Q:
As quick as the Valkyries ride,
As true as Odin’s spear flies,
There is nowhere to hide.
As true as Odin’s spear flies,
There is nowhere to hide.
Any real way to profit from crafting?
Some people claim to have found a ‘niche’ item here & there. But generally, I use it for leveling. Once I’ve capped it at 400, I find it’s often cheaper to sell the mats and buy the finished item I want off the TP.
So in answer to your question, no, it’s not profitable, at least from my experience.
This may be rather obvious but perhaps not so much, gather everything you need to make the stuff. Figure out how much the vender value of the stuff needed to make the stuff is and sell it for more than that total including the 15% TP fee. Note however this doesn’t mean that you will make more than by just selling the gathered stuff instead. So profit is subjective in a sense. If you like crafting and you gather everything you need then in essence everything sold within this guideline provided is profit as one wouldn’t care so much if they might get more selling the gathered stuff instead.
If the profit for selling a crafted item is less than the profit for selling the mats then its not a profit.
Gathering to skill up is fine. Gathering to sell end game is not ok. If you do that, please just sell the mats to those of us who can make money crafting. We don’t like being undercut by your “its all profit to me” items.
The real craft is buying items off the TP through buy orders and then selling them for more to people who have to have the item “now” rather than waiting for it to show up at their asking price.
The real craft is buying items off the TP through buy orders and then selling them for more to people who have to have the item “now” rather than waiting for it to show up at their asking price.
Fine with me as long as you aren’t one of those losers who place a artificially low sell price to encourage people to sell to buys. The margins are too dang small for that on many items IMO.
Fortunately with the prices of high end mats rising I haven’t seen that much since people were more than willing to buy those 30-50 stacks and rip them for ectos.
You can profit from crafting now, but it takes work. Here’s the explanation (in another thread):
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/crafting/How-can-crafting-be-made-profitable/672289
If, in any MMO, there are any loot drops that are better than crafted items, then crafting is effectively stillborn. Sadly, this is a lesson that seems lost on almost all of them.
Crafting is something most MMOs just add as a pacifier to the tiny crafter niche. Their real bread & butter will always be the power gamers who prefer to get everything off defeated boss monsters. To that affect, they will continue to make epic loot better than crafted items, so that their main customer base doesn’t have to resort to having to deal with those icky crafting freaks.
SWG had the best crafting system ever. EvE still makes crafting the foundation of it’s game as well, even if it is a bit simplified. No fantasy MMO, however, has ever really put much effort into crafting professions nor shall they ever. There is no reason to when 99% of the their playerbase is far more interested in having a bigger dragon to fight or bigger gazongas on their elves.
Just how it is.
I’d love to be sarcastic about difference between crafted exotic and “huge boss drop”-exotic, but that’d be rather rude.
To op, sure you can make money. It’s not always fast, nor 100%s of profit per item crafted but about patience and homework (when to buy materials, what to pay, what to craft, when to sell, what price to ask, how much time it takes to sell etc etc.)
Not really game of instant returns.
That being said, got some 800g out from bltc this weekend because items I had in stock became suddenly cheap in comparison to new prices of rare raw materials. And I started with less than 3g inventory a month ago.
OooOOoohh, box of shinies. So many shinies!
Outsource rng → profit.
Outsource rng → profit.
If for any reason my post is too long and anyone reading decides to not read my post at least skip down to the last paragraph and read it. However I would hope that anyone interested in the topic would read my whole post.
If the profit for selling a crafted item is less than the profit for selling the mats then its not a profit.
Gathering to skill up is fine. Gathering to sell end game is not ok. If you do that, please just sell the mats to those of us who can make money crafting. We don’t like being undercut by your “its all profit to me” items.
Fair enough as that is true if selling the mats nets more than the item made with them then you didn’t make as much as you could have. However if the item sold for more than what you would have gotten if you sold the mats to the vender then you made more than you would have if that was the only way to sell the mats. Keep in mind that my post didn’t include statements about end game stuff or any particular crafted item that is of significant value to others that is currently having an undercutting problem going on. So I’ll include thoughts in that regard.
