Guild Wars 2

So I’m at work right now, and I have tons of mats of all kinds from working on 100% Map Completion.

Previously, I’ve always simply sold all my raw mats directly to the TP. But then I began thinking.

I have a few characters up to 400 in most if not all crafting professions (Had lots of money, and crafted to speedlevel them); I have access to crafting many things.

Would it be more profitable to use the mats to craft things, and sell them to the TP, rather than just throwing the raw mats onto the TP?

I’m assuming the short answer is no, and the longer answer is “it depends.”

I was just hoping someone with crafting/selling/market experience can share their experiences and offer advice on this idea.

I am in the process of figuring this out, myself, but my guess would be that mats that can only be used in lower level items (the ones people make to level to 400) are usually more profitable to sell than to craft with (unless you need the skill points, of course). However, items that are useful for crafting top tier items (the ones that require 400 points to craft) can probably be used profitably.

First of all loot at OFFERS not selling prices. Some items highly priced rot in TP for ages.
IMO in 99% of cases it is more profitable to just sell mats unless you are in possesion of some uber rare recepie.

Generally speaking, wrt to mats before top tier, its more profitable to sell the mats than the finished product. However, I can’t say for sure for crafted lvl 80 rare/exotic ones. If ever there’s a profit, its very minimal for sure.

I made a spreadsheet to calculate the cost of crafting 400 level items vs the profit of selling the components on TP while farming for my legendary. In most cases selling the components will bring you as much profit as crafting something and then selling it. The only exception to this that I’ve seen is if you happen to get an event related crafting recipe drop AND you get the mats for it quickly then put it up on TP. For whatever reason people buy new items regardless of the stats for higher prices than you might expect. The karka event was a good example of this.

Generally my strategy for dealing with mats while farming is this:

Sell: All cloth and leather blues and all green items, salvageable generic leather, T6 mats.

Savage: All blue metal, wood items and all rares that sell for less than the price of an ecto on TP

TP: All sigils/runes/rares that sell for more than the price of an ecto on TP. Put ectos on TP if the price is good. You can also get a decent price for the bags that contain T6 mats (moldy bags from Orr, ect).

Craft: Carrion (xxx) rares and salvage for ectos. I’ve found that I get more mithril than elder logs so i usually make shields because they use the least mithril. Other crafts might have an even lower mat intensive recipe.

It very much depends. At almost all levels, there is some item you can make for a profit. They are usually rare items that require you to buy the inscription/insignia from the trainer for karma, but sometimes you can make components or greens and sell at a profit.

I find that the most profitable items are often a mixture of parts bought off the TP and ones I’ve made myself. Once I even found a green item I could vendor at a profit, because two parts were very cheap compared to mfg cost.

Save your fine mats (the teeth, scales, etc.) for making rare insignia and inscriptions. Those can even be sold at a decent profit sometimes, and you can usually make something for a profit that uses either the rare insignia or the rare inscription for a given material.

So… you can craft most materials profitably, but it takes research and watching the markets.