I have a wide variety of methods that I use to make gold in Wow, but by far, my favorite is what we call the “shuffle”. Many of you understand the principles of the shuffle, but for those who don’t, I’ll teach you everything from start to finish. This guide will be quite lengthy so If you find a part you need to work on, bookmark it and come back. I have put several hours into obtaining images and writing this post, so if it helps you or you enjoy it, take some time to share it wherever you prefer to share things.

First things first, the method I am showing you today will require a Jewelcrafter and possibly an enchanter. The enchanter is not so much required depending on your server, but I’ll get into that in a minute.  You will also need some start up capital. I usually invest about 10k when I do this, sometimes more, but not really any less than 1k. You CAN do this with little to no investment, but as with most things, the more you invest, the higher the returns. The JC shuffle can deal with some very large stack numbers, so I would advise planning ahead as far as space goes. Things can get crowded quite quickly when shuffling.

Basic explanation:

Shuffling, also know as the JC Shuffle, is the concept of taking a raw ore and refining it into something completely different in order to profit. Many professions do this by taking in materials and spitting out gear, but Jewelcrafters take this whole process to a new level. The idea is: you buy ores, prospect them, cut rare gems to their most profitable cut, take uncommon gems and craft jewelry,  sell the rare quality jewelry on the AH, disenchant the uncommon jewelry, make scrolls, and sell the scrolls on the AH.

This is a process that has been done time and time again, and information that has been regurgitated too many times to count, but, what most people don’t explain is how to do it properly. There are so many facets to doing this now, and a lot of people don’t think to explore their options because they are using a guide. Well I am going to walk you through every single step in the process and teach you everything I have ever learned about it. Using the JC Shuffle on my high population realm, I make an easy 20-30k a week with just a couple hours of work on the front end, and a lot of mixing and matching. Now let’s get started.

READ FIRST

Stede over at The Consortium Forums is a much smarter person than I, and he along with two others have gone through a lot of trouble to make this process much easier for you. If you check out their post on The Shuffle Spreadsheet, they have designed a spreadsheet to take most of the guesswork and analytics out of the equation. You will need excel 2003 or higher to use the spreadsheet, but it is worth the effort to at least download a trial. They have full instructions on how to use it in their post. If you find it useful, please join the forum and leave them reputation.

Tips and Facts to Remember:

• Try to lowball you estimations. If market price is 65g, consider making it 62 or 60. Don’t overdo it though, if you estimate one item far too low, you could potentially miscalculate the entire process.
• Don’t forget your sparkling shards! You can combine ten of these into a serpent’s eye. Since this is standard across all of the ores to prospect, you should only factor it in when determining your profit margins for the process as a whole. This includes determining what you are willing to pay for ores.
  
• Test. Go out and test your different methods and see the actual results. You can run calculations for days and still not account for everything until you try it.
• This guide does not factor in the guild perk: Bountiful Bags. If you wish to follow my guide, keep this in mind when calculating values.
• Ornate Bands require one of each: Lapis Lazuli, Sunstone, Tiger Opal, Jeweler’s Setting
  
• Shadowfire Necklace requires one of each: Pandarian Garnet, Roguestone, Alexandrite, Jeweler’s Setting
  
• Vendor Prices:

Cut Uncommon Gem: 0.85
Jeweler’s Setting (Buy): 1.20
Cut Rare Gem: 4.0
Ornate band: 8.97.82
Shadowfire Necklace: 8.97.82

• Proc Rates:

Sparkling shards proc about 3-6 per stack of ore
Perfect gem cuts occur about 1 in 20
Rare quality jewelry occurs about 1 in 10
Bountiful Bags has a rate of about 10% to proc extra mats from disenchanting, but you can recieve more than just 1 extra, so figure it to increase your mats gained by about 13%
Prospecting White/Black Trillium Ore results in about 4 of both rare and uncommon gems per stack
Prospecting Kyparite/Ghost Iron Ore results in about 1 rare and 6 uncommon gems per stack

Phase One: Market Research

The biggest part of knowing what makes money on your server is doing some market research. With something as hugely varying as the shuffle, we have a whole heck of a lot of research to do. I’m including an auctionator Shopping list here for convenience, I highly advise you use it regularly to keep an eye on how you server fares across the board for these materials. I personally suggest you head on over to The Undermine Journal and take notes on what each of these items have as average prices, and standard deviations.  If you don’t know how to use the undermine journal, you can use my Guide To Using The Undermine Journal. I’m going to include a list here of all the items you will need to look up through whatever means you have, and I will make a note on which ones will require enchanting.

