Guild Wars 2

Sorry for the ambiguous title, 45 characters ftw!

What is for you the best practice in making money at the start, i.e.: with less than 15g to start? No Gems, pls.
Please, don’t tell me “farm, nub!”, i guess there are possibilities even at the start to make money.

I would also like a preference order in these activities i have found to be somewhat profitable:

- flipping crafting materials
- flipping sigils/runes/upgrades
- flipping weapons/armor
- crafting weapons/armor (buy materials, and then sell)
- crafting sigils/runes/upgrades
- salvaging weapons/armor
- “salvaging” dropped containers
- buying weapons/armor to play in Mystic Forge
- others?

Thanks in advance for all of you that will provide meaningful answers without trolling. I don’t ask you to reveal your trading secrets, only telling us, if you’d like, your preferences in trading.

I was bankrupt once (down to 16s – I refused to invest the last bit so I could at leastdo a full repair if needed). I ran a couple dungeons, got 2g. bought 2g worth of selected crafting materials, made stuff out of them, sold it for 4g. bought 4g worth of selected crafting materials, made stuff, sold it for 8g. you get the pattern. It doesn’t keep going forever, as not enough people need that many crafted stuffs. Just pick a craft and compare cost to make something and how much you might get out of it. Some are better than others – I would guess the most popular would be the most profitable, but also the most competition. I suggest making everything that makes you a profit, making more of the ones with the most profit (it’s hard to sell 300 of one thing that gives you 200% profit, but easy to sell 50 of that, and 50 of 5 others each at 100% profit.) spreadsheets help a lot (I made one where I enter the cost of all the mats, it tells me how much it costs to make everything, I compare it to the TP and make the ones that are in the green)

-crafting partial cooking materials
-crafting food
-flipping basic cooking materials

crafting partial components in all disciplines is sometimes productive

If you are a weaponsmith, buy mithril, large bones and elder logs.

Craft them up so you can make the level 80 rare items. I think the one that uses large bones has “Krait” in them.

Only craft greatswords/daggers. They can net you 35s each but profit varies from 5s to 10s.

Vol.5241:

If you are a weaponsmith, buy mithril, large bones and elder logs.

Craft them up so you can make the level 80 rare items. I think the one that uses large bones has “Krait” in them.

Only craft greatswords/daggers. They can net you 35s each but profit varies from 5s to 10s.

This is good btw. Sell the buggers. I tried to be clever last night and forge Carrion Krait Rippers to break down for ecto and the yield over 20+ Carrion Krait Rippers was less than 1:1 for ecto with a cost that exceeded the value of the resultant ecto.

Lesson learned :P

Not sure why I’m sharing my little secret here, but i’ve had fairly good luck flipping exotic weapons. I started with 2-4g range, and worked my way up to a destroyer weapon (50g sell, 38g buy), and even 1 or 2 “cheaper” precursors.

Along the way I did learn 1 hard lesson, I went all in on a fancy skin weapon (stygian blade) I thought would be a huge profit; until it SAT on the trading company for at least a week, getting undercut more than twice. At that time, costing me almost 4g each time to relist it killed me. So, no matter what you are “investing” in, diversify your portfolio rather that putting all eggs in one basket.

PS- I find the 15% (10% to the house, plus 5% listing fee) to be BRUTAL, as many margins are now prohibitively slim.

Also, I only tend to buy things I can actually use… just in case I really get stuck with something.

You can get started even if your wealth is in the silver range. There is a veritable gold mine in low level crafted materials (other than jewelry)… not the crafting itself, but financing the crafting (by posting buy orders just above the highest buy order) and facilitating the consumers (by selling them just below the lowest sell order). There are products that are people are “selling now” for as little as a quarter of what people are “buying now” for. There is a reason this works.

Most people want to max out their crafting in as little time as possible. That means that all the leveling crafters are constantly driving down the “sell it now” price. I tried, for a time, leveling my crafting at a profit, by selling my products at the “smart” price. But it wasn’t that smart, because I was waiting around to get my money back to invest in more materials to grind into more skill points… and I got tired of waiting. It would have taken forever doing it that way. So instead, even I dump my crafted stuff at “sell it now” prices, when I’m quick-leveling a craft skill.

