Guild Wars 2

Cymatoperior.5942:

The casino will always make more money than the gambler. Thats why even anet is selling chests. If you are honest to yourself and did a real calculation, you will find that you arent making as much money as the smart farmers.

It’s only gambling if you haven’t got a large enough sample size and haven’t done the math.

Cymatoperior.5942:

And I have half a girlfriend

Isn’t that illegal in all 50 states?

majorkong.9073:

Here’s how my Mystic Forging worked out tonight. I placed buy orders for my materials this morning which took me about 5 minutes.

I logged on tonight, and I’d purchased about 32g worth of materials through the buy orders.

I combined all of the materials in the forge, and it took me about 30 minutes to do so. It was roughly 220 combines. From those combines, I received 111 items that I either posted on the TP or sold to a vendor. (The other combines resulted in items that I recombined.)

I posted my items on the TP for a total of 53g49s03c. It’s a liquid market, and the vast majority of these items will be sold within 24 hours.

After TP fees, I project to gross 45g26s68c, and I also vendored 17s worth of items as well. So my profit projects to be about 13g50s or so. Even if I have to relist a few of my items, that should cost me no more than about 10-20s in extra fees.

So let’s call it 13g in profit for five minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the evening. I projected 12.13g profit in my earlier post, so Zommoros smiled just a little bit on me today.

About 80% of the time that I do this, it works out roughly like this. The other 20% of the time there’s a lot of competition for materials and my buy orders don’t get filled too well so I either skip that day or work one of the less liquid markets with less competition.

It’s a bad day to buy wine… but a fine day to drink it.

Man, majorkong, lemme say that I have NO IDEA how you figure this sort of thing out, but I tip my hat to you for doing so. I’d be thrilled if I could figure out a reliable way to get a TENTH of the returns that you do.

For me, the MF seems, well, MAGIC, so I’ve not played with it much (on the grounds that I don’t have enough resources to level my main’s crafting skills as it is, not even considering “loosing” stuff in the Forge in exchange for nonprofitable stuff), but obviously you have a different perspective than us “mere mortals”. You’ve definitely figured out a meta-game here that seems well worth playing. Kudos!

@ImagoX

I’m a professional gambler, so my brain is trained to find this kind of thing.

The Mystic Forge is actually 100% unmysterious once you figure out the rules. For any four inputs, I can basically tell you all of the items you could possibly get back and the probability of each one (with the exception of precursors since it seems possible they “broke” the rules just for that particular item type and hand-tuned the probability). From there, it’s arithmetic to calculate expected profits and returns on investment.

I agree Majorkong, the Mystic Forge is all about the math and nothing more. You can make large sums of cash IF you are patient, play smart, and know how to do math. Simple as that I’ve made 4 gold today so far just fiddling around here and there with it.

I think I generally work in a market area that is less liquid than the one majorkong works in. I’m more tuned to factor my time into the equation (less time spent dragging 4 items in), and thus hunt for higher raw margins, despite less reliable movement and/or lower %margins.

Still, the concept is the same. Once you diligently map out inputs and possible outputs, it’s then just a matter of tracking value of each. gw2spidy does this latter job for me, and I attribute much of my profit to whomever runs that site.

I would say that an hour spent can yield anywhere from 2g (virtually nothing I posted sold) to 60 gold (virtually everything). But the key is to have faith that eventually, you will be able to move your product, and thus I cannot produce a reliable hourly figure. Sometimes it takes a busy weekend to move everything. Sometimes I have to relist things due to getting undercut, and the market suffering for that one item, thus forcing me to cut a loss.

The other thing I can say is not to underestimate the power of investments. I can give you a past example, as I would obviously not divulge my current strategies.

At one point in time, Ancient Bones could be bought for 14c. So I bought 10,000 of them. Why? Randomly? Tossed a dart? Take a look at risk vs. reward. The vendor cost of Ancient bones was 13c.

In other words, my entire risk for this particular move, was 1c per unit of item I bought, which translates to… yes. 1g. All I was putting on the line was a single gold, taking a gamble that one day, they would find a use for this crafting material which was, after all, a T6 material and relatively rare (only that people farmed the cursed shore relentlessly, raising supply).

So, to sum up, bet cost: 1g. Betting against: ANY of the (at the time) current trends being broken. Ceasing of CS farming. More uses for bones. Banning of bots, choking supply. Fast forward to today.

My advice to many of you is just this: keep your eyes open. Ask yourself what the total risk you are assuming is. Ask yourself what conditions could cause you to win your bet, and please, outside of the box of “Oh it’s halloween so suddenly, pumpkins!”. The best profit margins and lowest risk run counter to the current market trends.

