Fine Crafting Materials Drop Rate
The trading post is your friend. Sell stuff you don’t need and buy stuff you do need. It also helps not to try to raise two crafts that require (mostly) the same fine materials.
One – Piken Square
Trading post will not help, because to level a profession (and not craft a particular set) you need any of the mats. Got 3 blood vials? Great! No bone chips, but have Venom sacks, does not matter! Stuff that you don’t need for crafting nobody needs at all. And except for cooking every craft needs same fine mats.
Some mats may have less value than others but it is still something. It can minimize your output as far as coin is concerned. Nobody said crafting was going to be free it is something you work at.
With that being said something I have found that helps is magic find. This does in fact impact the amount you get from what you farm. You said in an hour of crafting you can make one inscription and based on my own experience that can be 3/8/15 per combine. In some of my farming spots i can farm 50-100 of a mat in an hour ballpark as it is still random (ish). But try it! You can purchase some food from a chef that can increase this magic find percentage as well as gems/armor that have that stat.
Trading post will not help, because to level a profession (and not craft a particular set) you need any of the mats. Got 3 blood vials? Great! No bone chips, but have Venom sacks, does not matter! Stuff that you don’t need for crafting nobody needs at all. And except for cooking every craft needs same fine mats.
Trading post does help depending on how you gather and craft. Gather everything as you play, it is XP anyway!
If you craft Jewelcrafting and Armorcrafting, sell your Wood, Leather, and food ingredients. Sell your lower level ore once you level past it if you don’t plan to use it later (likely that wont unless you level something else needing ore since there is no profit in low level crafted items on trading post).
If you craft Weapons and Leather, sell gems, food, spare wood, etc.
Use funds to buy fine goods. Sure, fine goods cost more, but you get a lot of nodes just running around doing hearts, map clears, and playing the game so it more than equals out.
There’s an innate problem to having the trading post as global as it is. Due to the sheer volume of players, (which due to the game design/constraints all of which have the same ability to do everything) there is absolutely no ‘profits’ to be made through unique professions or trades.
In the real world, you have to dedicate time and effort towards learning a craft. You can then charge for this expertise because others simply can’t do it, or don’t have the time to do it.
In the game world, everyone has the ability to do everything and anything. You can see the trading post become fixed very quickly.
In short, crafting materials, or gold, is almost 1:1 related in terms of time invested. If youre not making gold, its because you are not investing enough time, or youre farming in areas that are already exceeding demand.
The drop rate is terrible. I’ve been running around exploring, doing DE’s and random farming for the past 3 days and was only able to make 1 component that was needed to make a harpoon via discovery. Basically I’m gated from getting higher crafting levels due to the poor drop rate. I’m trying to level leatherworking and Huntsman and it’s nearly impossible. I’ve tried purchasing the needed components but all that does is make me poor. Most everything I need is now 1-2 silver per item and when you need 3-8 of those items PER discovery, it’s terrible.
I hope ANET looks at this issue.
Hello,
To those who suggested selling un-needed gear at the Trading Post, I salvage all that stuff to get materials to craft with. Ironically.
Thus, I’m left with the basic materials for crafting due to salvaging, but almost none of those fine materials to craft anything with. :/
Jake