Guild Wars 2

So for about eight years of playing MMOs, i’ve basically just sold things and bought things with little regard or understanding of how things worked, and I’d usually just buy materials, craft them into things and sell the things again, without any regard as to how much, or any profit i’d made from the transaction.

So considering how infeasible it is to make money crafting armour and weapons at the lower levels, I thought it’s time I learned some basic economics so I can better support myself. The only thing I really know about trading is to ‘buy low’ and ‘sell high’. I did buy 100 slabs of red meat and 100 piles of glittering dust for 4 copper, and sold them both for 6 copper a couple of days later with got me a couple of silver profit.

Just to clarify, I don’t really want to know what the hottest selling things are at the moment, but I would certainly like to know how to recognise what I can buy low, and what will sell well later on. Although I doubt it’s as easy as I’m making it sound.

All you need to do is keep in mind that there is a 15 % fee.
So take an item you want to trade and add 15 % to the buy price. If the buy price is lower than the sell price you want it’s a good item.

Which item you need to trade I’m not going to say.

But for people who say the trading post isn’t profitable. They are wrong.
I traded for like 2 hours now and made 1 gold each hour. And I can even make more if I want.

Just spend some time with it. You’ll get the hang of it.

Items that are good to trade (and I recommend doing more than one at a time, to reduce risk) are:

Strawberries, Raspberries, Chili Peppers, Onions, Oranges, Vanilla Beans, Cotton Scraps, Peppercorn, Copper Ore, Darksteel Ingots, any (non-exotic) bolts.

The turn around for these items is different and the risk in losing money on the trade varies between products (vanilla beans are risky right now because a-net did something to the supply). I may have missed a few, but those are the ones off the top of my head. Have fun!

Yes, but how did you figure out these were good to sell? Does the ‘Top most demanded’ items thing actually mean anything?

top demanded items means there is a lot of people buying them. And profit is good for anything with constant supply and constant demand. This game makes it simple to buy then sell back just buy a simple look at the lowest buyer and top seller for the items. Generally thats enough to make a decent profit.

Top demanded items sometimes have a slow move time due to the monstrous number of orders. Additionally some of these dont’ apply to the custom bid ordering, like dyes that are used as a form of gambling.

I discovered what was valuable partially because I have 400 cooking and I know what recipes are in high demand and what ingredients they require. Additionally there are some ingredients that are very good to level with – blackberries for example.

Then you have to consider other factors, such as what type of player cares so much about time that they would lose their left foot for the deal. That should lead you to post crafted items. Ingots, bolts, squares. There are other less obvious quickly traded items that you may have to do some hunting for (and I have yet to find myself) but the list I gave you is a good start.

CdrRogdan.8907:

Items that are good to trade (and I recommend doing more than one at a time, to reduce risk) are:

Strawberries, Raspberries, Chili Peppers, Onions, Oranges, Vanilla Beans, Cotton Scraps, Peppercorn, Copper Ore, Darksteel Ingots, any (non-exotic) bolts.

The turn around for these items is different and the risk in losing money on the trade varies between products (vanilla beans are risky right now because a-net did something to the supply). I may have missed a few, but those are the ones off the top of my head. Have fun!

Copper Ore isn’t a thing you can make money with.
Currently you can buy them cheap at 16 and sell them at 19.
16×1.15 = 18 so you only have 1 copper profit.

This means that you need to trade 1.000 to only have 10 silver profit.

Best trading advice: don’t believe everything people tell you. Figure it out for yourself. Continue to do what works for you. You will loose money someday – don’t beat yourself up.

Streaky Haddock.4530:

Yes, but how did you figure out these were good to sell? Does the ‘Top most demanded’ items thing actually mean anything?

Resources trades better than crafted products. Sale rate higher for lower tiers.
Also, when you have some spare money, you can detect sale rate by trading some small quantities orders.
Of course, you analyze margin between buy and sell orders first.

Xfuryion.6835:

CdrRogdan.8907:

Items that are good to trade (and I recommend doing more than one at a time, to reduce risk) are:

Strawberries, Raspberries, Chili Peppers, Onions, Oranges, Vanilla Beans, Cotton Scraps, Peppercorn, Copper Ore, Darksteel Ingots, any (non-exotic) bolts.

The turn around for these items is different and the risk in losing money on the trade varies between products (vanilla beans are risky right now because a-net did something to the supply). I may have missed a few, but those are the ones off the top of my head. Have fun!

Copper Ore isn’t a thing you can make money with.
Currently you can buy them cheap at 16 and sell them at 19.
16×1.15 = 18 so you only have 1 copper profit.

This means that you need to trade 1.000 to only have 10 silver profit.

21-17 was better.

@Maxster Good Call. Testing the waters is important. I probably should have mentioned that. Keeping a safety cushion of wealth is also a good idea, and never drop all your earnings into a single product. You can lose money this way, although it is rare, and investing all your resources into a single product could cost you big time.

As another note, be wary of locking yourself into butter and other high demand mystic forge recipe items, as on the 24th these temporary recipes will be removed.

Okay. I’ve heard that prices tend to be higher during the weekends and lower on the weekdays, so should I buy some stuff on wednesday and sell them friday/saturday? Is that worth waiting a few days, though?

While this is possible, and you could perhaps keep a pool of coin aside to perform such trades, I believe most us are discussing custom bidding within the span of a single day.

Find an item with a fast turnover – less than an hour for a stack of 100 lets say, and put a custom bid for the same value as the highest person (or 1 extra copper if you are testing the product), and then sell at the lowest sell value. Make sure this value takes the 15% fee into account!

Over the course of the day, the custom bids may become more or less expensive, just as the lowest sell value will alter. The more attention you can spare to remove buy orders and replace with new ones, and alter your sell price with newly acquired goods, the more money you can make, but if you want a more relaxed approach, you can just buy, sell and be done with it for the day.

Leaving buy orders pending when you go to bed can result in a nasty surprise. I don’t recommend this for anything but heavily traded items.

Check out http://www.gw2spidy.com

There is historical price data for most goods, with more coming everyday! Study the charts, see if there are times that you could have bought and sold the same item and made money. This could be over a day/week or whatever. See if those time are consistent, you maybe able to on Wed and sell on Sat evening and make great money, but look at real data to see if that pattern holds up.

I’m of the opinion that farming items that are currently in high demand would be a better way to get some extra cash than trading. ie find an item that is trading for more than it’s historical trend, go out and get a ton of them, and profit! Although I don’t have personal experience. It also sounds like more fun to me…

Siyeh.2407:

precious information

i love you

on a related note, I’ve messed about selling Jute scraps, Copper Ore etc but I have to agree with Xfury, I’ve only ever really made about 2s from it (from buying ore at 16c and selling it at 20c) and it’s not really worth the time investment.

Streaky Haddock.4530:

i love you

on a related note, I’ve messed about selling Jute scraps, Copper Ore etc but I have to agree with Xfury, I’ve only ever really made about 2s from it (from buying ore at 16c and selling it at 20c) and it’s not really worth the time investment.

And that is why the gap exists!

I love you for grasping basic economics!

perhaps the spidy should get stickied?