We all know that supply and demand has probably the biggest impact on the price put on an item. In the case of crafting if there is no checks and balances to the supply side of things even items of high demand can plummet in price if the supply exceeds demand continuously. Not that this is the case with all crafted items at all times. But it is right now probably the biggest problem with most all crafted stuff. Leaving only the top quality stuff like rare and up of any value. I’m not even sure if masterwork can be sold for more than the materials needed to make.
But supply and demand isn’t the only factor. Perceived value and costs need to be considered too. And it is the 2nd biggest problem for crafting. These two are linked because if an items perceived value doesn’t justify the price for making a profit over the cost to make then the item can never make a profit. All players need to understand the cost to make items so that the community can establish profitable value ranges for the items. And is probably the biggest problem to overcome. How do you get the whole community to establish the profitable value ranges for items?
To me the solution probably would be to setup a system to enforce minimum values that guarantee profit. Unfortunately this restricts free market to exclude anyone who would sell at a loss knowing full well they are selling at a loss for whatever reason they would do so. For loot drops that is easy as the minimum price would be somewhere above vender value + 15% total TP fees. For crafted items that minimum price would have to vary with the price of the materials to make. Which means a system to enforce the minimum would have to check the prices and calculate the minimum price when attempting to sell the item.
But honestly isn’t needed if players can just agree on setting pricing standards and sticking to them for selling everything crafted and loot drops. During the beta weekends there was such a system for loot drops which was about two times the vender value. I didn’t get into crafting except to see how far I could level up crafting by doing nothing but crafting the final beta weekend. I didn’t pay attention to the value of those items. So we are really between a rock and a hard place here because too many people seem to not care to work out a standard and stick to it.
I personally look at an items and determine in supply exceeds demand. If that is the case I know I won’t be able to make a profit and therefor it is not worth making the item. For the stuff that I made while leveling the craft if the supply exceeds demand and appears will never go up in price to even profit over the vender value then I just vender it. For anything else I set the price to make a profit. The problem is too many crafted items are impacted by one or both of the problems I mentioned making me have to take second best and sell for a profit over vender value. The problem is based on gw2spidy at the time of this posting less than 30% of all crafted items (including components) can be sold for a profit over the cost of materials to make them. Which means the remaining items fit either the sell to vender or sell for 2nd best profit over vender value.
I forgot to add, I only undercut if the current amount of sell listings exceeds the current demand for an item in such an amount that it doesn’t seem likely the item will sell in a reasonable amount of time. For example I have previously posted items for a price I felt they were worth despite there being quite a few listings for less. Some of them sold within a week or so. Others still have yet to sell weeks later. I’ve learned to judge supply and demand better to know when to undercut, when to match lowest seller and when to list higher than lowest seller. So I wouldn’t be undercutting unless there was very good reason to do so. And it wouldn’t be anything against those wanting to make more on the item. It all comes down to if I can’t sell it within a reasonable time after posting then I’ll undercut. Unfortunately bad timing with a period of oversupply would drive the price down and tick off people who are getting undercut. Believe me it has happened to me which is why I think about if it is appropriate to undercut.
I’d love to be sarcastic about difference between crafted exotic and “huge boss drop”-exotic, but that’d be rather rude.
Remember, there is now a new tier of equipment that will start to be introduced in days. There is no craftable equivalent to it (not a guess – the new recipes were already data-mined, so we know what has been added). So, there is going to be a difference between crafted exotics and boss/dungeon-drop ascendants
It may not be immediately aparent, and the process might take some time, but the crafting has been effectively killed off with this last patch.
Actions, not words.
Remember, remember, 15th of November
Remember, remember, 15th of November
(edited by Astralporing.1957)
“The problem is based on gw2spidy at the time of this posting less than 30% of all crafted items (including components) can be sold for a profit over the cost of materials to make them.”
The market is dynamic. Profitability of items changes from day to day (minute to minute, really). Some items or components are never profitable because people use them to rapidly skill up, and then dump them. Those components help the rest of us make bigger profits (since we can buy them below mfg cost).