Guild Wars 2

As a JC I am finding it isnt worth making items to sell on the TP. I can sell the materials and make more money.
Do all professions feel the same? Can a JC give me some tips, items to craft with profit.
thanks all

Crafting is not a profession in guild wars 2. Profession is the class you play. haha.

But seriously, unless you find a niche market, crafting in guild wars 2 is not for making money. It is to provide another method for people to level or make gear for themselves. Nothing more and nothing less. Just think how easy it was for you to level it, now imagine everybody being able to do that.

so is it wise to just sell most of my materials then? unless i personally need them for myself?

lol my bad, I think WoW is still engraved in my brain

Omniderad.2713:

so is it wise to just sell most of my materials then? unless i personally need them for myself?

Probably. Actually, if you are 80 is better just to gather orr and selling them.

Omniderad.2713:

As a JC I am finding it isnt worth making items to sell on the TP. I can sell the materials and make more money.
Do all professions feel the same? Can a JC give me some tips, items to craft with profit.
thanks all

I generally find my best profit comes from working with crafted exotics, but the velocity of those items is rapidly diminishing with Ascended gear getting more available, and once people have the laurals for ascended amulets, I expect that market to cool a bit more.

You may find some niches in bulk orb promotion (t5 dust + t5 gem → t6 orb) but the only way I’ve found that to have a good return is if you have a glut of t5 dust to clear.

The market it tight….. but if you focus on selling at the ‘lowest offer’ point, and aim to move 3-5 exotics at a time (different ones!) then you can recoup your investment + profit within 12-24 hours of the items sitting on the TP.

Generally, I re-purchase ecto when I pick up my profit to keep my supply of ecto moving upward, but I don’t bother re-purchasing base mats, since I prefer to work from supply that I’ve gathered.

You can still profit with jewel crafting, but I ain’t gunna lie on this one, you have to get savy with the TP to do it. GL!

I’ll go one step more granular…. when crafting for profit in JC w/ exotics, plan to move 1 neclace in one stat set, 1 neclace in a 2nd stat set, and do the same with earrings and rings….

If you have 15 Ruby orbs, plan to make 1 earring, 1 ring, and 1 necklace, not to make 3 rings…

Omniderad.2713:

As a JC I am finding it isnt worth making items to sell on the TP. I can sell the materials and make more money.
Do all professions feel the same?

They are all bad, but the introduction of ascended gear was the final nail in the coffin for JC. Not only do the ascended items have better stats than anything a JC can craft, but they also lack a gem slot, so JCs can’t even sell gems to players using ascended items (or craft items with infusion slots).

I have yet to see any positive effects of the introduction of the pink junk.

It’s just another example of how disorganised GW2’s evolution has been since release. It’s as if the people responsible for crafting and the ones responsible for dungeons don’t communicate at all. Another good example is the way you can get potions of slaying from dungeon vendors and sell them at the TP for less than the cost of materials (which basically screws artificers).

As to advice, use GW2Spidy to check the cost of materials and decide if something is worth crafting. It will give you a full breakdown of materials, projected profit, etc..

Due to the 15% “tax” charged by the trading post, crafting is usually cheaper than buying the items, but you don’t really make a profit by selling them (ex., even if you can sell the item for 10% more than the cost of materials, you’re still losing 5%).

Most often the ingredients sell for more than the finished product. So yes, i find it more profitable to sell all my matts, then buy what i want on the TP. Gathering is somewhat fun, if you like to mix fighting with gathering. I love the regular, old school crafting which is meaningful, profitable, and fun. But in GW2, the crafting is for leveling character to 80, or making a legendary, or playing the TP. Its not really a profession you can be proud of.

Just my opinion.

In general, you’re better off selling the mats.

However, don’t think that you can’t profit with crafting, you can. However, it’ll take analysis of the TP much like it does just buying and selling for profit. If you just blindly make an item and sell it, you probably lost money. There are windows of time where all sorts of items are profitable to make and sell however, vs selling the mats. When one window closes another opens. Funny enough, opportunities to make money are more prevalent on sub lev 80 items, where less attention is paid to any particular item vs the lev 80 item market which receives the most attention.

It isn’t uncommon at all to find things in the mid levels that cost 10s to make and are sellable for 20s.

Minion of Vey.4398:

In general, you’re better off selling the mats.

However, don’t think that you can’t profit with crafting, you can. However, it’ll take analysis of the TP much like it does just buying and selling for profit. If you just blindly make an item and sell it, you probably lost money. There are windows of time where all sorts of items are profitable to make and sell however, vs selling the mats. When one window closes another opens. Funny enough, opportunities to make money are more prevalent on sub lev 80 items, where less attention is paid to any particular item vs the lev 80 item market which receives the most attention.