If you can live with the risk, why not take it? If you think the example I gave above is a one time event, don’t be silly

LFk.1408:

At one point in time, Ancient Bones could be bought for 14c. So I bought 10,000 of them. Why? Randomly? Tossed a dart? Take a look at risk vs. reward. The vendor cost of Ancient bones was 13c.

Good call on this one. There’s lots of stuff like this. I’ll probably start doing some buy and hold because you made this point.

I remember Minor Sigils of Bloodlust were at one point going for basically vendor value. I know the demand is there because it was one of the first items I flipped to start making money and it’s basically the best thing you can put on a weapon below level 40. I couldn’t figure out why they were selling for vendor value, and now they are like 3s+ each.

Indeed. I did some rune work myself in my earlier days.

Your point about the sigils is valid, even though I haven’t researched much about that level range myself. I think one of the larger problems I have right now is a case of tunnel vision when it comes to end-game items.

One of the largest and most liquid markets is for people below level 60, who are incidentally more inclined to shell out money for things they can just use now, and discard. Level 70s have a more stubborn mindset to push for 80 and just cobble together endgame gear, which occasionally leads to a somewhat exploitable “dead zone” in the mid 70s range of gear. It comes and goes, though, due to how obvious it is.

I have tendencies to chase big-ticket items, which in turn lead to some complications when fads go in and out of style.

To try to counteract that, I’m a lot more buy-and-hold now than I used to be, and also because it’s inherently less work. Interesting that we’re talking about this, because I just dumped 200g worth of a crafting material investment right now. For the life of me I can’t even find out what caused the 350% price spike, so I’m led to believe either someone started another pointless rumor, or the reddit AMA revealed something between the lines. My money is on bubble.

It’s kind of funny. This kind of brash, unreasonable reaction is actually not uncommon in the real Stock exchange, either. It’s particularly fun because Guild Wars is something of a time warp: markets move faster. A day is a great deal of time. Huge, market shaking shifts can be seen in a matter of weeks. This is the game to me, perhaps even more so than the part where you go and kill monsters.

LFk.1408:

Indeed. I did some rune work myself in my earlier days.

Your point about the sigils is valid, even though I haven’t researched much about that level range myself. I think one of the larger problems I have right now is a case of tunnel vision when it comes to end-game items.

One of the largest and most liquid markets is for people below level 60, who are incidentally more inclined to shell out money for things they can just use now, and discard. Level 70s have a more stubborn mindset to push for 80 and just cobble together endgame gear, which occasionally leads to a somewhat exploitable “dead zone” in the mid 70s range of gear. It comes and goes, though, due to how obvious it is.

I have tendencies to chase big-ticket items, which in turn lead to some complications when fads go in and out of style.

To try to counteract that, I’m a lot more buy-and-hold now than I used to be, and also because it’s inherently less work. Interesting that we’re talking about this, because I just dumped 200g worth of a crafting material investment right now. For the life of me I can’t even find out what caused the 350% price spike, so I’m led to believe either someone started another pointless rumor, or the reddit AMA revealed something between the lines. My money is on bubble.

It’s kind of funny. This kind of brash, unreasonable reaction is actually not uncommon in the real Stock exchange, either. It’s particularly fun because Guild Wars is something of a time warp: markets move faster. A day is a great deal of time. Huge, market shaking shifts can be seen in a matter of weeks. This is the game to me, perhaps even more so than the part where you go and kill monsters.

I wonder if you’re in one of the markets that I’m messing with at the moment. Someone just sold about 10,000 units into a new demand wall I setup.

Chocolate bars?

Tip: Do not buy chocolate bars right now ^

BUTTERBLUME.3217:

Tip: Do not buy chocolate bars right now ^

You are right. I would not recommend you buy chocolate bars now if your purpose is investing. I think the prices will remain close to what they are now, until I start unloading my supply.

I unloaded mine, made 22 gold last night. Pretty good for a 24 hour flip o 50 gold, but then again this was my first investment ever in the TP.

Puandro.3245:

I unloaded mine, made 22 gold last night. Pretty good for a 24 hour flip o 50 gold, but then again this was my first investment ever in the TP.

Did you sell 6-7k bars directly to buyers between 78-85c last night?

LFk.1408:

I think I generally work in a market area that is less liquid than the one majorkong works in. I’m more tuned to factor my time into the equation (less time spent dragging 4 items in), and thus hunt for higher raw margins, despite less reliable movement and/or lower %margins.

Still, the concept is the same. Once you diligently map out inputs and possible outputs, it’s then just a matter of tracking value of each. gw2spidy does this latter job for me, and I attribute much of my profit to whomever runs that site.

