Prospecting

Prospecting is a jewelcrafting ability used to process raw ore in order to find gems. This ability is available to all jewelcrafters regardless of skill level. Prospecting an ore from an expansion does not require that expansion's jewelcrafting proficiency; for example, Osmenite Ore can be prospected without learning Kul Tiran or Zandalari Jewelcrafting first. Various mass prospecting skills can be learned from trainers, but those do require a certain skill level in the relevant expansion proficiency.

Each prospecting attempt consumes 5 ore of the same type and is guaranteed to yield at least one item. Mass prospecting consumes 20 ore of the same type at once, and multiple mass prospecting attempts can be queued up in the crafting window. Mass prospecting does not appear to reduce the gem yield per ore.

Dark Iron Ore, Blackrock Ore, True Iron Ore, and quest item ores cannot be prospect.

Prospecting, like disenchanting and milling, can be boiled down to a fairly simple set of rules. When ore is prospected the results fall into three probabilities:

• Common gems - Each ore has a set of gems that result from the majority of attempts. Every gem in an ore's common results has the same probability of being found. Sometimes prospecting yields 2 of the gems in this group. Also, from is an exception to the rule of equal probability as its drop rate is higher than the other common gems found in.
• Uncommon gems - Each ore has a set of rare result gems. Like the common gems, each gem in this group shares the same probability of being found in the target ore.
• obtained from . It is used to create, which is in turn used by many jewelcrafting recipes. Before patch 3.0.2, ore would also yield other powders, which had no use other than recouping some of the costs of the ore being destroyed.
• now has a chance to give which you can hand in to Tiffany Cartier in Dalaran. She will exchange 10 for 1.

• All the percentages in this table were derived from data at Wowhead.
• More than one gem can be found on each prospect, so these numbers don't add up to 100%!