48 replies to this topic

[HeroYouFear]

Does anyone makes their gold out of the crafting system?

In WoW i was a Miner/Jewelcrafter and that wa,s my main source of incoming.

In GW2 crafting it's plain stupid, i used it to level up, and sometimes to craft some weapons to try to get a precursor.

I have never, ever sold anything to anyone or even thought of having crafting as a partial source of income, notice the partial.

[Darkobra]

Bags, to make my own equipment far cheaper, runes. Pretty much the main reason I craft.

You can, however, use materials you find and make a profit. You can't buy the pieces, meld them together and resell it at a higher value in 90% of cases. So while it CAN make me money, there are better ways to do so.

[Sword Hammer Axe]

I notice that you only mention income in your argument. It's a source of other things though.

It's a source of skins, refining, and max stats weaponry/armor, not to mention things like boosts and runes, which in the end is... well... pretty much everything in the game.

Oh yeah, also, it must be capable of giving at least something of an income. True, as it is now you can buy most of it on the TP, but crafting was actually required for making these things that are lying around in there. So basically, someone has to craft in order to make these things. And seeing as they sell them on there, it must be possible to earn a little something something from crafting, unless they actually sell these items to make a loss instead of profit. However, it is true that these days the economy seems rather odd. The items are sold for way little on the TP compared to the materials required for it.

Darkobra, on 18 December 2012 - 04:01 PM, said:

Bags

Bags! How did I forget to mention bags?

Edited by Sword Hammer Axe, 18 December 2012 - 04:05 PM.

[Zhahz]

At times I've made small profits (over just selling mats) selling exotics or other stuff but the margins are pretty small.  It is nothing like other MMORPGs where you can get cheap mats, find a niche of something to make that nobody else is making, and make obscene profits doing next to nothing.  That kind of scenario just doesn't exist in GW2.  Too many sellers, too much of a flood of gear that competes, no real demand, nothing really remarkable to sell (making a rare low/mid level item when it's not really rare and the TP is flooded with "rares" gets you nowhere, for ex), and so on.

The best use of crafting is to get some extra levels, supply your own character(s), supply friends/guildies, (ie, save a little money), and that kind of thing.

Crafting is never about easy profits no matter what game it is - in games where you can make money with it you still have to figure out where that money can be made (and most people cannot do manage to do this).  But in GW2, the potential just isn't there because the player economy is so different (and sucks if you're into actually making money and player economy mini-game).

[Vysander]

Sword Hammer Axe, on 18 December 2012 - 04:03 PM, said:

I notice that you only mention income in your argument. It's a source of other things though.

It's a source of skins, refining, and max stats weaponry/armor, not to mention things like boosts and runes, which in the end is... well... pretty much everything in the game.

Oh yeah, also, it must be capable of giving at least something of an income. True, as it is now you can buy most of it on the TP, but crafting was actually required for making these things that are lying around in there. So basically, someone has to craft in order to make these things. And seeing as they sell them on there, it must be possible to earn a little something something from crafting, unless they actually sell these items to make a loss instead of profit. However, it is true that these days the economy seems rather odd. The items are sold for way little on the TP compared to the materials required for it.



Bags! How did I forget to mention bags?

Basically, crafting is good for a few things now days. Levels, gifts for legendary's, Achievements, And making stuff cheaper then you can buy (sorta).

Basically, if the only reason you are crafting is to make your own exotics/sigil/rune then dont do it. The cost of leveling a crafting profession far outweighs the... ~10-20Silver you would save from just buying the item already crafted. (10-20s is probably generous now days).

To make money off of crafting, you would have to craft hundreds of items. Before there were thousands of players making items, you could make money off of buying raw mats and turning them into exotics. I did this around the second week of release and made enough money to make my exotic set by the time i hit 80. However, even when there were far less people with 400 crafting, i could only make about 20-30s per piece, and this profit dropped to about 10-20s within 5 days of me hitting lvl 400. Now days its around 5s if anything...

It is a nice bonus to be able to turn raw materials you get into rares/exotics to sell for.. most of the time more money then the raw mats. It can be seen as a long term investment, as you will eventually get your money's worth out of it, but for a short term, "is this a good way to get my exotics" scenario, then absolutely not.

