With Jewelcrafting profession, one can create items like rings, necklaces, crowns, and other items which were previously only available as quest rewards or loot drops. One can also carve gems to prepare them for insertion into socketed items. The addition of these jewels creates bonus enhancements to armor, based on the type of jewel used. While Jewelcrafters are the main source of usable jewels in these items, there are some dangerous monsters that can also drop gems that can be used in this way.

Socketed items can have these gems installed by any character, but they cannot be altered aside from putting the gems into them. Sockets cannot be added to, changed, or removed from any item. Once a jewel has been obtained from a Jewelcrafter, it can be socketed by shift-right-clicking the desired item and dropping the jewel into the socket in the window that pops up. After placing the jewel, simply click the "Socket Gems" button to create the new item. While you can replace an old jewel with a new one, this destroys the old jewel completely.

Jewelcrafters should pair their primary profession of Jewelcrafting with Mining to enable them to acquire raw materials more easily. With these materials, such as metal ores, a Jewelcrafter can create rings and other jewelry for sale. At low levels, these are simply Copper Rings, but other items are quickly available. A Jeweler's Kit is also required initially, but this can be acquired for 8 silver. Making items available to your Jewelcrafting characters will improve their skills by a point per item as well as earning experience. Items that are displayed in green test in the Jewelcrafting menu are worth less experience and you may have to make several of them to acquire a skill point. Yellow or orange text items are more difficult and worth correspondingly more in skill development. At a certain level, particular items will stop bringing experience when made, and more difficult items will have to be created to produce the same effect. A common strategy is to find an item which uses a small amount of readily available materials and grind up skills by making many of it. This way, you can stockpile component items such as Delicate Copper Wire and Bronze Settings for later use while improving your skill. Until the higher levels, Jewelcrafting is mostly about creating jewelry and small trinkets.

At skill level 20, you can learn Prospecting from the Jewelcrafting trainer. In addition to your Mining skill, this will allow you to extract gems from the ore you have mined. This is advantageous, since other Miners don't have this ability. It also increases the chance of obtaining gems for jewelry. Prospecting can be taken without having the Mining skill, but your Jewelcrafting skill must be the same as the minimum skill level for mining particular piece of ore in order to prospect it. You will need 5 of any type of ore in order to use Prospecting on it. After reaching skill level 300 in Jewelcrafting, you will be able to cut special gems found in the Outland. This requires the use of a Simple Grinder, again purchased from the Jewelcrafting supplies vendor. The Grinder costs 2 gold and fifty silver. Cutting these gems permits them to be used in socketed armor. Anyone can socket already cut gems, so if you don't need them for your personal gear, you can sell them to other players.

For many Jewelcrafters, the goal is to grind their skill up to 300 as quickly as possible. This is best done by creating many of the items made from easy, readily available materials. What path you use to reach this goal will depend on what materials you have on hand, and how much space you have in your inventory. In many cases, making more of an item with yellow text will provide free skill points since it is a required component for other items. Doing these early in the game allows you to use them later as well as to get the skill points for making them.