Same with upgrading your gear. Who wants to wait around for a buy order to fill, when they want to play with it now, not five levels later (at which point it’s already obsolete)? Even I, when I buy something for a leveling character, “buy it now”. This exerts a constant upward pressure on “buy it now” prices.

Enter the trader. We can do the waiting for them… for a price. The trader pushes back against the dividing trend, and makes money doing so. If the highest buy order is 50s, and the lowest sell order is 3g… that’s a truly massive profit margin. And we’re not even doing anything wrong. Without us, the 50 becomes 49 becomes 48 while the 3 becomes 3.1 becomes 3.2… crafters get less money, levelers have to spend more for what little supply is available. When we “exploit” this market, instead the highest buy goes up to 51, to 52, to 53, while the lowest sell drops to 2.9, 2.8… As we compete with each other for this profit margin, the gap closes. Everybody wins.

It doesn’t close fast. Why? Because it’s time consuming. If you’ve only got 5 gold, this is a GREAT way to quickly grow your money. If you’re dealing in larger numbers, it gets a bit tedious… so this area is perfect for the lower level trader.

Another thing to help (one time) is to make mystic weapons. If you have 50 skill points that you don’t plan on using. Do a little research on what mystic weapons are going for and compare the prices to the components (mystic coins will be the biggest expensive).

Ethics.4519:

Another thing to help (one time) is to make mystic weapons. If you have 50 skill points that you don’t plan on using. Do a little research on what mystic weapons are going for and compare the prices to the components (mystic coins will be the biggest expensive).

50 skill points is a lot to waste on one weapon

If we’re going to sell skill points, I think we should at least look at upgrading components in the forge, including t6 mats and lodestones. At least those have less of an investment and more demand.

T6 upgrades are a gamble if you do them in low volume. Make sure you have enough gold and skill points to do a lot of upgrades to smooth out the RNG if you don’t want to gamble.

Your answers are really all very good, i thank you all for your helpful hints. I choose Mystic’s answer, but all of them were really good.

I encourage readers to continue to put their answers in this post, which i found to be a good source of material for the novice trader.

:) glad I could help. I guess the one thing I can add to it is that the final items crafted are not always the most profitable. sometimes the refined materials or crafting components are.

I know for a fact that in cloth armor, Mystic’s answer is pretty much incorrect. There are a few slim profits to be made, but for the most part, everything sells either at or below cost. What Mystic was really doing there wasn’t so much selling crafted items as selling material—that he happened to have changed into crafted items. This will make a small profit, true, but not so great a profit as selling the mats outright and then playing the spread.

yeah, not all crafts and not all tiers and not all item types are good for this.
I’m not a tailor, so I have no first-hand knowledge of it.

There is respectable profit to be made out of crafting, but it’s not always consistent…

Sometimes, I’m selling crafted items as fast as I can churn them out (literally within seconds of posting them), and at other times, the amount of competition pushes the prices far below the point of profitability… I try to mix up the types of items I’m crafting to make sure I don’t get stuck holding lots of particular type if the price crashes.

BTW, I’m buying my crafting mats so “you could make more profit by selling the materials” does not apply.

Cooking.. Farm the popular mats/food items to craft. Even simple things you can make via karma like peach filling (you can simple with peaches, sugar and like dough) sells pretty well.

Cooking.. Farm the popular mats/food items to craft. Even simple things you can make via karma like peach filling (you can simple with peaches, sugar and like dough) sells pretty well.Basically you can invest karma to make the items to sell.

Cooking.. Farm the popular mats/food items to craft. Even simple things you can make via karma like peach filling (you can simple with peaches, sugar and like dough) sells pretty well.Basically you can invest karma to make the items to sell.Also do the work to make the rare and super rare veggie pizzas. The mats are not hard really.

Astraea, what percentage gains are you getting on the items you’re crafting and selling? I’d given up on crafting, and I’d be curious to know if it’d be worth going back in to search for profitable crafting opportunities.

