Guild Wars 2

Crafting is not profitable because crafting materials prices are inflated in the trading post. And also from having to buy expensive bound crafting materials from npc’s.

With crafting being such a big part of this game. Players should be encouraged to make some profit (extra 10% to 15%) from crafting items and selling them in the TP. And less profit from just selling the crafting materials.

Some might say this is supple and demand. But in the real world labor is factored into the price of products sold.

Even after reaching 400 crafting their should still be insensitive to make things of all levels for a small profit.

If people end up making to much money. New gold sinks can be added to the game.

Some items that you craft are profitable, you just have to check the price of the mats and how much the item you making is currently selling for.

Every item crafted with farmed items should be a little profitable. Over just selling the crafting materials.

yeah like 1s over profit but then that gets taken way via tax = GG

crafting never makes you rich in this game.

it is a leveling tool, especially chef…..

I view crafting as a major gold sink and something that exists for entertainment only. There might be obscure little ways to profit from it eventually (even counting the cost of leveling crafting enough to take advantage of those ways) but for the most part, nah, it’s a gold sink.

Maybe dungeons should be less profitable. Then crafting can replace dungeons as the number 1 way to make gold.

First, there are enough crafters in the game so there will never be large profit margins on a given item for any length of time. Once crafters find a profitable market, they move into it and the price drops. Just competition at work in the virtual economy. Second, crafted items compete with items from karma vendors and items available for dungeon tokens. This provides alternatives to the crafted items and thus lowers demand. For level 80 exotics, the dungeon tokens are easier to get than gold, at least for me. I can complete 3 to 5 paths in the Ascolonian Catacombs and get one piece of level 80 exotic armor. For me this is quicker and more enjoyable than finding the crafting materials or farming gold.

Not sure what you all are doing but i make bank off of crafting weapons. I farm what i need and buy the rest and still come out on top. 45 gold in 2 days and bought my T3 Sylvari Helm and boots.

Funny I seem to be making gold from crafting. I gather my own materials and I “unlock” every recipe in a craft just so I can see it in my list. I make exotics in jewellry for example and can sell some of them fo 1-2+ gold each. What are you doing wrong exactly?

So your saying crafting is only profitable at 400. I only have cooking at 400 now.

what? Why?

That makes no sense, especially since it’s so easy to max a crafting level.

If that were the case people would just buy materials on the trading post, craft stuff with them, and then sell the items.

I don’t play as much as you.

You CAN earn money by crafting, but you need to study the market and see what items are selling high at the time, then crafting those items to meet demand. Rare/Exotic items are usually the ones to go for, but profit margins can be tight depending on competition. For people like me who don’t really have the time/inclination to watch the Trading Post, it’s much simpler to know what the ingredients/materials that sell for a decent/good price (e.g. Copper Ore, Vanilla Beans, Powerful Blood) and go out and farm those instead (or in my case, just slowly accumulate them through normal play and sell them once you have a stack).

Basically, crafting in GW2 is not really intended to be a wealth generator for the player. It is intended primarily as a gold sink, a way for players to gain XP, and for the thrill of “making stuff”.

You can make money crafting.
You can hold on to the mats till the items that you can do get a good price at the TP.

However, there is an easier way to make money from crafting, and that is to make money from other people who are crafting.

My method is simply use the mats I need to level, and sell the rest on tp.
Chasing my personal story, as well as some hearts I needed for a particular map completion, while farming all the resources I encountered yielded some nice stacks of mats. Iron ore sells nice, soft wood logs sells nice.
At the end of a run like that, which isn’t long I’m at least 1 gold better than before that, and I enjoyed it. If you completed the map, there’s even more money and a stack of 40 of a resource, which if is a tailoring resource, you’ll get more money selling these.

Also, while going for map completion, I gather mats which I don’t need, and selling them wouldn’t be profitful, in which case, I use them to level my alts’ crafting.
I have an alt at level 11 that never left it’s capital city. I don’t even have skill points to fill in the slots.

grinding Orr maps for completion yields ton of mats, all of which sell nice. I gathered mats and rares for several pieces while farming for my own knight’s gear.

Onshidesigns.1069:

So your saying crafting is only profitable at 400. I only have cooking at 400 now.

I would say about 300 if you choose to make the right stuff and choose the right profession but the profit is very low at 300 (a few silver but it can go towards levelling 300 to 400).

IMO a Cook will never make any money, try a Weaponsmith or Armourer, I make the most from my Weaponsmith but I only make the 375 recipes to do so because the mats are so easy to find in world (salvage for globs of ectoplasm to sell), I think there are better ways to make money on crafting I just can’t be bothered to do anything else I prefer playing the game (Events, etc).