I would say that an hour spent can yield anywhere from 2g (virtually nothing I posted sold) to 60 gold (virtually everything). But the key is to have faith that eventually, you will be able to move your product, and thus I cannot produce a reliable hourly figure. Sometimes it takes a busy weekend to move everything. Sometimes I have to relist things due to getting undercut, and the market suffering for that one item, thus forcing me to cut a loss.

The other thing I can say is not to underestimate the power of investments. I can give you a past example, as I would obviously not divulge my current strategies.

At one point in time, Ancient Bones could be bought for 14c. So I bought 10,000 of them. Why? Randomly? Tossed a dart? Take a look at risk vs. reward. The vendor cost of Ancient bones was 13c.

In other words, my entire risk for this particular move, was 1c per unit of item I bought, which translates to… yes. 1g. All I was putting on the line was a single gold, taking a gamble that one day, they would find a use for this crafting material which was, after all, a T6 material and relatively rare (only that people farmed the cursed shore relentlessly, raising supply).

So, to sum up, bet cost: 1g. Betting against: ANY of the (at the time) current trends being broken. Ceasing of CS farming. More uses for bones. Banning of bots, choking supply. Fast forward to today.

My advice to many of you is just this: keep your eyes open. Ask yourself what the total risk you are assuming is. Ask yourself what conditions could cause you to win your bet, and please, outside of the box of “Oh it’s halloween so suddenly, pumpkins!”. The best profit margins and lowest risk run counter to the current market trends.

If you can live with the risk, why not take it? If you think the example I gave above is a one time event, don’t be silly

That seems pretty one time to me. Once the market stablizes as the game matures and bugs are fixed as it is currently looking to do so,there would not be any more quick grabs like the ancient bone example you mentioned.
Also when prices of outputs rise, prices of inputs will without a doubt also rise because every of the hundreds of people camping at the trading posts are doing exactly what you are doing. So how you can actually make a profit larger than the same amount of time you spend farming is beyond me.

Logun.5360:

Puandro.3245:

I unloaded mine, made 22 gold last night. Pretty good for a 24 hour flip o 50 gold, but then again this was my first investment ever in the TP.

Did you sell 6-7k bars directly to buyers between 78-85c last night?

More than 7K. I knew someone was trying to mess with the bars (again) to get them higher. When i saw someone buy a lot of choco and set up a few buy orders a bit below the new sell price my reasoning was that they were trying to set a new price range for the choco so that the average price would be higher, then in prob a week unload their new stock + their old stock (about 40K bars have “disappeared” in the past 2 weeks). I could have played a long and kept my choco and let the price rise but i decided to play it safe and take my profit. The price will keep rising until someone unload their stock or right before wintersday.

Personally this was my first attempt at playing with the TP to make money and ive never done it in another game but im pretty good with numbers and with access to Spidy i think i did pretty well for a 1 day investment.

Puandro.3245:

Logun.5360:

Puandro.3245:

I unloaded mine, made 22 gold last night. Pretty good for a 24 hour flip o 50 gold, but then again this was my first investment ever in the TP.

Did you sell 6-7k bars directly to buyers between 78-85c last night?

More than 7K. I knew someone was trying to mess with the bars (again) to get them higher. When i saw someone buy a lot of choco and set up a few buy orders a bit below the new sell price my reasoning was that they were trying to set a new price range for the choco so that the average price would be higher, then in prob a week unload their new stock + their old stock (about 40K bars have “disappeared” in the past 2 weeks). I could have played a long and kept my choco and let the price rise but i decided to play it safe and take my profit. The price will keep rising until someone unload their stock or right before wintersday.

Personally this was my first attempt at playing with the TP to make money and ive never done it in another game but im pretty good with numbers and with access to Spidy i think i did pretty well for a 1 day investment.

Lol, then I was the one who bought your stock and you are correct. The only reason I didn’t post more was because I didn’t know how much you were sitting on and I didn’t want to potentially eat 150k at .85. Most people don’t sell directly into a wall like that. Had you not, we’d probably be looking at 1.5s right now The key to moving a price is keeping the spread traders out of of it.

Logun.5360:

Puandro.3245:

Logun.5360:

Puandro.3245:

I unloaded mine, made 22 gold last night. Pretty good for a 24 hour flip o 50 gold, but then again this was my first investment ever in the TP.

Did you sell 6-7k bars directly to buyers between 78-85c last night?

More than 7K. I knew someone was trying to mess with the bars (again) to get them higher. When i saw someone buy a lot of choco and set up a few buy orders a bit below the new sell price my reasoning was that they were trying to set a new price range for the choco so that the average price would be higher, then in prob a week unload their new stock + their old stock (about 40K bars have “disappeared” in the past 2 weeks). I could have played a long and kept my choco and let the price rise but i decided to play it safe and take my profit. The price will keep rising until someone unload their stock or right before wintersday.