It isn’t uncommon at all to find things in the mid levels that cost 10s to make and are sellable for 20s.

You couldn’t be more spot on here. I was stunned while leveling a craft that the mid level greens were worth significantly more than what it cost me to make them… was not intentionally looking for that opportunity, but was thrilled to find it

I recently read old posts (prior to release) by a GW2 developer on twitter that are kind of laughable now…

It was something along the lines of “We want crafting to be an integral part of the game and a good way to make money.”

Minos.5168:

I recently read old posts (prior to release) by a GW2 developer on twitter that are kind of laughable now…

It was something along the lines of “We want crafting to be an integral part of the game and a good way to make money.”

I’ve made over 800g crafting. It’s simply a matter of checking prices against each other, don’t just craft something because it looks like it sells high.

There are two general mentalities without looking at power traders and market manipulation and all that snazz:

Buy/Sell, the Profiteer:

• Always checks prices against each other to make sure he is making a profit, even if it is a small one.
• Never makes anything that will not net him profit.

Got it/Don’t got it, the Casual:

• If the materials are owned and the price is decent, will craft and sell, regardless of the net worth of items used.
• Doesn’t really care about buying and selling, just uses what he has to make a little bit of profit.

Both of them are “making” money. One makes more than the other, but it doesn’t really matter as the latter is having more fun with the game.

Minos.5168:

I recently read old posts (prior to release) by a GW2 developer on twitter that are kind of laughable now…

It was something along the lines of “We want crafting to be an integral part of the game and a good way to make money.”

Crafting is an integral part of the game. The majority of level 80 players are wearing crafted exotics. You need to craft to make parts for a legendary. All those useful foods we all use are crafted. Even if you don’t craft and just kill stuff and buy everything, the majority of the money you make from drops is from selling those drops to people that use the stuff for crafting. It’d be hard to make crafting more integral than it already is honestly.

Crafting is the best way to make money in the game. It’s comically more profitable than flipping. It just takes more effort finding what’s profitable to craft.

I’m not sure what people expect out of crafting. Do they want every random thing they make to be profitable? How could the game even function if that was the case?

Minion of Vey.4398:

I’m not sure what people expect out of crafting. Do they want every random thing they make to be profitable? How could the game even function if that was the case?

I feel some times like yes, this is what people expect. Every time I wade into a thread and try to explain how to profit via crafting I get the answer back: “That’s not crafting, that’s playing the TP.”

Maybe in some games, the process of crafting is so unappealing to the vast majority of people that for the few willing to partake in the activity there is profit to be had… maybe crafting in those games is something that creates an opportunity for people who wind up with their face in the dirt in end game content…. I just don’t know.

What I do know is that crafting in GW is easy to learn for anyone, and takes a higher skill curve to use effectively…. If all you want to do is gear your own characters, its easy to do that, and accessible to everyone. If you want to make money… that takes some skill beyond pushing the buttons and watching your character stand at an anvil.

Gw2 crafting is useless. FF13 crafting system and eve market are more of players run.

Gw2 craft i think it as achievement instead of get rich short-cut

Making gold through crafting requires investment of time to understand your chosen market. The profit is there to be made, but no one is gonna tell you that you should be crafting x, y and z to get a profit. As with everything you need to invest something into it to get something back.

Worst crafting system ever. I have never seen a game make crafting so useless in my life. The only use you have actually is either to level up or to make your legendary. Otherwise is a total waste of time and gold.
The price of materials is so high that makes the whole system pointless. Why would I craft if it is cheaper (some times way cheaper) to buy the item on the market?
I wonder what Anet think about it, it’s impossible they think is anything positive to the game and still never heard of any plans to improving it.
I think one of the problems is the lack of resources. The lack of resources make their prices too high on TP and so it makes crafting unprofitable. Resources should be way more abundant that way a lot of people could really start enjoying crafting.

You know, you are absolutely right! Crafting is completely useless and it’s impossible to make a profit through crafting.

I suggest that you pursue other profit making avenues.

Morpheus.6401:

Worst crafting system ever. I have never seen a game make crafting so useless in my life. The only use you have actually is either to level up or to make your legendary. Otherwise is a total waste of time and gold.
The price of materials is so high that makes the whole system pointless. Why would I craft if it is cheaper (some times way cheaper) to buy the item on the market?
I wonder what Anet think about it, it’s impossible they think is anything positive to the game and still never heard of any plans to improving it.
I think one of the problems is the lack of resources. The lack of resources make their prices too high on TP and so it makes crafting unprofitable. Resources should be way more abundant that way a lot of people could really start enjoying crafting.