You guys should check out gw2spidy.com. Under crafting, you’ll see the list of all craftable items and how much you can profit (or not) from them.

LOL Seriously dude ??
No Profit ?
Then how i have turned 20 G to 104 G in 2 weeks ?

Also if you craft rares using materials you have farmed you can salvage them for ecto. I so this all the time. Spend a few hours at cursed shore and I’m able to craft rares without spending anything. Ectos are climbing in price or save them for your own use.

There is a range, no doubt. Crafting is totally worth it when making exotics…will save you tons of coin. But from levels 1-60 ish…its sometimes less expensive to buy armor and weapons than it is to craft them and have to buy mats that you are short on.

Tell that to my weaponsmith guildie who has made 50g+ in the past week or 2.

As long as crafting professions give normal XP they will never be broadly profitable. They’re used to powerlevel characters.

Everyone who says they make signficant money crafting are really just saying they make money playing the TP. Which is certainly the way to make money in this game.

Auesis.7301:

Tell that to my weaponsmith guildie who has made 50g+ in the past week or 2.

50 gold in 2 weeks seems excessive to me. So he must be making exotics and if he is, he’s gotta be buyin mats. I’d bet his net is a lot less than 50 gold.

They are plenty profitable……shock farm the mats yourself, if you are buying your mats on trading post your doing it wrong.

I made 13 gold yesterday so it’s plenty profitable.

I love the responses. Some argue that it’s for leveling only and not to generate player wealth. Others are making gold hand over fist. One thing for sure is that crafting has not found its home in GW2. And, having supported myself well in another MMO through farming/crafting, I can tell you the farming/crafting thing just is not happening in GW2 at the current time. What it takes to farm mats is not even practical given the crafting recipes if you are not playing 12 hours a day.

Crafting is probably the best and easiest way to make gold since 2 days.

Raine.1394:

I love the responses. Some argue that it’s for leveling only and not to generate player wealth. Others are making gold hand over fist. One thing for sure is that crafting has not found its home in GW2. And, having supported myself well in another MMO through farming/crafting, I can tell you the farming/crafting thing just is not happening in GW2 at the current time. What it takes to farm mats is not even practical given the crafting recipes if you are not playing 12 hours a day.

If you aren’t farming on a team you are doing it wrong… MUCH better and more frequent drops of rarer items when you work with a farming group. Plus its faster and you get MORE loot… because you kill more things in a shorter period of time. Also… knowing where to farm for what, and not over farming it is really important to avoid the DR.

I haven’t leveled a craft yet… but I farm with a guildie who is a crafter and have him use my mats to craft stuff for the tp… I’ve made good sums of gold this way (upwards of 4 and 5 gold a day for an hour or two of farming), and so has he…

karma.8763:

They are plenty profitable……shock farm the mats yourself, if you are buying your mats on trading post your doing it wrong.

Making assumptions again, huh? I farm and harvest all the time. But there is no way to farm enough to make multiple exotics on a regular basis without having to supplement from the TP from time to time.

Also, if you had bothered to read it…I never said he didn’t make 50 g…I said I suspected he netted less than 50 g.

Raf.1078:

Auesis.7301:

Tell that to my weaponsmith guildie who has made 50g+ in the past week or 2.

50 gold in 2 weeks seems excessive to me. So he must be making exotics and if he is, he’s gotta be buyin mats. I’d bet his net is a lot less than 50 gold.

Actually, he makes mithril weapons, buying literally every single mat. Hundreds upon thousands of them in massive batches. Small silver or copper profit per weapon, but massive net gain.

Regizer.1763:

Some items that you craft are profitable, you just have to check the price of the mats and how much the item you making is currently selling for.

I don’t see anything in my list of jewelery items I can craft that would likely be more profitable to make and sell than to just sell the mats. Nothing requiring ectos is worth making because the ectos themselves are worth so much. Even upgrades don’t to be worth making because the tiny bit they sell for above the cost of selling the mats gets eaten up by the tax.

And I can’t wait until most people are at 400 in crafting because even the common materials prices will collapse as leveling the skill is really the only reason people are buying most of them now anyway, with a few exceptions like ghost peppers and ori.

Rare Crafted stuff is always worth 5-50x its value used up to make it. Crafted rares are lv 35 (tier 2) 50 (tier 3) 65 (tier 4) and 80 (tier 5) exotics are always 80 (tier 6)

Most of the reason even lv 35 stuff is so high in price, is that its because of the skin. Tailor and Armorsmith have the Masquerade and Gladiator skins respectively which are obtainable as low as wool and iron material levels. People will still pay upwards 50 silver for a masquerade skin as low as lv 35. This idea still sticks for weapons too. The best skins are the rare level.

