Guild Wars 2

Crafting actually works almost as well as it theoretically can. But, you say, crafting isn’t working! And you have company…

“crafting, in GW2, just isn’t a viable way to make money.”, " I love crafting but it does not pay.", “its well known that crafting the items you need as you level up is not possible.”, “Is crafting broken?”

You can make money crafting, even as you level up. You can craft way beyond your level, so that you can always craft your own armor. I make money crafting, and you could make money if you crafted the same way. You may not enjoy it , and it may be difficult for you to make money crafting the way you like… but you, or anyone, can make money. However, making money takes effort and time, it’s not the simple button pressing of basic crafting.

1. In economic theory, markets with good information are efficient. Opportunities to make more than a modest profit will be short-lived. That’s mainly true here — a given item will not remain profitable for very long. If you want to make decent money, you must watch markets, and make items when you see short supply and profit. The shortages will appear on the market tracking websites, and then the shortage disappears, along with profit. You have to price your item to sell before that happens, and try to take only a small loss when it does not sell in time. You also have to find the profitable situation before it appears on the tracking websites….

We expect this from an efficient market economy with good information — small or fleeting profits. Really profitable areas will disappear quickly. That’s just how a good market works. So, you can’t just buy materials, make whatever you want, and profit.
Markets are dynamic. You won’t make a good amount of gold unless you are willing to be nimble and constantly search for market opportunities. Opportunities are not going to wait for you to get off of work, or for you to sleep. Your competitors in the market are nimble, and are constantly watching the shifts in the market. If the competitive environment doesn’t suit you, then you shouldn’t expect to craft for money.

2. Parts of the GW2 market are not yet efficient. There are lots of places to save or make money while leveling up that are ignored. People leveling up may go for speed, and make batches of the least expensive thing. They dump the result on the market at a big loss, so those things (usually intermediate pieces that take one or two basic mats) are for sale far below manufacturing cost. This has persisted at most of the levels of the armor/weapons crafts [and even in cooking), so the market definitely isn’t all working smoothly. Finding the discounted materials and parts takes player time, just like finding the profitable items. For many players, it’s not worth the time — they’re interested in getting to 80, as fast as possible.

3. Have you noticed that, as you level up, there is often no market for fine and masterpiece items? A key raw material, the fine drop (bone, totem, etc), gets used to make rare items. The rare item market can be profitable, and it looks like demand from that market drives up fine drop prices. Like many profitable markets in the real world, there’s a barrier to entry — the recipes to make the rare part cost karma. In every tier except the first, many of the rare items can be made for a profit. (There are no rare items in the first tier).

“But this is not the crafting I was looking for! Too much playing the market!” What would you say to a player that wanted to compete in PvP without learning how to dodge, or without optimizing their build? If you want to compete, there are some things you have to do. If you want to make money in a market economy, you have to ‘play the market’ or ‘do finance’. Period. If you don’t, someone else will, they’ll undercut your prices, and you won’t make money. You have to look for cheap sources of raw materials or intermediate materials and you have to adapt to market conditions as they change. You have to avoid making items that are in oversupply, and make the ones that are not. That’s how people make profit in competitive markets.

— continued —

Before we get into more detail on making money, let’s look at some common complaints/solutions:
1. Crafting for xp ruins the crafting market. " Remove exp gain from crafting so people are crafting for the purpose of having access to the high end crafted gear."
ANet tries to balance XP/gold/time spent between PvP, PvE, and crafting. Taking XP off the reward side for crafting will increase the gold reward, but it will force PvE onto the people who want to mainly craft. That would be bad for the market success of the game.

2. Crafting is too easy, so there’s too much competition. “Make crafting more time consuming so people cant craft max gear after 1-2 hours of grinding the lower lvls.”
A big goal of the game design is to remove or lessen grinding. ANet abandon one of their big selling points? Won’t happen.

3. Crafting is too simple, and there’s no risk. “Add a fail chance to crafting where u can loose one of the components used for failing to craft said item.”
This will raise the cost of crafting items, overall, but won’t change the profitability in any appreciable way. (study the concept of expected value in probability theory if you don’t understand why).

4. Crafted items aren’t unique or special enough for players to want them. “Critical Crafting chance which gives the item 2 upgrade slots instead of one or some extra visual on the item (or for food multiple use for one item, extended time or better stats).”
This tends to introduce grinding; players generally don’t want to buy the non-critical items. Especially true in PvP games, where things like slots matter. An extra visual or alternate skin might be workable.