Tarvok.4206:

Astraea, what percentage gains are you getting on the items you’re crafting and selling? I’d given up on crafting, and I’d be curious to know if it’d be worth going back in to search for profitable crafting opportunities.

As I mentioned, it can be a bit inconsistent and there seems to have been more competition over the past month that has lowered the profitability. I was getting between a 20-30% return (after fees) prior to the increased competition, it’s more like a 15-20% return currently. This is from crafting level 80 exotics, I understand there are higher profit margins possible from crafting lower level items, but I haven’t really done any research into this.

hehe @ 20-30%
Maybe I just found a really good niche, but I consider it “ehh” if it’s below 50% profit (after fees), unless it’s T6 (higher prices = more profit per sale. 200% profit on a 80c sale is going to take you a while to make much gold. It’s almost just not worth the time despite the profit, but I do it anyways :P) if it’s too close to the break-even point (less than 50%), it’s too likely it will drop into negative profit. I will still make them, just not nearly as much.
The last time I did a session of investing, I estimated something like these returns for the different items: 60%, 80%, 200%, 150%, 10%, 100%, 75%, 250%, 100%, -50%. and that was just one tier. It’s enticing to make thousands of the 100+% returns, but I’ve found that they are notoriously hard to sell. I’ve recognized there are several other people in my niche, and the higher the profit, the more likely people will invest in that item and undercut you.
I will note that unless I make less than 10 of each item, I rarely see the returns I estimated. It just takes too long to sell them before someone undercuts, forcing me to relist at a 5% loss for listing fee (and lower prices = less profit). the more items made, the lower the return is.
Also, more items crafted = longer before you see the full return. Last session was on sunday, I spent 70g on materials. I am only now back to the gold amount I had before that. (about half of the items haven’t sold yet).

Another strategy I’ll suggest: watch crafting material prices. maybe record them each day. If one has a significant drop in price, buy a lot of it. chances are it will rebound soon. but more likely (and what I do): look at the items crafted with it. Their price will likely not have dropped yet.
Example: if a material costs 1s and it takes 4 and makes an armor that sells for 5s (normally a small profit). if that material drops in price to 60c, it then costs 2s40c to make that item. If you’re quick to see this, you can keep selling that armor for 5s before others realize it’s cheap to make.

What attracted me to it at first was the almost instant returns. The first time I did this I crafted a level 80 exotic and it sold within 30 seconds for something like a 50 silver profit. I think the first 3 or 4 I crafted sold in a similar amount of time.

I do need to diversify a bit more, as it does seem that there’s more competition in the field I’m in, but I’m happy with the profits I’ve made. They’ve paid for my character’s armor, weapons, runes and sigils, and it means I don’t need to worry about how much money I’m making when I’m out in the game world doing stuff.

oooo, good profit then.
I have said it before:
10% profit with 10-second turnaround time far out-performs 100% profit with 1-day turnaround time.

I don’t always realise my profits that quickly, it can still be pretty quick at times, but at other times I may end up having to wait for the undercutters to sell out before my items finally sell… or worse, relist at a lower price to get my capital back so I can invest elsewhere (I still usually make a slight profit if I relist, but it’s really just to salvage my pride).

Mystic.5934:

hehe @ 20-30%
Maybe I just found a really good niche, but I consider it “ehh” if it’s below 50% profit (after fees), unless it’s T6 (higher prices = more profit per sale. 200% profit on a 80c sale is going to take you a while to make much gold. It’s almost just not worth the time despite the profit, but I do it anyways :P) if it’s too close to the break-even point (less than 50%), it’s too likely it will drop into negative profit. I will still make them, just not nearly as much.
The last time I did a session of investing, I estimated something like these returns for the different items: 60%, 80%, 200%, 150%, 10%, 100%, 75%, 250%, 100%, -50%. and that was just one tier. It’s enticing to make thousands of the 100+% returns, but I’ve found that they are notoriously hard to sell. I’ve recognized there are several other people in my niche, and the higher the profit, the more likely people will invest in that item and undercut you.
I will note that unless I make less than 10 of each item, I rarely see the returns I estimated. It just takes too long to sell them before someone undercuts, forcing me to relist at a 5% loss for listing fee (and lower prices = less profit). the more items made, the lower the return is.
Also, more items crafted = longer before you see the full return. Last session was on sunday, I spent 70g on materials. I am only now back to the gold amount I had before that. (about half of the items haven’t sold yet).