As for jewelry its just because its rare level and has the best stats for that point in time.

At least for exotics, every time I price check crafting items it results in small or large loss of profit. I leveled my crafts for my legendary, which is probably their only real benefit right now.

Paulytnz.7619:

Funny I seem to be making gold from crafting. I gather my own materials and I “unlock” every recipe in a craft just so I can see it in my list. I make exotics in jewellry for example and can sell some of them fo 1-2+ gold each. What are you doing wrong exactly?

And I made 25g selling orichalcum ingots to people like you yesterday. I still have the various crystal orbs I got mining the ori so I haven’t even bothered getting all the profit out of my minimal time investment (the joys of having 6 level 80 alts smirk)

You can’t just say “Item X sells for 1-2g, so I made 1-2g”. You have to look at how much it cost for you to level your crafting to 400, how much you could have made just selling the crafting mats, etc. It’s that opportunity cost people forget about.

That said, I have all 8 professions at 400. Not because I had any dreams of getting rich crafting, but because I wanted to. I also use some crafting on new alts to effectively trade gold for XP speed leveling for 5-6 levels at a time at points in a toon’s development that I just don’t feel like hacking through (early levels on mesmer, mid levels on guardian, etc).

So uhh.. did i mention www.gw2spidy.com to check your profits on a per item basis? When i checked about a day ago, the most profitable exotic weapon gets you 80s profit if you buy all the mats. Mithril weapons can get you around 10s profit, but you can make them faster if you want to gather the mithril and wood.

Xavori.3768:

Paulytnz.7619:

Funny I seem to be making gold from crafting. I gather my own materials and I “unlock” every recipe in a craft just so I can see it in my list. I make exotics in jewellry for example and can sell some of them fo 1-2+ gold each. What are you doing wrong exactly?

And I made 25g selling orichalcum ingots to people like you yesterday. I still have the various crystal orbs I got mining the ori so I haven’t even bothered getting all the profit out of my minimal time investment (the joys of having 6 level 80 alts smirk)

You can’t just say “Item X sells for 1-2g, so I made 1-2g”. You have to look at how much it cost for you to level your crafting to 400, how much you could have made just selling the crafting mats, etc. It’s that opportunity cost people forget about.

That said, I have all 8 professions at 400. Not because I had any dreams of getting rich crafting, but because I wanted to. I also use some crafting on new alts to effectively trade gold for XP speed leveling for 5-6 levels at a time at points in a toon’s development that I just don’t feel like hacking through (early levels on mesmer, mid levels on guardian, etc).

Like I said I buy NOTHING so I don’t know how you sold anything to people “like ME” yesterday. Basically I play the game for fun and gather along the way. I play a char and unlock his world complete to 100%. Today should be my third char to reach 100% world complete. I gather from resource nodes along the way as I am unlocking each map so I am buying NOTHING it is ALL profit. Also as I go along these maps I do get more resources than I need sometimes so I am also selling some of these extra stacks for more extra coin.

Sure I could probably sell the materials for more, I have always known that but like yourelf I want all crafting professions at level 400; but perhaps unlike you I want every recipe unlocked and don’t just “power lvl” the craft skill to get it to 400 as fast as I can so that my combat also gets a fast boost. In fact I would be VERY happy if they removed the combat exp gain from crafting all together.

On the 1st day of the 3 day early release of the game I made 8 characters, among these char’s I have every race and class covered and from early on I also had it planned which of these characters would have which crafting skill.

You CAN make money from crafting. You CAN’T expect to make a lot of money and/or fast without either A: gathering your own materials or B: if going down the buying matrials road – doing research on the market to see where the profit is.

People who expect to join the game, go buy mats and then make whatever they want and then expect to sell that item 100% of the time for a profit really are clueless about how these kinds of games work. You have to take into account supply and demand along with how many other crafters you are competing with for your sales as well as other variables I can’t even be bothered going into. The “I want to craft and always make money from it” type of gameplay just does not usually work in a MMO of this type. It can and usually does in single player games that actually have crafting in them which are usually few and far in between. We could say that with the philosophy of how this game was advertised in the early days it could be or should be a system where you can craft for FUN and ALWAYS make cash from it, but alas Anet decided to not go down this path and followed pretty much every other game out there who has crafting in them.

Now that’s all I have to say about that lol.