Engineering for Gold in Midnight: Parts, Gadgets and Margins

The short answer

Midnight Engineering lives on four parts. Two of them, Song Gear and Soul Sprocket, are smelted from ore. The other two, Evercore and Aetherlume, are cheap at both ranks. The part that makes money is the higher rank Soul Sprocket, which sells for 99 gold99 silver live, about double the lower rank at 44 gold50 silver and well above its ore bill on 2026-10-08. Almost every finished gadget we could price sold for less than its parts, with Weighted Boomshots coming closest. So an engineer earns by selling higher rank parts and by taking gear orders, not by crafting scopes and cogwheels for the market.

The four parts

Our datamine of client build 12.1.0.69933 lists four Midnight engineering parts, each at two quality grades. Here they are with live prices:

The ratios used our snapshot: Evercore at 2 gold23 silver and 4 gold95 silver, Aetherlume at 5 gold50 silver and 8 gold4 silver, Song Gear at 53 gold and 69 gold26 silver, Soul Sprocket at 55 gold15 silver and 111 gold81 silver. Two of these are smelted from ore and are expensive; two are cheap. The higher rank Soul Sprocket stands out: it was worth twice the lower rank.

How the parts are made

Song Gear and Soul Sprocket are the two parts our recipe table shows being crafted from raw materials. Both take ore and one Malleable Wireframe.

The break-even yield is the bill divided by one part's price: how many parts one craft must make to cover its reagents. Both parts lose a little at the lower rank. At the higher rank the Song Gear only just pays, while the Soul Sprocket pays almost twice over. If you have one point of Concentration to spend in Engineering, spend it on a Soul Sprocket.

The bills use lower grade ore. Do not make parts from higher grade ore for the market: on our snapshot the higher grade copper and tin sold for 23 gold99 silver and 26 gold97 silver, which would push a Song Gear bill past 370 gold for a part that sold under 70 gold.

Our recipe lookup searches by reagent, and it did not turn up the recipe that produces Evercore or Aetherlume. Check your own profession window for their source. Both were cheap on our snapshot, so whatever makes them, they rarely decide a margin.

The gadgets: a margin table

These are every Midnight engineering craft our tables could price on both sides, sorted by break-even yield.

The table is blunt. Every gadget we could price sold below its bill on one item per craft. Weighted Boomshots came closest: a well specialized engineer with a good multicraft rate and the higher rank result might clear it. The scopes and boots need four to seven items per craft, and the cogwheels need sixteen or more. The cogwheels are clearly made for crafters, not for sale: their parts alone were worth about 160 gold, and they sold for under 10 gold.

Look at where the bill comes from. In the four scopes and ammo crafts, the Song Gear and Soul Sprocket together were 108 gold15 silver of a 129 gold9 silver bill, 84 percent. Evercore and Aetherlume added only 20 gold96 silver. So the expensive part of every engineering gadget is the ore based parts, and the cheap parts barely matter.

Gear crafts

Our recipe table lists two lines of Midnight engineering gear: the Aetherlume pieces and the Quel'dorei pieces, plus an Evercore line. The Aetherlume pieces each take ten Aetherlume, two to four Evercore, several Malleable Wireframes, motes, armor material from another profession and one Tormented Tantalum. Our tables held no Auction House price for any of them on our snapshot. The Tantalum alone was 228 gold50 silver, so each piece costs a few hundred gold to make. Like most Midnight gear, these are crafting order items, where the customer brings the Tantalum and the armor material.

Notice that the gear pieces borrow from three other professions: Void-Tempered Hide from Skinning, Imbued Bright Linen Bolt from Tailoring and Dazzling Thorium from Mining. An engineer with those gatherers on alts can fill these orders cheaply.

Where engineers get their materials

The two ore parts need Refulgent Copper Ore and Umbral Tin Ore. Live ore prices:

Miners report both ores across the Midnight zones. We have not walked a mining route for this page.

Requirements

Level

80 or higher

Profession

Engineering; Mining helps

Reagents

Refulgent Copper Ore, Umbral Tin Ore, Malleable Wireframe, Evercore, Aetherlume

Group

Solo

Walked route status

Copper and tin loop for an engineer

Not walked yet

No hourly gold figure is published here until this route has been walked end to end with a timer and a full loot log. Until then this page gives you the inputs (live prices and what drops) and leaves the arithmetic to you.