Personally this was my first attempt at playing with the TP to make money and ive never done it in another game but im pretty good with numbers and with access to Spidy i think i did pretty well for a 1 day investment.

Lol, then I was the one who bought your stock and you are correct. The only reason I didn’t post more was because I didn’t know how much you were sitting on and I didn’t want to potentially eat 150k at .85. Most people don’t sell directly into a wall like that. Had you not, we’d probably be looking at 1.5s right now The key to moving a price is keeping the spread traders out of of it.

Like i said im new to this but i guess i was correct to what you were doing, i just wanted to get out and atm im flipping other items as we speak.

It was 10,550 bars btw, sold the last 1K at 77c. The price will rise a bit more for sure until you sell (and other ppl) and it crashes.

http://i.imgur.com/CzRTx.jpg

And logan why would you invest in chocolate if the profits are only about 10 gold per 10000 pieces if you already have like 2000 gold? Shouldnt you be doing something more expensive?

Cymatoperior.5942:

And logan why would you invest in chocolate if the profits are only about 10 gold per 10000 pieces if you already have like 2000 gold? Shouldnt you be doing something more expensive?

Who said profit is only 10g per 10000? I bought most of my stock at 13c back when I told everyone else in this thread to buy chocolate. Also, wasn’t it you who told me about the buying additional character slots? Before that, I thought I was limited to about 600ish bag spaces, then after your post I realized I could get buy additional character slots up to at least 37. That drastically changed my view on chocolate because space wasn’t a limiting factor anymore.

Puandro.3245:

Logun.5360:

Puandro.3245:

Logun.5360:

Puandro.3245:

I unloaded mine, made 22 gold last night. Pretty good for a 24 hour flip o 50 gold, but then again this was my first investment ever in the TP.

Did you sell 6-7k bars directly to buyers between 78-85c last night?

More than 7K. I knew someone was trying to mess with the bars (again) to get them higher. When i saw someone buy a lot of choco and set up a few buy orders a bit below the new sell price my reasoning was that they were trying to set a new price range for the choco so that the average price would be higher, then in prob a week unload their new stock + their old stock (about 40K bars have “disappeared” in the past 2 weeks). I could have played a long and kept my choco and let the price rise but i decided to play it safe and take my profit. The price will keep rising until someone unload their stock or right before wintersday.

Personally this was my first attempt at playing with the TP to make money and ive never done it in another game but im pretty good with numbers and with access to Spidy i think i did pretty well for a 1 day investment.

Lol, then I was the one who bought your stock and you are correct. The only reason I didn’t post more was because I didn’t know how much you were sitting on and I didn’t want to potentially eat 150k at .85. Most people don’t sell directly into a wall like that. Had you not, we’d probably be looking at 1.5s right now The key to moving a price is keeping the spread traders out of of it.

Like i said im new to this but i guess i was correct to what you were doing, i just wanted to get out and atm im flipping other items as we speak.

It was 10,550 bars btw, sold the last 1K at 77c. The price will rise a bit more for sure until you sell (and other ppl) and it crashes.

http://i.imgur.com/CzRTx.jpg

Yup, I’ve got all your chocolate. Next time you see that, you’re pretty safe selling at supply side because I’ll hold the wall. The only reason I didn’t put up more than a 12-15k wall was because someone was selling into it as fast as they could. I got worried there was someone else out their who had as much chocolate as me

Also, I’m not going to tank the market. I’m waiting to see what winter’s day recipes that bring out, more people will be buying the game and playing during the holidays, and then there is gold inflation. If the gem to gold ratio every drops I’m going to buy into gems again before the 14th.

Thats where you are still wrong. With the space you have wont it be better to use them to invest in something of higher value like powerful vials of blood instead of cheap stuff? Just like how rental works in real life, the space you have can be better utilized to store higher priced items instead of cheap ones to yield a better profit. Space still costs gold to purchase afterall and is not free.
This is common knowledge and if you have already made thousands of gold you should already know this by now.
No wait, t6 blood is still too cheap for you. Shouldnt you be investing in lodestones?

Cymatoperior.5942:

Thats where you are still wrong. With the space you have wont it be better to use them to invest in something of higher value like powerful vials of blood instead of cheap stuff? Just like how rental works in real life, the space you have can be better utilized to store higher priced items instead of cheap ones to yield a better profit. Space still costs gold to ouechase afterall and is not free.

True in most cases but you’re forgetting a couple of things. 1) It’s easier to take something from 10c to say 1s than it is to take 1s to 10s. 2) Vials can be easily farmed, chocolate can’t. If I were to increase Vials to 10s tons of people would start farming them and I wouldn’t be able to handle the increased supply.

