Guild Wars 2

I’ve been into crafting for a long time, and in my time here in GW2 (since Oct 2012), I’ve gone through all the crafting professions up to 400 (working on 500 now), along with crafting a number of items in the Mystic Forge.

While crafting can be fun to create items for yourself, my advice is to only craft items for yourself. Do not fall into the trap of thinking you can craft things in GW2 and make money at it. The reason behind this isn’t that there isn’t a big enough profit margin, nor is it about material prices, it’s the issue of undercutting. No, I don’t mean “undercutting” as in some guy comes in and sells his stuff for a copper less. I’m talking about people who have more money than brains going through on high value items and deliberately sell at a loss over the cost of the materials. You’ll find it’s not just one time events on this. These are people who systematically will place 5 to 10 items on the trading post below cost, and then lose even more money to make sure that their items are always 1 copper lower than anyone else. It’s tempting to out-copper them, but you’ll lose even more money in the abysmal listing fees and taxes. I currently have an item worth around 20gold in materials value, and have watched the price on the trading post for that item go from 21 down to 10, with multiple steps in between, always with the same person out-coppering everyone else. In the long run, I’m completely screwed on my investment in making the item because I bought some of the components for it.
Again, craft items for yourself or friends, but do not get settled on the idea of crafting for profit in this game. It simply is not possible on a casual basis, and there are plenty of people with thousands of gold to waste looking to prove it.

I so far have crafted items and gained a large sum of money by doing so.

First part about crafting is to gather the resources yourself rather then buying them on the TP.

2nd part Higher lvl does not always mean worth more. Such as lvl50-60 armour and weapons are worth close to 1g a piece depending on which one and the materials needed cost you not even close to 1g.

3rd part Leatherworking can easily be used to make ectos. Silk and tier 5 materials are really cheap due to large amounts of it. Making the rare version of the items (which don’t use ecto to make) you can easily make ectos for cheap.

This is a true advice for new crafts.

Suddenflame.2601:

First part about crafting is to gather the resources yourself rather then buying them on the TP.

This is invalidated by the fact that most items are selling for less than the total value of the materials used in them. For example, there is a Destroyer Torch for sale right now for 8gold. The lodestones themselves cost 10gold for crafting that item. Never mind the orichalcum and ancient wood required for it. You would make more money selling the materials directly.
As for crafting yellows to make ectos, I’m not buying that line at all. Yeah, you can craft yellows and salvage for ectoplasms, but if there’s profit in it, then it’s simply going to be overdone.
If you have hours and hours every day to sit and watch the market and rush to craft something when values are just right, then maybe you can make a profit. Beyond that, the market is simply so skewed that crafting isn’t an option. People are deliberately underselling, deliberately losing thousands of gold, just to wreck the market.

Should this be in the Crafting forum?

Neural.1824:

Suddenflame.2601:

First part about crafting is to gather the resources yourself rather then buying them on the TP.

This is invalidated by the fact that most items are selling for less than the total value of the materials used in them. For example, there is a Destroyer Torch for sale right now for 8gold. The lodestones themselves cost 10gold for crafting that item. Never mind the orichalcum and ancient wood required for it. You would make more money selling the materials directly.
As for crafting yellows to make ectos, I’m not buying that line at all. Yeah, you can craft yellows and salvage for ectoplasms, but if there’s profit in it, then it’s simply going to be overdone.
If you have hours and hours every day to sit and watch the market and rush to craft something when values are just right, then maybe you can make a profit. Beyond that, the market is simply so skewed that crafting isn’t an option. People are deliberately underselling, deliberately losing thousands of gold, just to wreck the market.

Your missing many of my points that I made just to attempt to discredit me. A lodestone great that its 10g you would sell that yourself without crafting the weapon. As I pointed out I was very specific that only some weapons (not all) are worth making along with armours. I also was specific that they are not lvl80s. Destroyer weapons are lvl80. Gold weapons and armour is created using mithril and silk which is 2 of the most common materials in the game and is cheap to buy on the market along with common T5 materials. Ectos are worth far more then the materials used to make the item. Also ectos are a lot more important and most people have a stock pile of those materials already and gain more from salvaging.

edit: the main point of step #1 is to avoid unnecessary costs associated with crafting. Gathering the materials yourself lowers the cost of crafting the item. Most materials used in crafting are not worth selling on the TP such as mithril and silk. Iron, Platinum, and gold are worth more and should be mined instead of being bought on the TP due to their high costs. They are also needed to get to 400 crafting. Basically Step #1 is avoid unnecessary costs.

I second this advice.

The only way to make money by crafting is to scan the trading post for in-demand crafted items that you can craft and weighing them against the cost of all your materials.

Which I’m not entirely sure is even possible given current market prices, but I did make profit this way on my way to 400.

Here’s the problem leveling up crafting. Profit Vs Crafting XP. You get the most XP discovering some new recipe, making one of X in the process. Now this new item is likely going to an item with a high crafting XP for a bit so there is that incentive to make more of them. Problem is EVERYBODY who is crafting that discipline is going to do the same thing and the TP will be full of them even though there is limited to no demand for them. But you can’t bear to sell them to a vendor for 80c so you put it up on the TP.

However there are items you have already discovered/made but have outleveled them for crafting XP that are profitable, sometimes very profitable, even when buying mats and sub-components off the TP.

So often you have a choice, discover and make an item that isn’t profitable (selling off the mats required that you gathered yourself will often make you more coin) or disregard any hope for profit and craft to boost your crafting skill.

I’ve made about 100 G via crafting in the past week or so. Not an enormous sum, but enough to put towards some account upgrades I’ve been meaning to get.

My experience has been that as long as I stick to crafting several low-price but high-turnover items, and diversify what I craft and sell, I can make roughly 10-12 gold per day depending on how often I craft and post. I’ve tried selling higher priced rare gear, but that hasn’t brought in nearly as consistent a profit as the cheaper stuff. At that price point you’re better off putting in low buy orders and trying to flip existing TP items.

The key is willingness to be flexible. Keep an eye on sites like gw2spidy and see what you can craft for profit right now, but keep in mind that tomorrow or even a couple of hours from now, the market will change and different items will be the potential money makers. This isn’t something that’s out of the realm of the casuals, either ( I’m a fairly casual player myself).

Crafting is definitely not as lucrative in this game as it is in several others, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make money doing it. You just have to be smart about it.

I made far beyond 3000 gold with crafting in a year. 90% of the mats i use to craft, i get from the TP, 9% i get form salvaging, the last % is propably mats that i gathered.

The vast majority of crafted items wont yield you a profit but still, many do.
But you have to know the value of the mats that you are using and the cheapest way to obtain them.
And the golden rule: Always put in buy orders and dont sell directly to the highest bidder.