Now, if you crafting for levels, skins (though crafted skins are ugly imo), achievements or legendary crafting, then yea, its very useful.

Edited by Vysander, 18 December 2012 - 04:15 PM.

[Enscheff]

Getting to max level in crafting is far too easy in GW2 to expect to make any profit from crafting items. Everyone has 1-2 skills maxed, and it is almost the same price to go ahead and max a skill to make an item than it is to buy the exotic item itself.

I use crafting to make my own exotic gear. It isn't really useful for anything else. You are stuck farming for silver just like everyone else.

[ShezuTsukai]

One of the cheapest ways to generate Ectos is crafting rare weapons for hacking. And ectos continue to go up in price as more are needed to forge ascended gear.

[Humungous]

Crafting can absolutely make money. I've been making a solid 20g per hour with crafting.

And leveling crafting should always make you money. I usually earn 3-4g per discipline I max, and that's not maximizing for profit, but for time.

[Coren]

Made exotic pistols, applied cheap tier 1 ebon vanguard skins. Much cheaper than spending time in dungeons getting tokens. Nuff said.

[Juanele]

Since I don't run dungeons I get most of my equipment from crafting. So yeah I'd say it is useful.

[Soki]

Juanele, on 18 December 2012 - 05:58 PM, said:

Since I don't run dungeons I get most of my equipment from crafting. So yeah I'd say it is useful.

You could have sold the materials you used to craft; and buy the gear you crafted from the TP - and save coin.
Yes, that's how screwy it is.

[Humungous]

Soki, on 18 December 2012 - 06:02 PM, said:

You could have sold the materials you used to craft; and buy the gear you crafted from the TP - and save coin.
Yes, that's how screwy it is.

Not true.

Crafting your own exotics is always cheaper. However, they don't always turn profit if you sell them, but that's due to the 15% tax.

I have a full crafter in everything but cooking, and sell huge batches of gear (investing 50-90g per sitting), and I've turned profit on many, many different items. Runes, second-level materials, fine through exotic, armor, weapons, bags, etc... I think the only thing I haven't made money on are sigils and tier 2+ blues. Each discipline has plenty of $$ to be made in it as well (though there are some that typically make more than others).

[Daesu]

Humungous, on 18 December 2012 - 06:11 PM, said:

Not true.

Crafting your own exotics is always cheaper. However, they don't always turn profit if you sell them, but that's due to the 15% tax.

Not always.  For lower crafting levels, it is hard to make a profit with crafting.  Even for exotics, it is not always cheaper either but I agree that things are a little better at level 400 even though it takes a lot of wasted gold to get there.

Edited by Daesu, 18 December 2012 - 06:19 PM.

[Kymeric]

It's also a cheesy way to get your Survivor title.

Crafting from 200 to 300 in one craft at level 78 will get you the 500k exp in one sitting for Lifetime Survivor tier 2 with no risk of being defeated.

[Vysander]

Humungous, on 18 December 2012 - 05:50 PM, said:

Crafting can absolutely make money. I've been making a solid 20g per hour with crafting.

And leveling crafting should always make you money. I usually earn 3-4g per discipline I max, and that's not maximizing for profit, but for time.

I'm going to have to call bs on making 3-4g per discipline. And if its not bs, what are you crafting?
I just lvl'd 5 crafting professions from 1-400, and the price of 90% of what was crafted was at vendor cost.

If you already have everything to level a crafting profession, so you're not putting money in, then yea, you can "make" 3-4g.

And you must be doing thousands of items to make 20g per hour (not saying its impossible, but damn, that's too much crafting for me).

[Humungous]

Vysander, on 18 December 2012 - 06:56 PM, said:

I'm going to have to call bs on making 3-4g per discipline. And if its not bs, what are you crafting?
I just lvl'd 5 crafting professions from 1-400, and the price of 90% of what was crafted was at vendor cost.

It's not BS at all, but I'm not leaping up to tell you what all I'm crafting If you want, you can make more like 6-8g (which is what I used to make, but I'm better off saving that time to spend on my focused money-making). I have 6 level 80s, and 3 more whenever I care to do it. All turned profit on every discipline except cooking (I skip that and level to 10 the normal way).

Note: you DEFINITELY lose money at certain tiers. But you make it back and more at other tiers.

Quote

If you already have everything to level a crafting profession, so you're not putting money in, then yea, you can "make" 3-4g.