Logun.5360:

Cymatoperior.5942:

Thats where you are still wrong. With the space you have wont it be better to use them to invest in something of higher value like powerful vials of blood instead of cheap stuff? Just like how rental works in real life, the space you have can be better utilized to store higher priced items instead of cheap ones to yield a better profit. Space still costs gold to ouechase afterall and is not free.

True in most cases but you’re forgetting a couple of things. 1) It’s easier to take something from 10c to say 1s than it is to take 1s to 10s. 2) Vials can be easily farmed, chocolate can’t. If I were to increase Vials to 10s tons of people would start farming them and I wouldn’t be able to handle the increased supply.

So that proves my point. You dont have that much gold as you claim.

You people have way too much gold :P I don’t even have 100.

Cymatoperior.5942:

Logun.5360:

Cymatoperior.5942:

Thats where you are still wrong. With the space you have wont it be better to use them to invest in something of higher value like powerful vials of blood instead of cheap stuff? Just like how rental works in real life, the space you have can be better utilized to store higher priced items instead of cheap ones to yield a better profit. Space still costs gold to ouechase afterall and is not free.

True in most cases but you’re forgetting a couple of things. 1) It’s easier to take something from 10c to say 1s than it is to take 1s to 10s. 2) Vials can be easily farmed, chocolate can’t. If I were to increase Vials to 10s tons of people would start farming them and I wouldn’t be able to handle the increased supply.

So that proves my point. You dont have that much gold as you claim.

How much gold do you think I claimed to have? Additionally, you seem to miss the point that there is potentially a limitless amount of supply for vials because they are easily farmed by everyone.

Logun.5360:

Cymatoperior.5942:

Logun.5360:

Cymatoperior.5942:

Thats where you are still wrong. With the space you have wont it be better to use them to invest in something of higher value like powerful vials of blood instead of cheap stuff? Just like how rental works in real life, the space you have can be better utilized to store higher priced items instead of cheap ones to yield a better profit. Space still costs gold to ouechase afterall and is not free.

True in most cases but you’re forgetting a couple of things. 1) It’s easier to take something from 10c to say 1s than it is to take 1s to 10s. 2) Vials can be easily farmed, chocolate can’t. If I were to increase Vials to 10s tons of people would start farming them and I wouldn’t be able to handle the increased supply.

So that proves my point. You dont have that much gold as you claim.

How much gold do you think I claimed to have?

You claim to make 30 to 40 gold/hour on the average and 25 gold/hour on a bad day.

Dude, I haven’t been making 25-40g every hour since I started playing. Surely I never implied that. I’ve spent tons of time building spreadsheets, often investing money at a loss just figure out returns/breakeven points, and then running numbers before my system started paying off. I didn’t start making the gold at this level until about 3 weeks ago. How much gold do you think I have?

Logun.5360:

Dude, I haven’t been making 25-40g every hour since I started playing. Surely I never implied that. I’ve spent tons of time building spreadsheets, often investing money at a loss just figure out returns/breakeven points, and then running numbers before my system started paying off. I didn’t start making the gold at this level until about 3 weeks ago. How much gold do you think I have?

In an earlier post you said you trade 1000 to 1300 gold daily. With some money as backup id say you got 2000 gold, as I did earlier. You are just market troll, making impossible claims. And your strategies sound childish, as do your attempts at personal insult.

Cymatoperior.5942:

In an earlier post you said you trade 1000 to 1300 gold daily. With some money as backup id say you got 2000 gold, as I did earlier. You are just market troll, making impossible claims. And your strategies sound childish, as do your attempts at personal insult.

1. You are misquoting me. I said, “Everyday I invest 1000-1300g in bids, which I then resell”. Not all of my bids are filled, sometimes as little as 300g comes through but I usually make 25-30% on the total that does come through. I’ve linked images to show the hedge principle that I was talking about. In the image you see my full bags with 1000g sitting in my inventory. At that time I also had bids up on the TP.

2. You are intentionally and actively trying to misrepresent my position, also known as a straw-man argument (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man). I never claimed to have some astronomical amount of money. I’d estimate my current net worth at or slightly above 3000g but with only about 1500g liquid or in active sell orders. Most of which was acquired in the last month.

3. You are rude. Anyone who takes the time to read this thread will see that you are clearly being an A Whole. At first it appears to be good healthy skepticism but that quickly deteriorates. My only guess is that you didn’t buy chocolate when I first suggested it, in which case you missed out on a chance of a 1000% ROI or at minimum a 100% ROI. If I was the person you attempt to portray me as, then I would have pumped and dumped after I was perfectly positioned in the chocolate market. Perhaps you should go troll the 2g per hour farming forum, at least there you’d have something of value to offer. I will not be responding to you again, unless you have something to add other than insults and skepticism.