In a game where anyone with a pick / ax / sickle can gather mats, loot bags drop like candy, and most drops from mobs can be salvaged, how are resources not abundant? Seriously, it’s beyond easy to get crafting mats, why anyone looks to the TP to get 100% of their mats is beyond me.

All the mystic forge weapons should have been crafting recipes. And it wouldn’t hurt to make some unique armors as recipes either.

Agree with you there Sinergy.
Would really like to see at least one interesting skin being added for armorsmiths, leatherworkers and tailors. Some interesting weapon skins would be a welcome addition as well.
But I feel that they should be same difficulty/expense as corrupted weapons atm, so as to give them some sort of “prestige”.

Also, why do all gladiator armor has to share the same skin throughout every level? We have different “themes” for weaponsmith/artificer/huntsman, why do armors all have to look exactly the same no mater what level they are?

Ooshi.8607:

Agree with you there Sinergy.
Would really like to see at least one interesting skin being added for armorsmiths, leatherworkers and tailors. Some interesting weapon skins would be a welcome addition as well.
But I feel that they should be same difficulty/expense as corrupted weapons atm, so as to give them some sort of “prestige”.

Also, why do all gladiator armor has to share the same skin throughout every level? We have different “themes” for weaponsmith/artificer/huntsman, why do armors all have to look exactly the same no mater what level they are?

I would love to see more skins along the line of Corrupted / Destroyer…. please, some weaps that use Crystal Lodestones.

I do, however, understand why (from a dev perspective) why we get a different theme of rare weapons every level bracket, but not rare armors: Weapons are easier to build than armor. A weapon skin uses the same model (size scaled, which is easy) regardless of race or gender. For armor skins, you have to rescale / adjust at a mesh level for each race, and have to build male and felame versions of such….. an armor set is a great deal harder to produce than a weapon set. (I can model a sword in an afternoon, modeling and rigging a skirt that will correctly parent / colide with the base figure is more work.)

I like to think our ‘one interesting skin’ for armorsmiths and weaponsmith is the lvl 80 exotic skin, which is at least a departure from what we made with blues / yellows.

CRAFTING IS NOT USELESS IN MAKING MONEY!

Yes, completely useless. Move along and let the people willing to rake in …err I mean, lose all their money to continue crafting.

Jeweler is one of the two crafting disciplines I’ve not leveled, but I can see, hypothetically, how the introduction of Ascended gear would seriously hurt Jewelers.

darkace.8925:

Jeweler is one of the two crafting disciplines I’ve not leveled, but I can see, hypothetically, how the introduction of Ascended gear would seriously hurt Jewelers.

Hypothetically… and yet, lvl 80 exotic jewelry is where I make a lot of my money….. lots of people not willing to do the work for ascended gear

Obtena.7952:

Yes, completely useless. Move along and let the people willing to rake in …err I mean, lose all their money to continue crafting.

Did you hear what I said?

CRAFTING IS NOT USELESS IN MAKING MONEY!

runeblade.7514:

Obtena.7952:

Yes, completely useless. Move along and let the people willing to rake in …err I mean, lose all their money to continue crafting.

Did you hear what I said?

CRAFTING IS NOT USELESS IN MAKING MONEY!

Methinks it was missing the sarcasm tag :P

Wetpaw.3487:

Crafting is only worth it if you want to lvl your toon w/o leaving LA, or if you are going for a Legendary…..that is all.

You just keep believing that…. those of us who craft for profit will continue to sell our goods to people who believe that…..

Yes it’s worthless.

Anet’s goal is to make as much RL Cash as possible.

GOLD is Anet’s Meal Ticket.

The system is designed to make Anet Rich.
Not to make those who work hard at their Profession Rich with in game Gold.
Sounds like North Korea… doesn’t it?

Nothing to see hear. Everyone please stop crafting. It’s worthless.

sixtyninetee.9785:

Yes it’s worthless.

Anet’s goal is to make as much RL Cash as possible.

GOLD is Anet’s Meal Ticket.

The system is designed to make Anet Rich.
Not to make those who work hard at their Profession Rich with in game Gold.
Sounds like North Korea… doesn’t it?

Yes, a company legally operating in a capitalist and democratic environment is comparable to a communist regime where information is suppressed, people are brainwashed and oppressed, and have a leader who is absolutely looney tunes.