NOTE: To do this right and maximize your profits, it really is imperative that you take the research seriously. Many people these days are screaming about how they can’t make profits doing the shuffle, and they are generally wrong. I have yet to find a server that I can’t make gold doing this. But I also put in the time and effort to research the market before I go throwing tens of thousands of gold into it. You can take shortcuts if you like, but I strongly urge you to put in the research time up front.

Ores:

• Kyparite
• Ghost Iron Ore
• White Trillium Ore
• Black Trillium Ore

NOTE: You can expect to end up with relatively even numbers of all the gem colors no matter what ore you prospect.

Gems

• Alexandrite
• Lapis Lazuli
• Pandarian Garnet
• Roguestone
• Sunstone
• Tiger Opal
• Imperial Amethyst
• River’s Heart
• Primordial Ruby
• Sun’s Radiance
• Vermilion Onyx
• Wild Jade

NOTE: I highly recommend you look into each of the cuts for the above. The greens are generally not as important, but depending on what some of the perfect cuts go for on your server even cutting the greens can make you better margins. The list is daunting I know, but if you use my included auctionator shopping list, you can have a much easier time. I will talk more on cutting further down.

Enchanting – Requires an enchanter alt/main/trustworthy and very nice friend

• Ethereal Shard
• Mysterious Essence
• Spirit Dust
• All scrolls you can make with those materials

NOTE: Selling the materials by themselves can generally be much easier than unloading the scrolls. Factor in how quickly the specific scrolls can sell on your server. I personally only sell the materials, but scrolls are not profitable for me specifically.

Rare Rings

These you can research once you make them, its really not worth the effort to look them up in advance since they are random procs and it is indeterminable which ones you will create.

Phase Two: Determining Your Plan of Action

Now that you have completed the market research phase, you are now prepared to choose your course of action. This is a huge factor in making the most gold for your investment, and also requires some analytic capabilities. To make it a bit easier, I have created a list of things to consider and in what order.

Do you have an enchanter?

Yes:

1. Value your enchanting materials. Use your research to determine if it is worth your time to trade up your materials. Example: If shards are more than 5 times as expensive as essence  use your enchanting to turn all your essence into shards. If your dust is worth more than 1/5 the cost of essence, then sell the dust instead of trading up to essence.
2. Determine the cost/value of scrolls. Take the research you did and determine if you are better off creating scrolls instead of selling raw materials.
3. Tip: Separate calculations for The Ornate Band and The Shadowfire Necklace from here.
4. Disenchant or Vendor? Considering the Proc rates listed before, determine if your average disenchant value of the jewelry is greater than their vendor price. (Vendor value for the rings and necklaces is: 8.97.82)
5. Jewelry or Gems? Armed with your average jewelry value, again considering proc rates, determine if the perfect cuts outweigh the Disenchant value. Don’t forget to include values for all three gem types when figuring.
6. Raw or Cut Rare Gems? Do you have the ability to turn more profit from cutting the rare quality gems? Don’t forget the sale rates. It is generally much easier to sell uncut gems in bulk.
   
7. Select your Ore. Armed with the absolute value of every gem you can receive;  calculate your profit margins considering ore prices. It is good to note that if you determine more than one ore is profitable, set safe margins that allow you to buy the different ores and how much you can afford to pay for each one while still maintaining healthy profits.