Now the details:

Use offers Buy your materials using offers. There is usually a 15% or more gap between the offer price and the sell price. If you pay the sell price, you’re losing a big chunk of your profit. Use offers, and have patience.

Compare costs Compare the costs of the raw materials, the processed materials, and the parts for your products. Figure out which combination of raw materials, processed materials, and parts is the least expensive… and watch the market for deals while you’re doing this. When you’re calculating costs, use a bit above the highest offer price. For high-volume markets, you can even use 1c above. I often make an items with some purchased parts, some processed materials, and even raw materials.

Find the dumped goods Figure out which parts are being mass-produced to level up. Those parts are usually for sale at a huge discount over their material costs. Never make those parts yourself!! Look not just at things made from common raw materials, but also the inscriptions, insignia, and filigreed gems. Some of them get dumped, too.

Look for anomalies Market prices that don’t make sense are often opportunities… just maybe not right where you are looking. If you see an anomaly, think about it. For instance, most parts are not profitable… but some are, almost. Those are the parts that are getting used, for making items that are sold for a profit.

Watch the markets for opportunity You’re in competition with every other crafter. The high-profit opportunities will disappear quickly when they do show up, so be ready to jump.

Look at the distribution of bids and offers The pattern of bids and offers for an item – how many goods are offered, at each price — can give you hints about the future direction of that item’s profitability. They will also tell you how active the market is, and therefore how likely it’ll be that you can sell your item profitably. Thin markets (few sales) are risky, but can have very high profit margins. Busy markets are safer, but there’s more competition so the profits are less.

Ideally, we would like to be able to make as much money crafting as you could farming dungeons, with as much effort. However, at present it’s more efficient to farm for money than to craft, at least if you’re level 80. So even though you can make money crafting, you’ll be doing it because you enjoy it, not just to make money.

Or then just simply play the TP instead of trying to make crafting profitable. :P

There are several items going ±10 silver (almost) daily.

I’ll just throw one more in the mix:

Profitable crafting may involve either the mystic forge and/or a salvage kit at one or more of the steps.

Playing the market is more profitable at present because so many are so willing to craft at a monetary loss. I dispute the notion that this means this part of the market is “not efficient”. What it means to me is that the crafters who speed-level and dump things at a monetary loss simply value the experience points and the time taken acquiring them more than Daulnay does. :p

It is an error to suppose that one’s own valuations are objectively more valid than those of others.

Those of us who value the money more also win, as they provide us with materials and money in exchange for their points.

I’m actually really enjoying the crafting system. My Spreadsheet of Ultimate Domination is coming along nicely.

i dont understand this post, as far as i understand crafting is 100% profit when done the right way.

erigais.6805:

i dont understand this post, as far as i understand crafting is 100% profit when done the right way.

Depends what you mean by “the right” way. If you do not count the time you spend on gathering mats AND if you get them (aka grind) yourself + you spend a little time watching current TP trends you can make some gold. In most cases, however, the price of mats alone can be higher than an item made from them.

A lot of people tend to forget about this.

Ahh, I believe this game of ‘Efficient Market Simulator’ must have come from the same shelf in my local GAME shop as Farming Simulator, Forklift Simulator and Bus Simulator (trust me, they actually exist!)…I didn’t buy them either…now, as for Smack things in the Head with a Sword Simulator, that I DID buy! I do admit to getting a mild buzz from undercutting the majority on thr TP with some green/blue I found but crafting for profit seems like a second job tbh!

Make rare gear only and sell halfway between the buyer and seller prices. If you follow the above stuff the OP said, You’ll always make money on rare gear regardless of its level.

this is such a stupid discussion. if you do it right your crafting should be 100% profit. If you buy from the TP to craft YES YOU ARE LOSING MONEY. I can make gold ez on any of my crafts simply by going out and farming the materials. farm all of it, even ectos. Just do fractals, salvage the rares turn around make profit with crafting. yes it might take a while to make a few items. is it worth the time? who knows but the fact of the matter is you will not make a quick buck off craft. you can make a slow buck but its 100% proft.

erigais.6805:

this is such a stupid discussion. if you do it right your crafting should be 100% profit. If you buy from the TP to craft YES YOU ARE LOSING MONEY. I can make gold ez on any of my crafts simply by going out and farming the materials. farm all of it, even ectos. Just do fractals, salvage the rares turn around make profit with crafting. yes it might take a while to make a few items. is it worth the time? who knows but the fact of the matter is you will not make a quick buck off craft. you can make a slow buck but its 100% proft.

