Guild Wars 2

In most games i have played so far, making items and selling them at a profit makes you just that; a profit. In the cases of weaponsmiting, artifacting, and huntsman, i really found no such way to make a profit by making rare and exotic items. Why? Because the materials that go into the weapon + the 15% tax on the TP =/> the price of that weapon. (This is true for all the corrupted weps + rares) I can assume that armor crafting is the same way as well. Yes you could farm all the materials that go into that weapon and make it that way, but you could also just sell all those materials for the same amount of money and make a profit that way.

You could make rares and salvage them for Ectoes, but that is a gamble you may not win. (You could just place a 19s buy order on the creatable rares and salvage that way…its cheaper than actually crafting the item + you don’t need 375 crafting…hint hint) I’m not looking for a super fast way to make money, i am simply stating that 400 crafting is pretty much worthless aside from making legendary weps, and that basically the money/time/effort you put into getting a lv 400 crafting skill is really just for making the gifts for a legendary.

My question is, Is this working as intended? Opinions? Thoughts? Do you see a way to make money off 400 crafting that i don’t?

TLDR >>> I’m not looking for a super fast way to make gold, I’m just wondering why having 400 crafting is practically worthless. :/ (aside legendary crafting and lving your alts of course ;3 )

Kind of agree with this. Making level 80 rares is about the only thing that turns profit. I was disappointed to find that just about all craftable greens even at high levels sold for only a few copper more than vendor best case scenario.

In most other games, all you get out of leveling crafting is the ability to craft materials for a profit. The up front costs of leveling crafting in the first place presents a barrier to entry that keeps crafts profitable.

In GW2, the fact that getting a 400 craft is worth 10 levels turns this on its head. Crafting is an incredibly popular way to level alts quickly, to essentially buy levels with gold. There isn’t nearly the barrier of entry on a high level crafting discipline, as it’s now just a side effect of leveling your characters.

There is money to be made off of crafting, but with essentially a negative up front cost to getting 400 crafting on a character, profits are inevitably going to take some work to acquire.

Ensign.2189:

In most other games, all you get out of leveling crafting is the ability to craft materials for a profit. The up front costs of leveling crafting in the first place presents a barrier to entry that keeps crafts profitable.

In GW2, the fact that getting a 400 craft is worth 10 levels turns this on its head. Crafting is an incredibly popular way to level alts quickly, to essentially buy levels with gold. There isn’t nearly the barrier of entry on a high level crafting discipline, as it’s now just a side effect of leveling your characters.

There is money to be made off of crafting, but with essentially a negative up front cost to getting 400 crafting on a character, profits are inevitably going to take some work to acquire.

You don’t quite understand me bud. yes i know 400 crafting is easy to get. I know a fresh player can’t get there because they don’t have the resources. What I’m getting at is crafting should be considered as work. (fun work) witch you invest in to turn a profit into the future.

I estimate it takes any where between 3-10g to lv a profession to 400. This said, i wanna see a return on this investment. : ) Its not much to some people (myself included) but to some one who only has that money to invest…they would be disappointed.

There is a reason i did not touch crafting until i had acquired 300 skill points after all.

GeoX.5046:

I estimate it takes any where between 3-10g to lv a profession to 400. This said, i wanna see a return on this investment.

The return on the investment is 10 levels at less than a gold per level. That is such a good deal that players take it all the time for that alone.

400 in a crafting profession isn’t something you invest in to unlock, it’s a byproduct of buying levels for gold. It’s only in that framework that it makes any sense.

In order for crafting to work the way you think it should work, they’d have to rip the XP from crafting off the professions. Only at that point would it start to be considered an ‘investment’ that would yield returns.

Ensign.2189:

GeoX.5046:

I estimate it takes any where between 3-10g to lv a profession to 400. This said, i wanna see a return on this investment.

The return on the investment is 10 levels at less than a gold per level. That is such a good deal that players take it all the time for that alone.

400 in a crafting profession isn’t something you invest in to unlock, it’s a byproduct of buying levels for gold. It’s only in that framework that it makes any sense.

In order for crafting to work the way you think it should work, they’d have to rip the XP from crafting off the professions. Only at that point would it start to be considered an ‘investment’ that would yield returns.