P.S. But to your credit, you did alert me to the vast amount of character slots that can be purchased, which fixed my space problem, which enabled me to heavily invest in the chocolate market. I’d tell you how much it’s worth at 1/2 the current market rate but you’d probably crap your pants.

You keep mentioning hedge funds hoping the general public dont know what that is about and dont doubt your 3000 gold. That is basically just aggressive investment in everything, using every principle and technique. It does not refer to a specific technique used.
So what are you doing with cheap chocolate if you got 3000 gold, more than my estimated 2000 gold?
Why I keep saying it is cheap? Total supply of chocolate is at about 12000 pieces and before your posting it was valued at 13 copper. To buy up the entire supply of chocolate in the trading post will cost you merely 16 gold. And 16 gold pales greatly to your massive amount of 3000 gold.

Sooo know nothing of markets or statistics… But I’m trying to make some extra gold on the side in this game, and I’m interested in learning how to make a profit on the Black Lion. My question is? Are you guys buying cheap, holding the item and selling when prices raise? and are you buying? or putting offers? and are you selling by matching the lowest sale price?

faztazkitten.7293:

Sooo know nothing of markets or statistics… But I’m trying to make some extra gold on the side in this game, and I’m interested in learning how to make a profit on the Black Lion. My question is? Are you guys buying cheap, holding the item and selling when prices raise? and are you buying? or putting offers? and are you selling by matching the lowest sale price?

Many things work, depends on your money amount and how much of a risk you decide to take.

I believe Majorkong and I are using the same method to make money based on his post. The mystic forge is gambling however what the majority people fail to understand is that the players take the roll of the house in the old saying the house always wins. Part of the reason the house always wins is because odds are skewed in its favor. So as a player all you have to do is find a commodity that the 20% odds skew the price in your favor and forge enough items that those odds become fairly absolute (we are talking about 250-500 forges per run). Unfortunately getting to the point of 250-500 forges costs a fair amount of gold investment.

My recommendation to anyone wanting to gain gold on the TP is crafting. I see all over the forums that crafting is not profitable which is simply not true. All of the armor making professions are capable of making 1-2 gold a day with very little effort.

An example (obviously this is subject to change but currently…):

Level 80 Rare Leather Armor (Noble Explorers) Prices
Total price for entire set is: 2.10g*.85 listing fee = 1.785g or 1g78s50c

Total mats to craft the set is:
90 Claws = 1.125g
70 silk thread = .336g
36 Silk Scraps = .036g
36 Leather Squares = .0288g

Total Mat cost is 1.5258g or 1g52s58c

That is a roughly 25 silver profit I know it seems small but I could sell 8-16 sets a night across all of different items which was 2g-4g and over the weekend if I was strict I could make 15g all with very little invested time maybe 5-10 minutes to do the research in my spreadsheet of current costs and place buy orders then another 15 minutes to craft and re-list. Then once things sold I would repeat. A final piece of advice is be patient if things don’t sell as quickly as you desire.

Disclaimer: This is something I enjoyed doing it was fun for me so my time doing it was enjoyed if this is not what you enjoy or it seems to much like work I recommend finding another path…

So what’s the next big thing? Egg, saffron threads, mints? As for glacial lonestones, they’ve gone up alot but the cores remain cheap for some reason.

Well earlier today i joined another guilds party for FotM and they claimed that they and their alliance were going to push the ecto price even higher by buying kittenloads of them this weekend, so if you can trust that you should buy some ectos.

If you buy ectos at the lowest current buy order rate of 32.01s you would have to resell them at 37.66s just to break even. There are thousands of ectos listed below that. It would take a lot of resources to move that enough to make money on. It would be kind of silly to buy up ectos expecting someone else to move the pile that much.

Mint seems a pretty solid investment. I doubt lodestones (specifically the glacial lonestone) will go up much. Lodestones were used to craft the Halloween weapons but very few people actually did so as the weapons dropped so frequently from chests that they were not worth crafting.

Cymatoperior.5942:

That seems pretty one time to me. Once the market stablizes as the game matures and bugs are fixed as it is currently looking to do so,there would not be any more quick grabs like the ancient bone example you mentioned.
Also when prices of outputs rise, prices of inputs will without a doubt also rise because every of the hundreds of people camping at the trading posts are doing exactly what you are doing. So how you can actually make a profit larger than the same amount of time you spend farming is beyond me.

If you indeed believe what you said, I can see why this method of profit is beyond you.