Bartas already replied you 10 days ago, you spent time gathering, it’s not 100% profit. The “profit” you get is from your time spent farming materials. You can sell materials for gold directly without crafting and in many cases you get more gold from just selling the materials than crafting.

Ok tried this yesterday. Made 1 exotic sword (berserker one) and tried to sell it on TP. I gathered all mats myself.
mats needed:
- 6 ori inglots for blade/hilt
- inscription: 5 vials of powerful blood, 5 globs, 5 ori plated dowels (15 more ori inglots and 10 ancient wood planks)

sword sold for roughly 3 gold minus tax and I did not sold it to highest bidder.
mats alone would cost about 3,5 to 4 gold with current TP pricing. Oh and I needed to salvage 3 rares to get those 5 globs (was lucky I suppose) which I could sell for almost 75s to 1g alone.

Interesting? Basically crafting lvl 80 exotics is a loss unless you are able to craft something uber rare but then mats alone would cost you way more also.

Althoght most would result in a profit loss there is still a few ways to make a profit. 3 days ago, for example, I bought something on tp and use it to craft a ton of things at 1/2 the price on tp. I probably got 3x profit. But I am just saving it.

To me there’s two primary causes:

1) commerce tax. This isn’t a sales tax, it’s a commerce tax. If you list something in GW2, it has a chance not selling and you lose money because you’re paying a commerce tax. This also means that you want to list low in order to ensure your thing sells, you are punished if you do not, so people try to sell very low and prices are squashed. In real life, the reason people use sales tax on the person buying the item is to not punish people for contributing to the economy which is what is happening in Guild Wars 2. You are punished for contributing to the economy.

2) No scarcity. In lots of games, its either somewhat difficult to level up crafting, or crafters can specialize in order to create some scarcity, which raises prices. Final Fantasy XI had both in large amounts. Crafting was very hard to level up so if you had a decent level crafting, you were one of the few who could make certain things, so there was going to be a bit of profit there. Also, there were crafts that required two different combinations to make, so even if you had high level bone craft for instance, you may not be competing directly with all other bonecrafters. WoW on the other hand, uses a gated system for some crafts. You have to do dailies for tokens that you redeem for recipes. That means that not every jewelcrafter will have the same recipes as you so there is some built in scarity. They used to also let people specialize in certain crafts, like a smith could be weapon or armor, then sword, mace, axe etc, but they kind of went away from that and back more towards token gating to create scarcity.

In guild wars 2, it’s even worse because you have all servers on one AH so you’re not competing against the 100 other max level smiths on your server, you’re competing against 10,000 smiths with access to the same recipes all looking for that one thing that might eek out a slight profit, that means that your market is very efficient (more people looking for profit) and any chance of profit is much more slim. Combine that with taking a chance PUNISHES you, and you’re generally going to lose money crafting.

Rukh.9287:

To me there’s two primary causes:

1) commerce tax. This isn’t a sales tax, it’s a commerce tax. If you list something in GW2, it has a chance not selling and you lose money because you’re paying a commerce tax. This also means that you want to list low in order to ensure your thing sells, you are punished if you do not, so people try to sell very low and prices are squashed. In real life, the reason people use sales tax on the person buying the item is to not punish people for contributing to the economy which is what is happening in Guild Wars 2. You are punished for contributing to the economy.

2) No scarcity. In lots of games, its either somewhat difficult to level up crafting, or crafters can specialize in order to create some scarcity, which raises prices. Final Fantasy XI had both in large amounts. Crafting was very hard to level up so if you had a decent level crafting, you were one of the few who could make certain things, so there was going to be a bit of profit there. Also, there were crafts that required two different combinations to make, so even if you had high level bone craft for instance, you may not be competing directly with all other bonecrafters. WoW on the other hand, uses a gated system for some crafts. You have to do dailies for tokens that you redeem for recipes. That means that not every jewelcrafter will have the same recipes as you so there is some built in scarity. They used to also let people specialize in certain crafts, like a smith could be weapon or armor, then sword, mace, axe etc, but they kind of went away from that and back more towards token gating to create scarcity.

In guild wars 2, it’s even worse because you have all servers on one AH so you’re not competing against the 100 other max level smiths on your server, you’re competing against 10,000 smiths with access to the same recipes all looking for that one thing that might eek out a slight profit, that means that your market is very efficient (more people looking for profit) and any chance of profit is much more slim. Combine that with taking a chance PUNISHES you, and you’re generally going to lose money crafting.