First, you would get more than 10 lvs from crafting 1-400. Second, im pretty sure the reason you craft is to make items and make money. At least that’s what i would expect a crafting system to be. Yes, having exp in there is nice, but its really not unique only to crafting. (xp is abundant through the game…) Quite frankly id rather have them rip the xp out, make it harder to lv to 400, make it actually require some skill so you can make a profit off your hard work. That is my opinion since there are lots of good ways to lv already in gw2. These include; but are not limited to, doing anything in the game!

Srsly, wvw, dungeons, events, all pretty fast ways to lv. The reward for crafting should be something unique…and not just some cookie cutter pieces of armor you can buy off the TP for the same amount of cash it takes to craft without the hassle.

Again this is my opinion, and i respect your opinion. : )

I really would like a Dev’s opinion on this…

GeoX.5046:

First, you would get more than 10 lvs from crafting 1-400.

The experience gained from leveling crafting is based on a percentage of the exp required to reach the next level. Leveling a crafting discipline from 1-400 will give 10 levels of exp.

GeoX.5046:

Second, im pretty sure the reason you craft is to make items and make money.

I leveled jeweler to 375; cooking and artificer to 400 on three or four characters now. I did not do so to make items and money. There is absolutely no faster way to level than crafting.

Fatali.4819:

GeoX.5046:

First, you would get more than 10 lvs from crafting 1-400.

The experience gained from leveling crafting is based on a percentage of the exp required to reach the next level. Leveling a crafting discipline from 1-400 will give 10 levels of exp.

GeoX.5046:

Second, im pretty sure the reason you craft is to make items and make money.

I leveled jeweler to 375; cooking and artificer to 400 on three or four characters now. I did not do so to make items and money. There is absolutely no faster way to level than crafting.

Again, i respect your opinion but i disagree. I am aware of the exp caps, and when i lved up my professions, i am curtain i gained more than 10 lvs. Maybe it is different with a lv 80. (hard numbers plz?)

If you are satisfied with paying gold to lv your character, then that is your preference. I never said it was faster, but unless you plan on maxing every profession just so you can reach 80, i recommend you actually play the game for the sake of getting your monies worth. (my opinion)

There is a reason i asked if this was working correctly, i honestly don’t think people with money should just skip 79 lvs of content. Heck WvW may not be “as fast” but it gets the job done in under a day.

Oh come on you already gain experience while crafting! Making money as well would just make crafting be too strong.

Pssst….
If you took a bit longer to look at the trading post you probably would have seen loads of lvl400 epics on sale….
That’s items that where crafted and that didn’t return any XP to the crafter….
I wonder…. are these people doing it for fun, because they are very silly, or because the crafting fairy made them do it…..
It can’t have been because it would make them a profit….

GeoX.5046:

TLDR >>> I’m not looking for a super fast way to make gold, I’m just wondering why having 400 crafting is practically worthless. :/ (aside legendary crafting and lving your alts of course ;3 )

I think you are indeed looking for a super fast way to make shinies…
You found this forum, now you just need to find the search feature and start digging for some of the really good posts from this community detailing how to make a profit from crafting.
Or you could just use maths and add things up…

1. You can make money by crafting. I did. Tons. I bought Onyx Cores, used a skill point to MF to Lodestone, crafted Superior Rune of the Ranger. I was making >60s profit after taxes and everything, which is a good use of my extra skill points.
2. Max crafting in this game is extremely easy to achieve. There’s a huge amount of players that have 1 or more crafts maxed. If there was an easy way to make money by crafting it would be very quickly marginalized.
3. To make money (a significant amount of money) by crafting you need to invest time into figuring out what items would sell for profit. And you need to do it quickly before others figure it out and undercut you by 1c.

edit: Also crafting is not worthless outside legendaries. I’d rather craft exotic armor for alts than use dungeon tokens. Craft and sell/salvage rares. But it all goes back to supply and demand. If 75% of the players have a 400 jeweler, there’s low interest in your products unless they’re special in some way.

I have maxed all crafts, and made back far more than that total cost by crafting 2 specific rare items. The profit wasn’t huge, but on a good day I would sell over a hundred of them, and that adds up. Now, I’ll grant that I haven’t been crafting those particular items lately, and maybe that situation has changed, but the point is, I’ve found that while many or maybe even most recipes won’t make a solid profit, there are always some that can, and you may have to do some looking to figure out which those are.

As for corrupted weapons, I made some of those last week. They all earned me a profit.