Another strategy I’ll suggest: watch crafting material prices. maybe record them each day. If one has a significant drop in price, buy a lot of it. chances are it will rebound soon. but more likely (and what I do): look at the items crafted with it. Their price will likely not have dropped yet.
Example: if a material costs 1s and it takes 4 and makes an armor that sells for 5s (normally a small profit). if that material drops in price to 60c, it then costs 2s40c to make that item. If you’re quick to see this, you can keep selling that armor for 5s before others realize it’s cheap to make.

Better thing to do is add them on a watchlist on spidy

I started out with 7g and between fotm and tp, i made 350 over the past 2.5 week. the secret to tp is look for items with fast turn over rate. I would usually place buy order for fast selling items, and has a large quality available with a 3-15 copper profit margin after tax.
I would buy and sell tens of thousands a day.

Fabsm.5897:

Sorry for the ambiguous title, 45 characters ftw!

What is for you the best practice in making money at the start, i.e.: with less than 15g to start? No Gems, pls.
Please, don’t tell me “farm, nub!”, i guess there are possibilities even at the start to make money.

I would also like a preference order in these activities i have found to be somewhat profitable:

- flipping crafting materials
- flipping sigils/runes/upgrades
- flipping weapons/armor
- crafting weapons/armor (buy materials, and then sell)
- crafting sigils/runes/upgrades
- salvaging weapons/armor
- “salvaging” dropped containers
- buying weapons/armor to play in Mystic Forge
- others?

Thanks in advance for all of you that will provide meaningful answers without trolling. I don’t ask you to reveal your trading secrets, only telling us, if you’d like, your preferences in trading.

Yeah flipping small things for profit isn’t gonna work. The profit you would make is eaten up by fees (totaling 15% when all is said and done.) Like the other poster suggested do some dungeons or something, make some quick gold (tokens are nice too) and then craft something you can sell for a decent profit. Eventually you can do this with higher end items. I took things I had in my bank and 45g to buy what I didn’t have, mainly lodestones and made 100g profit. So 145g pick up from the TP.

If you have at least one level 80 character I would suggest farming ore, and while doing this you will probably find the orbs you need and craft some level 80 exotic jewelry. Can easily turn 1g into about 3g-4g.

Tup.1803:

Fabsm.5897:

Sorry for the ambiguous title, 45 characters ftw!

What is for you the best practice in making money at the start, i.e.: with less than 15g to start? No Gems, pls.
Please, don’t tell me “farm, nub!”, i guess there are possibilities even at the start to make money.

I would also like a preference order in these activities i have found to be somewhat profitable:

- flipping crafting materials
- flipping sigils/runes/upgrades
- flipping weapons/armor
- crafting weapons/armor (buy materials, and then sell)
- crafting sigils/runes/upgrades
- salvaging weapons/armor
- “salvaging” dropped containers
- buying weapons/armor to play in Mystic Forge
- others?

Thanks in advance for all of you that will provide meaningful answers without trolling. I don’t ask you to reveal your trading secrets, only telling us, if you’d like, your preferences in trading.

Yeah flipping small things for profit isn’t gonna work. The profit you would make is eaten up by fees (totaling 15% when all is said and done.) Like the other poster suggested do some dungeons or something, make some quick gold (tokens are nice too) and then craft something you can sell for a decent profit. Eventually you can do this with higher end items. I took things I had in my bank and 45g to buy what I didn’t have, mainly lodestones and made 100g profit. So 145g pick up from the TP.

If you have at least one level 80 character I would suggest farming ore, and while doing this you will probably find the orbs you need and craft some level 80 exotic jewelry. Can easily turn 1g into about 3g-4g.

I disagree, because high profit stuff are harder to sell and would most likely get undercut, you will most likely waste more fold relisting it. I buy and sell tens of thousands of raw mats for 4-15copper margin after 15% everyday. for every 1000-2000 item I sold, I make a gold profit.