I make 10-15gold an hour from crafting

Personally I would be happy if you continued to gain experience on your char after 80 from crafting. It may not sound like alot, but as an “amateur crafter” the extra skill points you could gain would make all the difference.

I don’t believe people who claim consistent gold income from crafting because from my observations the market is not static. Id love to see someone actually make gold from being a chef because I outright don’t believe that is possible. Essentially though, I believe any major profit from crafting would be more from power trading than the actual crafting. The only other way it can pay is producing rares/exotics and putting them in the mystic forge and playing the gambling game for precursors.

Ireniicus.2167:

I make 10-15gold an hour from crafting

Judging from your name (old Baldur’s Gate char) you are not 12yo so pls be serious. By “make” you probably mean you sell for that amount but it is hard to believe that you actually get 10-15g profit from crafting. Anything that sells for more that 2 silver require mats that are worth bit over 2 silver (for common stuff) and anything exotic is usually priced less than mats used.

As has been mentioned many times crafting with mats you obtain by yourself is not free. You have to spend the time and resources (WP travel, repair fees) and you pay the tax for listing and selling stuff on TP.
If you buy mats from TP it is even worse. For example, you buy mats for 2 silver and sell stuff for 2.50 (if you are lucky and the market demands your product which is usually not the case), you pay the 15% tax which cuts your income by roughly 37c so your real profit is 13c. I wonder how much of that stuff you should make to make 10g profit per hour even if people wanted to buy such masses of goods for your price.

With rares/exotics it is even worse just because there is no huge market for those. Best bet is to make weapons as they do not require additional mats from NPC and even then making Rare sword lvl 80 costs bit more than mats needed. In fact, if you are lucky, you can make lvl 80 rare sword, salvage it and get back 1 ecto, 1 mithril and sell those FOR MORE than the actual sword.

Bartas.4908:

Ireniicus.2167:

I make 10-15gold an hour from crafting

Judging from your name (old Baldur’s Gate char) you are not 12yo so pls be serious. By “make” you probably mean you sell for that amount but it is hard to believe that you actually get 10-15g profit from crafting. Anything that sells for more that 2 silver require mats that are worth bit over 2 silver (for common stuff) and anything exotic is usually priced less than mats used.

As has been mentioned many times crafting with mats you obtain by yourself is not free. You have to spend the time and resources (WP travel, repair fees) and you pay the tax for listing and selling stuff on TP.
If you buy mats from TP it is even worse. For example, you buy mats for 2 silver and sell stuff for 2.50 (if you are lucky and the market demands your product which is usually not the case), you pay the 15% tax which cuts your income by roughly 37c so your real profit is 13c. I wonder how much of that stuff you should make to make 10g profit per hour even if people wanted to buy such masses of goods for your price.

With rares/exotics it is even worse just because there is no huge market for those. Best bet is to make weapons as they do not require additional mats from NPC and even then making Rare sword lvl 80 costs bit more than mats needed. In fact, if you are lucky, you can make lvl 80 rare sword, salvage it and get back 1 ecto, 1 mithril and sell those FOR MORE than the actual sword.

I reiterate. I spend 3-4 hours crafting each day. I could not hope to gather the materials I need to consume so that leaves just one place.

I have 7 of the 8 crafting professions maxed (my wife has one I do not so yes I am old 40+)

I make 10-15 gold an hour from crafting. It is boring and certainly not for everybody, but I can watch VoDs, TV, listen to music, talk to my wife whilst doing it.

the length of the first 2 posts is exactly why people dont make money from crafting. its soooooo much time and effort that for ‘most’ people and by most i mean the real majority of mmo’s typical mums, dads, fulltime workers/students etc etc its not worth it. most people dont want to look at different items, investigate trends, fiddle with the filters, check the trade sites.

the simple issue is crafting makes too many items to level up, meanwhile the world constantly throws crap at you that nobody wants for more then 4-5 levels at most. there a few niche markets due to lazyness or sudden supply changes most the time and thats it.

Other games have soulbound items from crafting. The profit is not so much money profit as it is the personal benefit from making things you can’t buy.

Gear crafters get the option to create their own unique gear sets as opposed to buying them that are usually superior in some aspect such as stats or unique attribute or ease of creation requiring few mats for good gear.

Artificers and chefs get buffs only they can use.