Ooshi.8607:

Woh there bud, i said off lv the lv 400 crafting itself. I already play the market and make enough money to satisfy me 10x over, it was only recently that i had an intrest in crafting at all .

bcd.4352:

1. You can make money by crafting. I did. Tons. I bought Onyx Cores, used a skill point to MF to Lodestone, crafted Superior Rune of the Ranger. I was making >60s profit after taxes and everything, which is a good use of my extra skill points.

This is really inventive…i have really not heard of this yet, so it was nice that some one shared that. Granted i knew about it before hand to some extent, but i associated the MF with RNG so i never really gave it much thought.

Any how, thx, ill so some math on that later. Though this does not really have to do with crafting through your crafting skills…its mystic forge. .-.

RetiredBard.5294:

I’ve found that while many or maybe even most recipes won’t make a solid profit, there are always some that can, and you may have to do some looking to figure out which those are.

As for corrupted weapons, I made some of those last week. They all earned me a profit.

I would like to know some of them if you please. Like i said i looked into all of weaponsmiting, huntsman, and artifacting and found none, so id love to hear of what you have found.

Umm…are you sure you took into account taxes for corrupted weapons?

Yes, I’m quite sure I took taxes into account. I still made a profit, and all of the materials (and the etched weapon) were bought from the tp, in each instance on the same day I made the corrupted weapon.

I’ll pm you the names of the 2 items I referred to. One was from weaponsmithing, and the other was from artificing.

I want to toss in a few things here, and some of this is old hat because as Ooshi said, there are several really good threads about how to profit via crafting.

Skills that are important:
#1: Knowing how to source your mats. If you buy at lowest seller price instead of working with buy orders, you’re missing the point. Also, know what mats can be quickly gathered with a little sweat-equity, and how to promote mats. For things that use lodestones, buying cores and using the MF to improve them is one method to improve your profit margin. There are others.

#2: Market analysis is important. There is no push-button profit. The market shifts quickly as people see an opportunity and jump on it. Some items have consistent high demand (look at the most expensive precursor weapons and then look at the selling price of the lvl 80 rares that people buy in bulk to chuck into the forge,) some items have demand increased because patches change the drop rate of the item or the components. Know what people want to buy and make that.

#3: Recognize that as a crafter, working in bulk is in your favor, but beware of saturating the market. If your profit per item is 5s, then your profit for making 20 of that item is 1g, just make sure it’s something you can sell 20 of. Given that crafting is pretty push-button easy, it doesn’t take much more effort to make and sell 50 of an item than it does to sell 5.

#4: Profit exists in all crafts, and at multiple levels of the craft. Some times, you can also profit by selling un-finished goods (sword blades, insignia, etc), and some times the secret to profit by crafting is to realize that sourcing the pre-built components is cheaper than buying the raw material. If you want to make a lvl 80 exotic great sword, and the cost of Orichalcum Ore to make a blade is 27s, but you can buy the blade for 24s…. buy the blade! (I use this example because the price of ore relative to the price of blades flip / flops frequently….)

GL out there, and happy crafting. As always, if you have questions, ask, there is a lot of help to be had in the community here.

GeoX.5046:

In most games i have played so far, making items and selling them at a profit makes you just that; a profit.

It is much harder in this game because there are so much more competition. The problem is auction house is “cross server”, so you have a few times more people trying to do the exact samething you are doing.

Now imagine the games you played. Say you are one of the 3 jewel crafter on the server who sell jewel everyday. Now imagine there are 30 server all cross linked. Now you have 90 competition.

That is why it is so much harder to make money through crafting in this game. In other game I can craft almost anything and make a profit.

There’s too much competition to expect yourself to sit there crafting all day buying at lowest seller price and selling at lowest buyer price. If any gap like this comes up, someone will fill it in due time if they can. (OT but that if they can part is why precursor prices are nuts – demand is higher than supply and there’s not much people can do about it)

I do recommend you look at http://www.gw2spidy.com/ under the crafting section to give you an idea as to what can get you some coin. This changes very frequently because of aforementioned competition however.

I’ve made some money on TP crafting steel rifle barrels one week, the lvl 80 maintenance oil another week, some random shoulder pads the next week, etc etc..

I just started with my Weaponsmith crafting and so far I have yet crafted anything that isn’t profitable. Yes, I’m probably going to come across a range where profit and crafting XP won’t coincide but I haven’t come across it yet. And yes I’m in my early stages of leveling that skill (spitting difference of 75).