No:

1. Vendor or Sell Jewelry. The green jewelry is sometimes desirable by people leveling, but it can give you a massive back stock. If you are not worried about liquidity, i would suggest dipping into the market and seeing how this works out for you.
2. Jewelry or Gems? Armed with your average jewelry value, again considering proc rates, determine if the perfect cuts outweigh the Disenchant value. Don’t forget to include values for all three gem types when figuring.
3. Raw or Cut Rare Gems? Do you have the ability to turn more profit from cutting the rare quality gems? Don’t forget the sale rates. It is generally much easier to sell uncut gems in bulk.
   
4. Select your Ore. Armed with the absolute value of every gem you can receive;  calculate your profit margins considering ore prices. It is good to note that if you determine more than one ore is profitable, set safe margins that allow you to buy the different ores and how much you can afford to pay for each one while still maintaining healthy profits.

Phase 3: Execution

Now that we have calculated every possible scenario for the shuffle, let’s begin! As this part of the guide is dependent specifically on you and you alone, there is not much more I can do to help you. However, I am always talking about how time is money and saving time is saving money, so here is a link to my Guide on Making Profession Macros. You can read it and make your own, but if you just want to use my macros, you can find them listed at the bottom of the page. Remember, practice makes perfect, its relatively impossible to get everything right from the start. If you find that something is not quite working for you, tweak it, change calculations. Adaptation is the key to survival.

Extras

There are three additional variations to the shuffle which I did not discuss in full detail above. The reason these methods were not included is very simple, they are almost never worth the time, the liquidity, or the tiny profit margins. But, as I want this to be the end all be all guide for the shuffle, I will include them purely for completionist sake.

Method 1: Selling the uncut uncommons

Simple enough, some of the gems are worth hefty returns on the auction house in their raw form. The reason I don’t mention this variation is for two reasons. Usually the uncommon gems that are uncut have incredibly unstable markets due to the sheer volume in which they are obtained. These wild market variations can cause these gems to go from 35g to 3g each in a matter of hours. Its not worth the time averaging these together, and even if you did, I don’t expect the calculations would be even remotely close to accurate on a regular basis. The second reason is, when these gems are expensive, it usually correlates with the perfect cuts also being very expensive, usually by 3 to 4 times as much. Since that is the case, its generally in your best interest to cut the ones you have either way.

Method 2: Buying uncut uncommons and crafting for profit.

This method would most likely need to be put under the enchanting required section. The idea here is, if you can buy all three of the gems at lowest prices then you could possibly turn a profit from making the specific jewelry. As stated in method one, with the stability of the market, this is almost never a feasible option, but it is more likely than method 1 as well since you are a buyer not a seller.  In my experience, the markets always work against this method. Usually one of the three gems required for making the jewelry is absurdly higher priced than my profit margins will allow. This method could work if you are willing to watch the markets and hold back stock until a time as you can finish the jewelry. I personally do not recommend this as it takes time and space that I feel is more suitable to other methods.

Method 3: Using Serpent’s Eyes to craft ilvl 450 Jewelry

This is a method that I discourage, but that I have utilized on more than one occasion  The idea is that if you can get serpent’s Eyes at decent prices, or you can’t sell your own, you can make the lvl450 jewelry and sell it on the AH, or disenchant it. This method basically doesn’t work because serpent’s eyes are always more profitable to be sold raw than to be used. However, depending on the server, this may be your best bet. I’m not including a walk through guide here, but if you want one, email me or tweet me and I’ll see what I can do.

Auctionator Shopping List

In order to use this list, just open auctionator > click buy > manage shopping lists > Import > then paste in the code below.

*** New JC Shuffle
Alexandrite
Black Trillium Ore
Ethereal Shard
Ghost Iron Ore
Imperial Amethyst
Kyparite
Lapis Lazuli
Mysterious Essence
Pandarian Garnet
Primordial Ruby
River’s Heart
Roguestone
Serpent’s Eye
Spirit Dust
Sun’s Radiance
Sunstone
Tiger Opal
Vermilion Onyx
White Trillium Ore
Wild Jade

I hope you have found this guide useful. I spent a lot of time trying to make it as complete as possible. If you enjoy it, please remember to share it. Leave me a comment below and let me know what you think. Tell me if I made you think of a new variation, or how the shuffle works for you. Thanks!