Guild Wars 2

I was at a world boss farming session and somebody claimed to get Dawn out of one of the chests. This left me thinking- are the precursors such a significant portion of the cost of a legendary that it would always make sense to craft the legendary rather than sell the precursor? Since the legendary is presumably worth more than the precursor would it make more financial sense to complete the legendary and sell that, and then use those funds to buy what you really wanted?

At the moment Dawn is about the same cost in gold as Gift of fortune. If you have about 1 million karma, a lot of skill points, 500 badges of honour, have world completion and find Ascalonian Catacombs easy, then sure you may as well buy the mats and craft Sunrise. You stand to come out several hundred gold better off doing these things so it’s probably wort the effort unless you only have something like 20% world completion.

In the case of dawn/sunrise u will have around 1400g profit if u craft the legendary and sell. But only if u have the precursor already. Remember u need 1500 gold to invest also.

Eggman.1405:

I was at a world boss farming session and somebody claimed to get Dawn out of one of the chests. This left me thinking- are the precursors such a significant portion of the cost of a legendary that it would always make sense to craft the legendary rather than sell the precursor? Since the legendary is presumably worth more than the precursor would it make more financial sense to complete the legendary and sell that, and then use those funds to buy what you really wanted?

The way the loot system is, your best option is almost always to play GW2 like a job: earn gold with whatever is the most convenient method and buy what it is you really want with that gold.

So in this particular case, craft the Legendary, sell it, and buy whatever it is you really want with the proceeds.

Mityr.1320:

In the case of dawn/sunrise u will have around 1400g profit if u craft the legendary and sell. But only if u have the precursor already. Remember u need 1500 gold to invest also.

You won’t make 1400 gold profit. Even if you get the precursor as a drop, it still has value and can be sold for whatever the going rate is at the time.

if you get dawn as a drop and sell it, you’ll get 850g
if you craft sunrise and sell it, it’ll cost you another 1630g and you’ll get back 2902g (1272g profit)
if you craft a ‘random’ legendary, I would currently suggest meteorlogicus, it’ll cost you 2205g and you’ll get back 2796g (591g profit)
so… (1272g profit) vs. (850+591g=1441g profit)
I would say selling dawn then crafting and selling the highest-profit-legendary would be slightly better than crafting sunrise. of course, that is not always true (like if sunrise was the highest-profit-legendary).

I believe it’s always better to craft a legendary to sell rather than sell a precursor outright as most legendaries, if not all, provide a decent enough profit margin. I think I calculated a 530 gold profit margin between buying up all of the components for Twilight on buy orders and then selling it for whatever the lowest sell order was. Of course patience will net you more gold.

Mystic.5934:

if you get dawn as a drop and sell it, you’ll get 850g
if you craft sunrise and sell it, it’ll cost you another 1630g and you’ll get back 2902g (1272g profit)
if you craft a ‘random’ legendary, I would currently suggest meteorlogicus, it’ll cost you 2205g and you’ll get back 2796g (591g profit)
so… (1272g profit) vs. (850+591g=1441g profit)
I would say selling dawn then crafting and selling the highest-profit-legendary would be slightly better than crafting sunrise. of course, that is not always true (like if sunrise was the highest-profit-legendary).

I’m not sure if my math is off but I don’t understand this.

A buy order for Dawn is currently around 935g, minus 15% trading fee – 795g pure “profit”.

Crafting Sunrise now would involve all the materials, skillpoints, karma etc, I assume everything you can buy is valued at buy prices for 1630g?

So if you sell it now for 2900g, minus tax leaves you with 2465g, minus the above mentioned cost = 835g

40g more but all your karma, skillpoints etc lost?

Yeah and the value of the 431ish skill points is much greater than 40 gold if you convert them properly.

Rouven.7409:

Mystic.5934:

if you get dawn as a drop and sell it, you’ll get 850g
if you craft sunrise and sell it, it’ll cost you another 1630g and you’ll get back 2902g (1272g profit)
if you craft a ‘random’ legendary, I would currently suggest meteorlogicus, it’ll cost you 2205g and you’ll get back 2796g (591g profit)
so… (1272g profit) vs. (850+591g=1441g profit)
I would say selling dawn then crafting and selling the highest-profit-legendary would be slightly better than crafting sunrise. of course, that is not always true (like if sunrise was the highest-profit-legendary).

I’m not sure if my math is off but I don’t understand this.

A buy order for Dawn is currently around 935g, minus 15% trading fee – 795g pure “profit”.

Crafting Sunrise now would involve all the materials, skillpoints, karma etc, I assume everything you can buy is valued at buy prices for 1630g?

So if you sell it now for 2900g, minus tax leaves you with 2465g, minus the above mentioned cost = 835g

40g more but all your karma, skillpoints etc lost?

He either wrote the wrong number down or used sell prices. There’s more that enough gap between buy and sell orders for components to net you more than 40 gold in profit.

Rouven.7409:

Mystic.5934:

if you get dawn as a drop and sell it, you’ll get 850g
if you craft sunrise and sell it, it’ll cost you another 1630g and you’ll get back 2902g (1272g profit)
if you craft a ‘random’ legendary, I would currently suggest meteorlogicus, it’ll cost you 2205g and you’ll get back 2796g (591g profit)
so… (1272g profit) vs. (850+591g=1441g profit)
I would say selling dawn then crafting and selling the highest-profit-legendary would be slightly better than crafting sunrise. of course, that is not always true (like if sunrise was the highest-profit-legendary).

I’m not sure if my math is off but I don’t understand this.

A buy order for Dawn is currently around 935g, minus 15% trading fee – 795g pure “profit”.

Crafting Sunrise now would involve all the materials, skillpoints, karma etc, I assume everything you can buy is valued at buy prices for 1630g?

So if you sell it now for 2900g, minus tax leaves you with 2465g, minus the above mentioned cost = 835g

40g more but all your karma, skillpoints etc lost?

1630g is the cost to buy all non-precursor materials you would need to craft sunrise. if you include the precursor, the total cost would be 2565g. then you would get back 2907g for a 342g profit.
yes, all materials use buy order prices and all sales use sell listing prices. karma and SP and map completion were not added at all.
you wouldn’t sell for 2900g. you would sell for 3414g. 2907g is how much you get back after tax. (I think I read the calculator wrong and wrote 2902 instead…).

except OP was asking “if I find dawn, should I sell it or craft the legendary”. he was not asking “how much profit from crafting a legendary”. re-reading OP’s post, I realize I also miss-read it as “if I find dawn, should I craft it into a legendary and sell it or sell it then craft another legendary?” sometimes titles aren’t directly involved in posts :P

so, let’s answer OP directly:
if you find dawn, you can:
sell dawn for 850g profit
craft sunrise for an additional 1630g cost + account-bound stuff and sell it for a 1272g profit (422g more)
not all precursors and legendaries would be more profitable to make the legendary. If there is a larger spread between buy and sell I would except selling the precursor to be more profitable.

Ok, well I would not calculate with sell prices, but that explains it, thanks Mystic.

My answer to the OP would be, calculate the difference as Mystic has done and then appraise the difference in value for you.

This includes world exploration, acquiring karma, other options to convert over 300 skillpoints to gold etc.

Fastest and easiest in my opinion would be to sell the precursor and buy the one you would like (if possible). You might also want to factor in if you have some unique materials already – be it silver doubloons or charged lodestones etc.

Edit: Maybe I’m thinking too complicated since you don’t want to craft a second legendary but buy it outright? Would all depend on which pre drops for you I guess.