Only tools I’m using is GWSpidy to provide me a list of items that are profitable for my current crafting skills and GuildWarsTrade to make sure the current selling price is way above historical levels.

And for the Six’s sake don’t craft so called “profitable” items where supply is already 2x or higher than demand and expect them to sell overnight. Supply and Demand people, look at items that demand is higher than supply if you prefer a quicker turnaround.

9.49 GMT 18th March 2013

Corrupted Lodestone – 1g46s02c
Etched Einhander of Rage – 2g00s00c

20x corrupted lodestones – 29g20s40c + 2g00s00c = 31g20s40c

Corrupted Blade = 41g24s99c – 15% TP tax = 35g.06s.24c – cost (31g20s40c) = 3g85s84c

9% profit on your initial investment

There are items out there with a much bigger profit margin.

STOP! This thread is completely wrong! You can make money through crafting!

Here

runeblade.7514:

STOP! This thread is completely wrong! You can make money through crafting!

Here

Nice post, you can even put the excel sheet on Google Docs for people to view it live

Anyone who thinks that you can make any profit from crafting in this game should go back to the elementary school and learn how to use calculator.

The crafting material’s price is always bigger than the price of the final product on each level and each rarity.

If you think I am wrong – give me good example and I will send you the difference in gold.

Dont forget about the 15% fee on succesfull sale, folks.

GeoX.5046:

i am simply stating that 400 crafting is pretty much worthless aside from making legendary weps, and that basically the money/time/effort you put into getting a lv 400 crafting skill is really just for making the gifts for a legendary

You are wrong.

You are failing to see the obvious answer in front of you – the goal behind the crafting system is to craft items, not to make gold. It’s not worthless, it’s simply a way to make the gear with the stats you want, with your choice among a list of available skills, without needing other players.

That’s what crafting is, and that’s what crafting should be. It isn’t a ticket to free gold – it’s a tool to make the gear you want.

Badur.2730:

Anyone who thinks that you can make any profit from crafting in this game should go back to the elementary school and learn how to use calculator.

The crafting material’s price is always bigger than the price of the final product on each level and each rarity.

If you think I am wrong – give me good example and I will send you the difference in gold.

Dont forget about the 15% fee on succesfull sale, folks.

Nice necroing 4month old post;)

Last month I’ve made atleast 50 gold from crating. Think even more. Havn’t done much crafting last few days since very stupid people tank the price for no reason.

Was crafting Berserker GS, the first day I made 20 gold. But each day, people just kept undercutting 10 silver at a time, resulting in a price drop from 5,8g to 4g.

Also crafting destroyer weapons, you will get a profit.

Badur.2730:

Anyone who thinks that you can make any profit from crafting in this game should go back to the elementary school and learn how to use calculator.

The crafting material’s price is always bigger than the price of the final product on each level and each rarity.

If you think I am wrong – give me good example and I will send you the difference in gold.

Dont forget about the 15% fee on succesfull sale, folks.

Ooh, I like this game. Free gold from Badur

Infinite Light: Cost 680g23s50c, 50 Skill Points
Lowest seller’s price: 1150g
1150×.85=997g50s
997g50s-680g23s50c=317g26s50c profit
I’ll take 317g please.

Maybe you don’t like that example because it uses the forge. Alright then. I’ll give another example.

Rampager’s Destroyer Staff: Cost 31g35s85c
Lowest seller’s price: 47g50s98c
47g50s98cx.85=9g2s48c
I’ll take 9g please.

In any case, there are hundreds of profitable items that you can craft, so long as you’re intelligent about how you buy their ingredients. For example, most of the time if you buy ingredients from the lowest seller, you are an idiot. Most of the other profitable items don’t have nearly as nice as a profit margin as the Destroyer weapons, but you can make up for that in volume as your potential customers for the items you sell number in the hundreds of thousands of other players.

For a better look at how to craft for a profit, I direct you to the tool my guild has been using since the betas. Torrenal’s Crafting Gadget – http://www.gw2gadget.com

I think those complaining about not being able to make money crafting expect EVERY item to sell more at the trader than the materials cost to make it.

That would basically be an unlimited gold supply for every player in the game and flood the economy with gold.

You CAN make money at crafting, you just need to do some research first and put in intelligent buy orders for crafting materials that you need. No, it’s not “easy” (nor “fast” in most cases) and shouldn’t be.