I want to see ArenaNet get rich. I want to see the developers who puts hundreds of hours into this game rewarded. ArenaNet has provided one of the best systems in gaming, with the least amount of coercion in its pricing.

There are plenty of resources available to the players that ameliorate any lack of market functions. You can’t expect to make money in crafting without understanding the fundamentals of market economics. Money isn’t for the ignorant.

Crafting isn’t useless if you use your head, but then the potential is horribly stunted compared to games with item destruction like EVE, I wish all games had items that were easy to craft but you lost on death. Would make exotics really mean something in gw2 :P

silvermember.8941:

Crafting is not a profession in guild wars 2. Profession is the class you play. haha.

But seriously, unless you find a niche market, crafting in guild wars 2 is not for making money. It is to provide another method for people to level or make gear for themselves. Nothing more and nothing less. Just think how easy it was for you to level it, now imagine everybody being able to do that.

There is no point in even making your own gear either. It is alot cheaper to buy the exotic gear on TP then it is to buy the mats on TP, so far i have bought all my gear and weps and saved lots of gold. Crafting is only good for leveling and absolutely nothing else.

This is kinda pointless as usually these “crafting is useless, there’s no point in even making your own gear” kinda people don’t have enough attention span to check on the threads that they spout nonsense into, but here it goes anyway.

Joe has a newly dinged lvl80 warrior with both lvl400 armorsmith and lvl400 weaponsmith.
Joe wants to gear his new warrior all in beserker exotics, he is going to need helm, shoulders, chest, gloves, leggings and boots. He will also need a greatsword and a pair of axes.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Cost to Craft xxxx Cost w/ Buy Order xxx Cost for straight Buy
Draconic Helm —-————- 3g21s94c—————-3g58s75c——————— 4g23s65c
Draconic Shoulders —-——- 3g26s18c—————-3g35s63c——————— 4g32s69c
Draconic Chest —-————-3g48s64c—————- 3g28s30c———————4g30s50c
Draconic Gloves —-————-3g26s18c——————3g80s43c———————4g33s59c
Draconic Leggings —-——— 3g41s58c—————-4g00s00c———————4g47s88c
Draconic Boots —-———— 3g26s18c——————3g50s20c——————-4g32s60c
Pearl Broadsword —-——- 3g39s91c——————3g90s36c —-————- 4g60s00c
Pearl Axe —-————————3g23s11c —-————4g45s40c —-————- 5g56s00c
Pearl Axe —-————————3g23s11c —-———- 4g45s40c —-————- 5g56s00c
—————————————————————————————————————————————————-
——————————————- 29g76s83c —-———-34g34s47c —-———— 41g72s91c

Difference Between Crafted / Buy Order – 4g57s64c
Difference Between Crafted / Buy Immediately – 11g96s08c
Difference Between Buy Order / Sell Order – 7g38s44c

The cost for the mats and prices for armor weapons where all taken from TP at around 7.30pm GMT.
Can one of you guys PLEASE explain to me how is crafting not profitable / rewarding / useful?

Edit: formating,

Irrelevant to the original assumption that crafting wasn’t profitable / useful.

But I’ll play along.

Wetpaw.3487:

Joe runs in rares+food CoF p1 w/some buddies, farms a set in no time, saves 29g76s83c & gains X amount of gold from the farm.

While Joe is farming CoF p1 for his gear he crafts 1 set of gear + weapons each day, supplementing his income by 11g96s08c (market variations apply).

Hey Wetpaw, between you and me we just came up with a way to make Joe rich….

Joe told me he didn’t like running dungeons.

CassieGold.7460:

Minion of Vey.4398:

I’m not sure what people expect out of crafting. Do they want every random thing they make to be profitable? How could the game even function if that was the case?

I feel some times like yes, this is what people expect. Every time I wade into a thread and try to explain how to profit via crafting I get the answer back: “That’s not crafting, that’s playing the TP.”

Maybe in some games, the process of crafting is so unappealing to the vast majority of people that for the few willing to partake in the activity there is profit to be had… maybe crafting in those games is something that creates an opportunity for people who wind up with their face in the dirt in end game content…. I just don’t know.

What I do know is that crafting in GW is easy to learn for anyone, and takes a higher skill curve to use effectively…. If all you want to do is gear your own characters, its easy to do that, and accessible to everyone. If you want to make money… that takes some skill beyond pushing the buttons and watching your character stand at an anvil.

