The oldest jewels in World of Warcraft are actually the best. Is it worth farming old dungeons from “The Burning Crusade”?
Update 21.10., 03:00 AM: In the meantime, Blizzard has fixed the bug and significantly weakened the jewels from “The Burning Crusade”.
Original report: Patch 9.0 has been in World of Warcraft for almost a week and there are still a number of quirky bugs. The latest one makes the old gemstones from the very first expansion of the game currently optimal. It is indeed worthwhile to go into dungeons for good gear that many players have not visited in 10 years or more.
What is it about? In the “The Burning Crusade” expansion, there were regularly jewels for socket slots as rewards in the heroic dungeons. They often dropped from bosses and were a solid source of good gems. Now, over 13 years after the introduction of these gems, they are suddenly better than the newest jewels in the game.
While current jewels from BfA only provide a bonus of +7 to a secondary attribute (like haste, critical strike rating, etc.), the old jewels are more versatile. They grant +4 to a secondary attribute, but also +5 to a primary attribute (Intellect, Agility, Strength). Thus, they are currently the best jewels in the game.
What is the reason for that? The reason is likely the level squish and widespread adjustment of all items in the game. Apparently, these jewels, which drop at the end of many dungeons, were simply forgotten. As a result, they now have values that make their 13-year-younger gemstone counterparts envious.
Should one farm old jewels now? No. This bug will probably be fixed – like many before – in the next few days. The gemstones from The Burning Crusade will surely be adjusted and their values reduced to a level that makes them significantly worse than their BfA counterparts. Therefore, exchanging sockets now would lead to better values for just a few days.
There are certainly still a number of other minor bugs – but also a large list of undocumented, secret changes in Patch 9.0.