I don’t doubt that it is possible to make money with crafting but it requires a significant amount of effort to find the product. It is ok that it requires effort so the amount is debatable. I also doubt that it is more profitable than just playing the (rest of) the game. I believe it requires a significant upfront investment making it less possible for some players and have a certain risk that your items not sell.

You can make money with crafting but it is not easy, which is OK.

However:

Darksteel Helmet Casing highest buy price 1s
Darksteel Ingot highest buy price 2s17c
Platinum Ore highest buy price 2*88c = 1s76c
….

Ingredients price is significantly higher than crafted item price. This is true for a lot of items.

This means that (if I dare to say for the casual player) crafting such items, and you need to craft such items to level your crafting, wastes a lot of money.

So why should someone craft?

• Legendary: yes but if you do you already have enough gold that you don’t care
• XP: yes but there is so much XP that it is not necessary
• getting stats: currently not since there is enough supply on TP which is cheaper
• skins: currently not since there is enough supply on TP which is cheaper

So IMO, crafting is currently only good for legendary which is not an option for some(/many?) players. There should be more to crafting!

GeoX.5046:

…. and lving your alts of course ;3 )

Anyone else find this little footnote ironic?

Supply and Demand… if there was less Demmand for materials to Power-Level alts, and faster leveling through other means that created more Fine Materials… then there would be higher demand for dedicated crafters to actually make the Gear for them, along with more crafting supplies in general with which to make that gear.

…Though I think another thing that would help a LOT, is if various Karma or Heart vendors sold Fine “Blue” Mats and “Karma Skin” Gear Recipes for Karma instead of the fully built Green Masterworks they currently sell. That would stimulate crafting without penalizing first-time players. …and get people to be more social in general seeking out D.E.’s instead of hiding themselves away in some forgotten corner of the world just b/c it had the best Blood/Scales farming circuit…

Ooshi.8607:

Pssst….
If you took a bit longer to look at the trading post you probably would have seen loads of lvl400 epics on sale….
That’s items that where crafted and that didn’t return any XP to the crafter….
I wonder…. are these people doing it for fun, because they are very silly, or because the crafting fairy made them do it…..
It can’t have been because it would make them a profit….

We have epic weapons now?
If you mean lvl 80 exotic (pearl) weapons on the trading post, those actually come from the crafting fairy called Zomorros.

I think the real profitability will come from grabbing limited run recipes while they’re available.
In the end, if only a select percentage of the user-base can make a particular item, they’ll be able to charge a premium.

For example, while the ingredients may seem prohibitively expensive at the moment, not everyone in the game can make the Molten Berserker Endless Tonic.
While there are still recipes available on the BLTC, the tonic makes less money on sale than it costs to make (significantly so; whoever’s selling these so cheap is a mug), but eventually it should be a seller’s market.

Found some niche items to sell.
Nothing spectacular but keeps the silver rolling.
Still most of the money is made by selling event skin,precursor/legendarys,mats and TP market

TheBlueI.3486:

I don’t doubt that it is possible to make money with crafting but it requires a significant amount of effort to find the product. It is ok that it requires effort so the amount is debatable. I also doubt that it is more profitable than just playing the (rest of) the game. I believe it requires a significant upfront investment making it less possible for some players and have a certain risk that your items not sell.

You can make money with crafting but it is not easy, which is OK.

However:

Darksteel Helmet Casing highest buy price 1s
Darksteel Ingot highest buy price 2s17c
Platinum Ore highest buy price 2*88c = 1s76c
….

Ingredients price is significantly higher than crafted item price. This is true for a lot of items.

This means that (if I dare to say for the casual player) crafting such items, and you need to craft such items to level your crafting, wastes a lot of money.

So why should someone craft?

• Legendary: yes but if you do you already have enough gold that you don’t care
• XP: yes but there is so much XP that it is not necessary
• getting stats: currently not since there is enough supply on TP which is cheaper
• skins: currently not since there is enough supply on TP which is cheaper

So IMO, crafting is currently only good for legendary which is not an option for some(/many?) players. There should be more to crafting!

I agree with this guy right here.

The time you spent studying the market you could of went around farming anything in this game and made better money.

When I first started playing the game I wanted to craft to make my own gear… but then I realize I lost money and time if I tried to craft my gear. Cause raw materials sell way more than the price you buy the final object something. You buy what you want, and would still have money left over for a profit.

Takes way less time. So yes crafting is pretty useless for anything but making Legendaries unless you like making money very slowly and inefficiently.