting is mainly about making small trinkets and jewelry.

When you reach skill level 20, you will be able to learn Prospecting from your trainer. When you have learnt this skill you will be able to extract gems from the ore you mine. This is a great bonus over other Miners who don't have this skill and will increase the chance of getting gems for your own jewelry. If you don't decide on mining as your second profession you can still prospect ore, although you must have a Jewelcrafting skill at least the same as the minimum skill level for mining the ore you are after to prospect it.