(Editing some numbers to be higher, felt they were to low after review)
Efficiently? No, no, no.
Painfully and expensively? Absolutely!
So here’s the breakdown for Jewelcrafters and obtaining Expulsom. Right now, the best item to craft to break down for a chance at expulsom (such a wonderfully designed system) is probably going to be the Golden Beryl Ring. Just using this as a setting point, as a Jewelcrafter you’ll be using any small gem you have to make a ring because they’re all about the same price to make.
1x Golden Beryl
10x Monelite Ore
Respective prices on the AH (US Thrall)… approximates.
Golden Beryl = 2.5g
Monelite Ore = 10g
Golden Beryl Ring = 142.5g~
So, running for about an hour with monelite-hardened Stirrups and a Coarse Leather Barding, I can obtain about 170ish monelite ore. The biggest factor that prevents me from getting more is that I’m a horde player on a horde populated server, competition is a bit stiff. Also, I farm the area around Akunda’s Temple in Vuldune, a very hilly area but about the best spot to farm monelite that I’ve found. If there are other areas, I’d imagine that competition would be just about the same.
SO — about a 220ish monelite in hour, what now? Now… break that stuff down, nerd! You ain’t earned those Golden Beryls yet! Done with that? Alright… now you’ve got about 10 Golden Beryls and a handful of other gems that we will also use to craft cheap rings.
IN TOTAL: About 45 gems basic gems.
According to a resource I found, you’ll also typically find about 6 rare gems (which are all about 25g-45g with the exception of the Owlseye which goes for about 550g. You might ALSO - MAYBE - get a Kraken’s Eye; which I’m not complaining, the rarity makes it a pretty decent price, but still when you can only use 1 of these gems they don’t “flow” on the market like they should. In general, you might have netted about 1,400g in extra rare/epic gems.
Now that you have your gems, let’s go mining for another hour! YAY! Alright, now you got your 220~ish monelite ore. SIDE NOTE, I bet you casuals with a few hours per day to play LOVE THIS DON’T YOU!!!
220 ore, we get to craft a whopping 22 rings! (Air horns sound off, angels fall from the sky, volcanoes explode) Alright, also in the future you’ll be able to skip prospecting 1 time and just go straight to farming for an hour to make another 22 rings. Let’s say you did that anyhow and you made about 44 rings.
Breakdown time! Your results may vary so I tried to find a consensus on the breakdown ratio of gear to expulsom and it FEELS like it’s around 4 pieces of gear for 1 expulsom IF – IF — you’re lucky. This stuff is so random that many excel charts I’ve looked you could easily break down 20 pieces of gear and get nothing. Rare, but the return ratios on some of the test breakdowns are so off from “what they should be” that the accusation sounds plausible.
In the end, you breakdown your 44 rings aaaaand…
8-11 expulsom.
3 hours of work…
…
EIGHT TO ELEVEN expulsom.
EDIT:::
Point in case, I just broke down 44 rings…
Six Expulsom.
A++ to the guys in charge of profession balancing at Blizzard.