16 replies to this topic

[Thuley]

I only have one craft to 400 (leatherworking) and looking back at it I am not sure why I even did that as I finished it after I was already 80.

In the past couple of days I have been looking into the feasibility of adding another craft but just couldn't come up with any valid reason to do so.

I realize that characters can gain 10 levels from leveling one craft to 400.  I don't care for alts, and my main reached 80 too fast already so that 10 level benefit doesn't apply to me.

Then I look at the TP and I see that the most profit is in crafting 400 skill items, but the individual profit per sale is like 20-25s if the item sells.  So I have to "deposit" 1.25g (cost of mats) + spend my time figuring out what mats I need, buy them, craft the item, and then put it on the TP and hope I don't get instantly underbid for a potential return of 20-25s at some future date.

Given that to be true I don't really see crafting as a money-maker either.  I blame globalization.  While having a global market across all servers is great for the consumer it is terrible for the manufacturer.  Especially since my high (opportunity) cost manufacturing is undercut by people who do not value their time.

I would love to hear what reasoning the devs put into creating the crafting system the way it is, but from where I am looking it is totally unrewarding unless you want the 10 levels.  Am I just too jaded to see the silver lining in there somewhere?

[Cynical]

Thuley, on 06 November 2012 - 02:40 AM, said:

I only have one craft to 400 (leatherworking) and looking back at it I am not sure why I even did that as I finished it after I was already 80.

In the past couple of days I have been looking into the feasibility of adding another craft but just couldn't come up with any valid reason to do so.

I realize that characters can gain 10 levels from leveling one craft to 400.  I don't care for alts, and my main reached 80 too fast already so that 10 level benefit doesn't apply to me.

Then I look at the TP and I see that the most profit is in crafting 400 skill items, but the individual profit per sale is like 20-25s if the item sells.  So I have to "deposit" 1.25g (cost of mats) + spend my time figuring out what mats I need, buy them, craft the item, and then put it on the TP and hope I don't get instantly underbid for a potential return of 20-25s at some future date.

Given that to be true I don't really see crafting as a money-maker either.  I blame globalization.  While having a global market across all servers is great for the consumer it is terrible for the manufacturer.  Especially since my high (opportunity) cost manufacturing is undercut by people who do not value their time.

I would love to hear what reasoning the devs put into creating the crafting system the way it is, but from where I am looking it is totally unrewarding unless you want the 10 levels.  Am I just too jaded to see the silver lining in there somewhere?

The global market in my opinion is good the buyer and the seller have access to the same information. The person that knows better what to do with that information can make good money.  Some people don't care for the information or to find out what they should sell or invest in to each his own.

As far as crafting the problem is honestly the bots they make it harder to make money from craft but at the same time in a way they help you level it because alot of materials are dirt cheap due to surplus.  I don't think crafting is suppose to be profitable well extremely profitable in this game.  Its more to sustain you than make you money  I mean the system is set up that you can craft 250 of x in like 20 seconds and that should turn into instant gold?  

I can speak on weaponsmithing I have  crafts at 400 but weaponsmithing is the only one I really do anything to make money on.  

To make money crafting you have to look at what the consumers are buying.  It isn't as simple as I have darksteel ore Ill make some axes and they will sell.  Axes are terrible market not many people use them.


I don't know about your area leatherworking.  but for weaponsmithing 1 thing I know people are doing is taking rares and chucking them into the forge.  That is why GS are always no less than 18s  Staves are priced the same 18s-22s.  If you look at the volume there is never alot of level 76-80 greatswords so the price always stays around the numbers mentioned.  

Also what else are people doing?  Like you they are leveling their crafting professions or other ones.  Look there for profit there is a reason steel ingot is usually more expensive than darksteel ingot even though it is a tier below.  Your not going to make huge chunks of cash in crafting honestly but it is there.  If you know where to look.

Right now pretty much across the board the money in crafting is not in exotics thats for sure.  Look around level 65 ish.  Also to add not all crafting professions are equal when it comes to possible income.

[Nyeh]

Cynical pretty much nailed it.

To add on to his post, I think to actually profit from the crafting business you have to be one of the first to discover that profitable recipe because once it hits the internet everyone will catch on and there goes your money making scheme.

[Mordakai]

Of all the games I have played, only EvE has had a real economy. Newer games would benefit from taking a look at why and resolve to duplicate the result. I will say that GW2 is not the kind of game where you have alot of turnover of goods. You dont lose items in PvP, they aren't broken beyond repair or destroyed in battle.

So that Shiny sword you bought or made, is yours forever and you will likely never need to replace it. With no need to replace items regularly, there is no demand. No demand, means everything you sell is going to have little to no mark up in order to compete.

Crafting is essentially a way to gain some experience to push you to 80 and then never touch again, unless you make an alt and need to make some gear for various levels. Honestly, the best way to make money is not in actually crafting anything, it is from salvaging things (sigils, runes, ectoplasm) and selling them on the market.