What to do first

1. Make Soul Sprockets with your Concentration and sell the higher rank results. It was the best margin in Midnight Engineering on our snapshot.
2. Make Song Gears only when you can hit the higher rank, and even then expect a thin margin.
3. Buy lower rank parts from the market when you need them for your own gadgets; they traded below their ore bill.
4. Do not craft cogwheels, scopes or boots for the Auction House on our numbers.
5. Take gear crafting orders and let the customer supply the Tormented Tantalum.

Risks and what to watch on the Auction House

Parts prices follow ore prices and engineering demand. When a patch makes ore cheap, Song Gears and Soul Sprockets get cheaper to make the same day. Engineers report that higher rank parts climb when a new season starts and gear crafting picks up; our tables do not yet cover a season start. The gadget market is thin: a single seller can set the price of a scope, so a gadget that looks profitable can stop being profitable after one competitor lists. Check the live price before every batch. Weighted Boomshots are the gadget to watch; if they climb back above their bill, they become worth crafting.

Why gadgets sell below their parts

A gadget selling for less than its parts looks like a mistake in the data, but there is a likely explanation. The scopes, boots and cogwheels are the kind of craft engineers make while they level the profession, for the skill points. Those engineers list the results to recover some gold, and they are happy to sell below cost because the skill was what they wanted. So the gadget market is flooded with items that nobody made for profit. That pattern is player experience from earlier expansions, not something our data measures, but the prices on our snapshot fit it exactly.

For you it means three things. First, do not compete with skill up crafters on the Auction House; you will lose. Second, if you need a gadget for yourself, buy it rather than crafting it, because the market sells it below the price of the parts. Third, the parts market is where an engineer has an edge, because only engineers who can reach the higher rank can supply higher rank Soul Sprockets, and those sold for about double the lower rank.

A simple engineering plan

1. Mine or buy lower grade Refulgent Copper Ore and Umbral Tin Ore when they sit near their 14-day lows. On our snapshot both were about 4 gold to 4 gold50 silver.
2. Spend Concentration on Soul Sprockets first. The higher rank sold for 111 gold81 silver against a bill of 62 gold74 silver, about 49 gold of margin per craft.
3. Sell higher rank Sprockets in small batches. It is a thin market, and a big dump will drop the price for everyone, including you.
4. Use any lower rank Sprockets and Song Gears for your own skill crafts instead of selling them at a loss.
5. Take Aetherlume gear orders when customers bring the Tantalum and the armor material from other professions.

Engineering versus the other ore professions

Engineering shares its ore with Blacksmithing and Jewelcrafting. That matters, because all three compete for the same lower grade copper and tin, and their best crafts react differently to ore prices. On our snapshot a higher rank Soul Sprocket cleared about 49 gold, a higher rank Sterling Alloy about 74 gold, and a higher rank Sin'dorei Lens far more, though the lens uses glass rather than ore. If you have a miner and can only feed one crafter, the alloys and the lens edged out the Sprocket. If you already have an engineer, the Sprocket is still a solid use of Concentration, and it uses tin heavily, which Blacksmithing uses less of in Sterling Alloy.

Malleable Wireframe and Pile of Junk

Two small reagents show up across Engineering. Malleable Wireframe goes into every Song Gear, every Soul Sprocket and several per gear piece. Pile of Junk goes into the cogwheels and the pet and toy crafts, five or ten at a time; it sold for 21 silver live. Our tables held no Auction House price for the Wireframe on our snapshot, so the part bills above may leave out a small cost. Check where you get yours and add it to the bill if you pay for it.

Mistakes engineers make in Midnight

• Crafting cogwheels for profit. Their parts were worth about sixteen times their sale price.
• Using higher grade ore for parts. A Song Gear from higher grade ore would cost five times its sale price.
• Selling lower rank Sprockets at a loss. Keep them for your own crafts.
• Ignoring the ratio. The Sprocket's higher rank was worth twice the lower rank, the Song Gear's only 1.3 times. Concentrate on the Sprocket.

Related reading

• Blacksmithing for Gold in Midnight
• Jewelcrafting for Gold in Midnight
• Concentration in Midnight
• The Best Midnight Profession for Gold
• All Midnight crafting guides

Changelog

• 2026-10-08: First version. Recipes and reagent counts from our datamine of client build 12.1.0.69933; prices from our US commodity tables, read on 2026-10-08 (US evening).
• 2026-10-08: Review pass. Reagent counts rechecked against our datamine of client build 12.1.0.69933; claims we could not confirm in our data are now labelled as player reports.