I think the reason people generally call it “playing the TP” is because the profit margin on a lot of the entry level items (destroyer/corrupted weapons) aren’t incredibly high, meaning it’s arguably better to just sell the mats. When you also factor in that a lot of these items require Skill points for Core to Lodestone upgrades you begin to realize that the Craft itself isn’t really providing the means to make the profit but rather the skill points used to save gold on the lodestones are the key.

Most of the gold people make on the TP is just from intelligent purchase of mats. Since I started trying to make gold off the TP I always buy all of the mats I need to make the item rather than using my personal stash because it forces me to look at the cost of the materials and because it keeps a record of what the mats were at the item I made the item. What kills me the most is the skill points. I might make about 7-8 gold on a Destroyer GS, but I’m basically just converting Skill points into money at a 40-50s/SP exchange rate. This also requires some level of time spent researching the cost of the item, the mats and roughly a 30 g overhead to make the item. Still learning here, but from what I gather it’s difficult to get into the market when the entry level stuff is difficult to really get decent returns on.

With that being said, some of the higher level gear like the Foefire’s can bring in a good return but require you to already be pretty well off.

TL DR; The profit margin between selling the mats and the final item have too much overlap, the profitable items have a huge barrier to entry, and the profit margin on the entry level stuff means it’ll be a long time before you can make decent gold (in addition to a lot of SP farming).

Ooshi.8607:

This is kinda pointless as usually these “crafting is useless, there’s no point in even making your own gear” kinda people don’t have enough attention span to check on the threads that they spout nonsense into, but here it goes anyway.

Joe has a newly dinged lvl80 warrior with both lvl400 armorsmith and lvl400 weaponsmith.
Joe wants to gear his new warrior all in beserker exotics, he is going to need helm, shoulders, chest, gloves, leggings and boots. He will also need a greatsword and a pair of axes.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Cost to Craft xxxx Cost w/ Buy Order xxx Cost for straight Buy
Draconic Helm —-————- 3g21s94c—————-3g58s75c——————— 4g23s65c
Draconic Shoulders —-——- 3g26s18c—————-3g35s63c——————— 4g32s69c
Draconic Chest —-————-3g48s64c—————- 3g28s30c———————4g30s50c
Draconic Gloves —-————-3g26s18c——————3g80s43c———————4g33s59c
Draconic Leggings —-——— 3g41s58c—————-4g00s00c———————4g47s88c
Draconic Boots —-———— 3g26s18c——————3g50s20c——————-4g32s60c
Pearl Broadsword —-——- 3g39s91c——————3g90s36c —-————- 4g60s00c
Pearl Axe —-————————3g23s11c —-————4g45s40c —-————- 5g56s00c
Pearl Axe —-————————3g23s11c —-———- 4g45s40c —-————- 5g56s00c
—————————————————————————————————————————————————-
——————————————- 29g76s83c —-———-34g34s47c —-———— 41g72s91c

Difference Between Crafted / Buy Order – 4g57s64c
Difference Between Crafted / Buy Immediately – 11g96s08c
Difference Between Buy Order / Sell Order – 7g38s44c

The cost for the mats and prices for armor weapons where all taken from TP at around 7.30pm GMT.
Can one of you guys PLEASE explain to me how is crafting not profitable / rewarding / useful?

Edit: formating,

You’ve shown it’s rewarding for a person that is crafting their own gear. How rewarding is it for someone trying to buy mats and sell the item or for someone who has the mats and is torn between selling the mats vs crafting and selling the item. Something can be profitable for your personal use but the 15% TP fee makes it impractical for making a profit.

Basically if the mats sell for more gold than the item does then it’s questionable how useful crafting is.

Edit: What versions of those items are you using for your values? Knight’s vs Valk’s vs Carrion are going to have different values. Same for the weapons. It’s worth noting that most of the profit you’d be getting on the sale would be from the weapons and not the armor.

The values are all for beserker’s armor and weapons.

All the mats where bought from the TP with a buy order (this is very important).

There is a 13% profit overall in this transaction.

It doesn’t matter if you got the mats from the TP or if you farmed them / got them during your normal play. They should all be cost at current market prices, as they aren’t “free”, they all have a cost.

I’ve just realised that I answered Wetpaw that Joe would be 11g richer, that is not true, I’ve made a mistake and didn’t account for 15% sale tax. The correct value at the initial prices should have been 5g77s77c profit.

And as a crafter your though process would not be to craft a complete set of gear but would be to concentrate on the products that provide you a better margin or that you can sell a bigger quantity off.

Me personally I like to diversify and will craft a range of armor / weapons so that if there is a variation in the market you won’t get caught with a lot of product that doesn’t shift or that the price isn’t profitable.