Rainzar.6905:

the length of the first 2 posts is exactly why people dont make money from crafting. its soooooo much time and effort that for ‘most’ people and by most i mean the real majority of mmo’s typical mums, dads, fulltime workers/students etc etc its not worth it. most people dont want to look at different items, investigate trends, fiddle with the filters, check the trade sites.

the simple issue is crafting makes too many items to level up, meanwhile the world constantly throws crap at you that nobody wants for more then 4-5 levels at most. there a few niche markets due to lazyness or sudden supply changes most the time and thats it.

I’m the typical dad with a (more than) fulltime job you’re talking about, I think. I can game in the evening, after the kids have gone to bed and I’ve spent quality time with my wife.

You see, I always thought like you, but a few days ago, I found out the OP is right. Crafting is easy, you just gotta spend one or two evenings studying the market instead of the stuff you’d otherwise do. After that, you’ll have at least found a few profitable things you can craft.

I went from having having 1g to 20g in the last 4 evenings I played. Having restocked whatever I used from my own mats, those 19g are net profit. I did this selling only 5 products from two professions. Me? I’m terrible at math, and I suck in economics. But you don’t need to be that smart to understand the markets. ALL you have to know, and really, this is the crux of crafting, is to place buy orders at the right time. Look at the graphs on GW2 spidy, it’s not hard to figure out what a good buy price is.

In the end, you’ll gain a ton of coin which allows you to buy whatever you like afterwards. The drop rates are completely kitten right now, as you will have noticed. “Farming” materials in the long run is boring, takes a lot of time, and is not necessary once you take 2 evenings to study the market. After that, you can craft what you see is profitable, you’ll learn when to buy low and when sell high, and spend most of your time in this game doing the stuff you really want to do. Help others, if you like to, do WvW without ever bothering about drops (other than badges), do sPvP, Tournaments, or whatever floats your boat.

It’s not as hard as you think. Two evenings playing around with crafting and studying GW2 spidy is all it took for me. Two.

erigais.6805:

this is such a stupid discussion. if you do it right your crafting should be 100% profit. If you buy from the TP to craft YES YOU ARE LOSING MONEY. I can make gold ez on any of my crafts simply by going out and farming the materials. farm all of it, even ectos. Just do fractals, salvage the rares turn around make profit with crafting. yes it might take a while to make a few items. is it worth the time? who knows but the fact of the matter is you will not make a quick buck off craft. you can make a slow buck but its 100% proft.

This is a common misconception for two reasons.

1. You can only use your time in so many ways. Farming materials is wayyyyyyyyyyyy less profitable than buying a ton of materials at a low cost, and process them into something which is profitable. I think the trick of succesful crafting is not about profit margin. It’s about volume. Most products with a high profit margin do not sell quickly. However, a lot of products with a low profit margin sell quickly. Usually, it’s more profitable to craft one low profit item 1000 times, than to craft another item that has a high profit margin. One thousand times 20 copper is still 2 gold. It’s boring, yes. But it’s not hard by any standard.

2. One method (crafting) does not exclude the other (farming). Once you know what you should craft, you just craft it and put it on the TP for the price you want. It will sell. Once you’re done crafting, you do the other stuff. Fractals, WvW, whatever you like. You can even farm materials if that’s what you really want.

Buttercup.5871:

erigais.6805:

this is such a stupid discussion. if you do it right your crafting should be 100% profit. If you buy from the TP to craft YES YOU ARE LOSING MONEY. I can make gold ez on any of my crafts simply by going out and farming the materials. farm all of it, even ectos. Just do fractals, salvage the rares turn around make profit with crafting. yes it might take a while to make a few items. is it worth the time? who knows but the fact of the matter is you will not make a quick buck off craft. you can make a slow buck but its 100% proft.

This is a common misconception for two reasons.

1. You can only use your time in so many ways. Farming materials is wayyyyyyyyyyyy less profitable than buying a ton of materials at a low cost, and process them into something which is profitable. I think the trick of succesful crafting is not about profit margin. It’s about volume. Most products with a high profit margin do not sell quickly. However, a lot of products with a low profit margin sell quickly. Usually, it’s more profitable to craft one low profit item 1000 times, than to craft another item that has a high profit margin. One thousand times 20 copper is still 2 gold. It’s boring, yes. But it’s not hard by any standard.

2. One method (crafting) does not exclude the other (farming). Once you know what you should craft, you just craft it and put it on the TP for the price you want. It will sell. Once you’re done crafting, you do the other stuff. Fractals, WvW, whatever you like. You can even farm materials if that’s what you really want.

I agree with buttercup