[Shady SourZ]

the demand may not come from the need to replace gear like in game featuring semi to full loot and item loss on death, but the key demand in gw2 is vanity. How vain is someone's need to look exactly how they want...and how much are they willing to pay for it. That's where trends become interesting.

[HappyWulf]

Crafting is hard for the main, but a breeze for every Alt after it. I personally would say that having a max crafter in every skill would be to have access to every stat combination of Exotic possible. Now you can make a set of gear for any build you could ever possibly come up with, with the stats to support it.  When a new Meta comes out, you can just poop out a set of gear with the correct stats.

I'm looking to make, as an example, this fucker:  http://wiki.guildwar.../wiki/Immobulus

But it requires 250 Giant Eye! (Any donations would be nice... I haven't even seen a single one yet) But as you can see, it has kinda shitty stats for a Confusion-based Mesmer. So I would instead make an Exotic with the stats I want, and then Transmute it with this skin. I don't care that it's not 'Legendary', it's what I want! (Exotics and Legendaries have the same stat pools)

[Cornflake]

I'm almost to the point where I'm going to make a spreadsheet for crafting.  There are profitable items, they're just not always obvious and sometimes pop up and disappear quickly when a material has a sharp shift in price (like sticks of butter).  Someone in TOSH uses one and swears by it and I'd had one in WoW for every profession and it had made money making painless and quick.

The Black Lion Trading Company Data is available outside of game too... so it's possible you may be able to auto refresh all your data pretty quickly.  Haven't looked into how to pull the data yet, but enough are doing it that it shouldn't be too difficult.

That all said, it is unsurprising that it is harder to make money via crafting  in GW2.  They went through great pains to make it accessible to all.  Most profit in other games game from it being difficult to produce some items that were in demand... and where it wasn't difficult it was time consuming.  In GW2 both mats and recipes are easy to acquire.  That is not necessarily a bad thing depending on which side of the fence you are sitting on.

[Thuley]

No need to make a spreadsheet, gw2spidy has done it already, for example http://www.gw2spidy....ort_profit=desc

What you see in that list is a near real-time snapshot of the market.  You will find that you can make about 15-20s selling some 400 level pieces.  BUT, what this does not accurately reflect is that you won't actually be making 15-20s selling anything because it doesn't capture the trade volume.

If I put up some 400 level exotic gear at a projected profit of 20s it will not sell right away because there isn't so much demand for it that it will sell before someone else puts up the same item for 1 copper less.  This means that you have parked 1+ gold in the market, you have paid the listing fee, and your item may or may not actually sell.  If you cancel the sale you lose the listing fee.

To me this just isn't worth my effort, but obviously there are players out there who don't mind, or even enjoy, crafting stuff, parking their wealth in the TP, and then making a few silver at some unspecified later date.  That's not me.

[Cornflake]

Very nice site.  Still think I would prefer a spreadsheet as it would do a better job of reflecting what you were actually paying for mats. That said, the site does a good job of reflecting that in many cases you are simply better off selling the mats.

There are some other things I'd like to see calcs for like conversions to find if there were oddball ways of making gold.  (like converting jewels to enchant materials for resale in WoW via a jewelcrafter).  Wonder if anything is worth crafting just to blow up for the mats.

[HappyWulf]

So... if I want to make a profit in the Market with crafting, I need to play my Leather worker.

[Fight Dirty]

HappyWulf, on 09 November 2012 - 06:15 AM, said:

But it requires 250 Giant Eye! (Any donations would be nice... I haven't even seen a single one yet)

I havent seen one yet either and I have probably opened a thousand of those moldy bags.

[Woedin]

This is what they call perfect competition. It is the way capitalism works. I just accept it. I think it is better than taking advantage of people who cant reach your competitors.

[Thuley]

Woedin, on 13 November 2012 - 11:41 AM, said:

This is what they call perfect competition. It is the way capitalism works. I just accept it. I think it is better than taking advantage of people who cant reach your competitors.

Except that in capitalism supply isn't created out of thin air.

[Khaleesi]

Crafting has become only 1 thing for me ..... A way to level a wvw toon from 1-80 in 4 hrs

[Thuley]

Khaleesi, on 14 November 2012 - 06:10 AM, said:

Crafting has become only 1 thing for me ..... A way to level a wvw toon from 1-80 in 4 hrs

Ballpark, how much gold are we talking to get that done?

[Sebrent]

For me, crafting is a way to get crafted items at a bit of a discount to myself and my guildmates. Sure, you can sell all the crafting materials you have, but you are taxed 15% of that profit because of the 5% listing fee and 10% tax on sales. Instead, you could have kept those ectoplasms, orichalcum, gossamer, etc. and used them to craft the item(s) you/guildies need without being taxed this 15%.

Additionally, each legendary requires 400 in two different tradeskills.

[Cirroq]

After reaching 80 on my main I basically only use cooking to make xp/mp food and weaponsmithing to make 80 rares to salvage for ectos. If you start an alt and don't want to go through the hassle of questing you can just craft your way to 80. I got to the low 70's with an alt from level 1 without leaving metrica.