There is no such thing as a “one time” occurrence in a fluid world. Something like what happened in my example (Ancient Bones) is actually the most likely type of event to happen again – an item with high relative rarity that had low previous utility (and thus high short-term supply due to that), being given a utility and thus driving value upward.

Combine it with the fact that risk was limited, all signs pointed to a sound investment. This is THE most common type of non-imagined (i.e. not rumor based) value spike that can occur in this game.

Your post implies an efficient, rational, stable, and omniscient market. In such a market, yes, investments do not exist. Everything is exchanged for fair value. None of this is the case.
- Stable is the easiest to disprove: ANet will continue to update the game. That alone makes the market a dynamic entity.
- A vast majority of the market is not rational. Most players buy what they need, when they need it. There is little contemplation of the equilibrium price of a product.
- Few, if any, markets can claim to be efficient. In the NYSE, the brightest minds design millions of automated programs crawl the marketplace for exploitable margins. Even that market is not 100% efficient. There are supposed to be no bots for this in GW2 (though it would be naive to believe that). Even with a few bots, what chance do you think the GW2 TP has to become anywhere close to 100% efficient?

These are all attributes of an ideal market, and none of those attributes even come close to holding true for the GW2 TP. A free market produces opportunities – how diligent you are with looking for them determines if you are able to capitalize or not.

Many here in this thread are much more active/experienced/skilled than me in terms of micro-transactions. Having done it before, I can tell you that it is a very real source of massive profit, but with 2 caveats. One is that the actual profit per hour is ever changing. The market value of the mats you need is always variable, as well as your demand. Even the most consistent market areas experience turbulence from time to time, unlike the Arah-2:30 wraith run, which nets you a set amount of gold with a proper party. The consistency of doing farm runs does have it’s advantages. If done well, though, 25G for an hour’s worth of work with no luck or ‘spike’ crafts is nothing special.

The second is the factor that drove me to lessen my activity in this area: It’s a lot of work, and a lot of careful planning. The 11/15 update ruined a lot for me: I love the fractals and I spend the hour or two I have to just play them. It’s tough to gain market control if you’re not actively monitoring it. I currently don’t have the time to do it well. Others do. I’m just defending the concept, that it’s perfectly feasible and vastly profitable.

You shouldn’t feel pressured to do any of this. The workings of an economy fascinate me. It may not be the same for you. Luckily, this game was designed with very little grind, despite what some seem to think. Most of the gear around the top end (statistically) can be obtained within a month of playing moderately.

I made what equates to possibly the worst investment in the game, sinking ~1000g in current value (I made it when T6 mats/ectos were cheaper) into a legendary weapon, aka something with non-existent value, and no gain in power. We all should do what makes us happy, which is not necessarily what makes us fake money. I’m really quite pleased to see other trading enthusiasts here

LFk.1408:

Cymatoperior.5942:

That seems pretty one time to me. Once the market stablizes as the game matures and bugs are fixed as it is currently looking to do so,there would not be any more quick grabs like the ancient bone example you mentioned.
Also when prices of outputs rise, prices of inputs will without a doubt also rise because every of the hundreds of people camping at the trading posts are doing exactly what you are doing. So how you can actually make a profit larger than the same amount of time you spend farming is beyond me.

If you indeed believe what you said, I can see why this method of profit is beyond you.

There is no such thing as a “one time” occurrence in a fluid world. Something like what happened in my example (Ancient Bones) is actually the most likely type of event to happen again – an item with high relative rarity that had low previous utility (and thus high short-term supply due to that), being given a utility and thus driving value upward.

Combine it with the fact that risk was limited, all signs pointed to a sound investment. This is THE most common type of non-imagined (i.e. not rumor based) value spike that can occur in this game.

Your post implies an efficient, rational, stable, and omniscient market. In such a market, yes, investments do not exist. Everything is exchanged for fair value. None of this is the case.
- Stable is the easiest to disprove: ANet will continue to update the game. That alone makes the market a dynamic entity.
- A vast majority of the market is not rational. Most players buy what they need, when they need it. There is little contemplation of the equilibrium price of a product.
- Few, if any, markets can claim to be efficient. In the NYSE, the brightest minds design millions of automated programs crawl the marketplace for exploitable margins. Even that market is not 100% efficient. There are supposed to be no bots for this in GW2 (though it would be naive to believe that). Even with a few bots, what chance do you think the GW2 TP has to become anywhere close to 100% efficient?

These are all attributes of an ideal market, and none of those attributes even come close to holding true for the GW2 TP. A free market produces opportunities – how diligent you are with looking for them determines if you are able to capitalize or not.

Many here in this thread are much more active/experienced/skilled than me in terms of micro-transactions. Having done it before, I can tell you that it is a very real source of massive profit, but with 2 caveats. One is that the actual profit per hour is ever changing. The market value of the mats you need is always variable, as well as your demand. Even the most consistent market areas experience turbulence from time to time, unlike the Arah-2:30 wraith run, which nets you a set amount of gold with a proper party. The consistency of doing farm runs does have it’s advantages. If done well, though, 25G for an hour’s worth of work with no luck or ‘spike’ crafts is nothing special.

The second is the factor that drove me to lessen my activity in this area: It’s a lot of work, and a lot of careful planning. The 11/15 update ruined a lot for me: I love the fractals and I spend the hour or two I have to just play them. It’s tough to gain market control if you’re not actively monitoring it. I currently don’t have the time to do it well. Others do. I’m just defending the concept, that it’s perfectly feasible and vastly profitable.

You shouldn’t feel pressured to do any of this. The workings of an economy fascinate me. It may not be the same for you. Luckily, this game was designed with very little grind, despite what some seem to think. Most of the gear around the top end (statistically) can be obtained within a month of playing moderately.

I made what equates to possibly the worst investment in the game, sinking ~1000g in current value (I made it when T6 mats/ectos were cheaper) into a legendary weapon, aka something with non-existent value, and no gain in power. We all should do what makes us happy, which is not necessarily what makes us fake money. I’m really quite pleased to see other trading enthusiasts here

Excellent Post!

So eggs and saffron thread will be needed for Wintersday stuff?

You do realize that these people were/are willing to give away alot of information just for the sake of sharing?

You did not receive any more than you would have received being a normal human being.

Ive bought my hardened leather sections already 2 days ago. Have you?

Not talking in my native language it is so very hard for me to express how sorry I feel for you having the need to behave in this manner to earn a few gold ingame.

I’ve noticed a trend in other platforms and social media, too, of people claiming they were trolling after they’re called out as being wrong. Logun and others have shown their class, by continuing to be so polite and helpful in the face of rudeness.

BUTTERBLUME.3217:

You do realize that these people were/are willing to give away alot of information just for the sake of sharing?

I like to share about the Mystic Forge because I think the same thought process used to make money using the MF is a thought process that can be used all the time in everyday life to make better decisions for yourself and your family. I’ve supported my family for the past decade using little more than the logic contained in my first MF post to make real money.

It’s more than that, though. It bothers me to see people get so frustrated about the Mystic Forge mechanic. “It’s all luck, it’s all random. One person could get it in two tries and another in 1,000. It’s unfair.” These ways of looking at randomness are extremely unproductive and spill over into real life frustration as so much of our daily lives are ultimately affected by chance. I believe that if you understand probability well enough to learn how to bend the Trading Post and Mystic Forge to your will, that knowledge will actually make your real life concretely better.

Also, this market is so laughably inefficient. I mean, you can just make a significant profit placing buy orders and reselling on many, many items. That’s the ultimate in inefficiency.

I trip over arbitrage opportunities. Every five minutes I find a brand-spanking new one that I’ve never used before.

Here’s a freebie that I found two minutes ago and I’m too tired tonight to exploit. On the trading post, filter for green items and search for “Bloodlust”. You’ll find items, some selling for less than half of their value. You have to figure out how to unlock the value.

majorkong.9073:

Also, this market is so laughably inefficient. I mean, you can just make a significant profit placing buy orders and reselling on many, many items. That’s the ultimate in inefficiency.

I trip over arbitrage opportunities. Every five minutes I find a brand-spanking new one that I’ve never used before.

Here’s a freebie that I found two minutes ago and I’m too tired tonight to exploit. On the trading post, filter for green items and search for “Bloodlust”. You’ll find items, some selling for less than half of their value. You have to figure out how to unlock the value.

The best was Exotic Bloodlust weapons after the karka event.

Puandro.3245:

majorkong.9073:

Also, this market is so laughably inefficient. I mean, you can just make a significant profit placing buy orders and reselling on many, many items. That’s the ultimate in inefficiency.

I trip over arbitrage opportunities. Every five minutes I find a brand-spanking new one that I’ve never used before.

Here’s a freebie that I found two minutes ago and I’m too tired tonight to exploit. On the trading post, filter for green items and search for “Bloodlust”. You’ll find items, some selling for less than half of their value. You have to figure out how to unlock the value.

The best was Exotic Bloodlust weapons after the karka event.

Question, can Shaman Etched Avenger of Rage swords be farmed or are they random world drops or random mystic forge items?

I hear its random drops and maybe mystic forge. I think they drop from the jormag event.

Puandro.3245:

I hear its random drops and maybe mystic forge. I think they drop from the jormag event.

Thanks, I was worried I missed something obvious