I'm talking 1-400 with more gold at the end than you started with (once it sells, which can take several days depending on the market).

Quote

And you must be doing thousands of items to make 20g per hour (not saying its impossible, but damn, that's too much crafting for me).

Not thousands, but I do have my own custom program to find the markets and organize the lot of it for maximum efficiency. For example, my crafters are either at their own stations, or split between two adjacent stations. My elementalist sits at the TP, using blink + RTL to quickly move to the weaponsmith station to dump it all off. I place my orders overnight and craft it all the next day. I have my "todo" list sorted such that I can do all my inscriptions, refinements and insignias with minimum character switching. Finally, everything I sell is marked with ideal sale price to try and move it quickly (rather than just posting for 1c less, which can mean your item just sits there forever).

I can buy, craft and sell 50+g of stuff in less than 1 hour (though turnaround in the market can take days if things slow down), with target profit of 40%, so 20+g.

Daesu, on 18 December 2012 - 06:17 PM, said:

Not always.  For lower crafting levels, it is hard to make a profit with crafting.  Even for exotics, it is not always cheaper either but I agree that things are a little better at level 400 even though it takes a lot of wasted gold to get there.

Like I said, I've made money leveling my crafters. I have 4+ 400-level crafters in every discipline but cooking, and I made my "seed" money that way. Now I have enough that I can do big bulk crafting sessions.

And I made the 6g+ per discipline BEFORE I wrote a helper-program to analyze the spidy data for me. You can do it by hand, though it goes much more slowly.

Edited by Humungous, 18 December 2012 - 07:21 PM.

[Vysander]

Humungous, on 18 December 2012 - 07:19 PM, said:

It's not BS at all, but I'm not leaping up to tell you what all I'm crafting If you want, you can make more like 6-8g (which is what I used to make, but I'm better off saving that time to spend on my focused money-making). I have 6 level 80s, and 3 more whenever I care to do it. All turned profit on every discipline except cooking (I skip that and level to 10 the normal way).

I'm talking 1-400 with more gold at the end than you started with (once it sells, which can take several days depending on the market).

I... might be able to see this. I used the cheapest fine materials as i was buying most of them, so what i crafted didn't have "desired" stats.

Humungous, on 18 December 2012 - 07:19 PM, said:

Not thousands, but I do have my own custom program to find the markets and organize the lot of it for maximum efficiency. For example, my crafters are either at their own stations, or split between two adjacent stations. My elementalist sits at the TP, using blink + RTL to quickly move to the weaponsmith station to dump it all off. I place my orders overnight and craft it all the next day. I have my "todo" list sorted such that I can do all my inscriptions, refinements and insignias with minimum character switching. Finally, everything I sell is marked with ideal sale price to try and move it quickly (rather than just posting for 1c less, which can mean your item just sits there forever).

I can buy, craft and sell 50+g of stuff in less than 1 hour (though turnaround in the market can take days if things slow down), with target profit of 40%, so 20+g.

Like I said, I've made money leveling my crafters. I have 4+ 400-level crafters in every discipline but cooking, and I made my "seed" money that way. Now I have enough that I can do big bulk crafting sessions.

And I made the 6g+ per discipline BEFORE I wrote a helper-program to analyze the spidy data for me. You can do it by hand, though it goes much more slowly.

Well, thats just good on you then. I recall other posts you've made about this program, and your need to optimize time/money. I say thousands because thats what i would likely have to do to make that profit doing moderately efficient items, as i would just be doing things that i have seen sell for good margins above the material costs. Not combing the market for the most efficient items.

[Soki]

Humungous, on 18 December 2012 - 07:19 PM, said:

It's not BS at all, but I'm not leaping up to tell you what all I'm crafting If you want, you can make more like 6-8g (which is what I used to make, but I'm better off saving that time to spend on my focused money-making). I have 6 level 80s, and 3 more whenever I care to do it. All turned profit on every discipline except cooking (I skip that and level to 10 the normal way).

Note: you DEFINITELY lose money at certain tiers. But you make it back and more at other tiers.



I'm talking 1-400 with more gold at the end than you started with (once it sells, which can take several days depending on the market).



Not thousands, but I do have my own custom program to find the markets and organize the lot of it for maximum efficiency. For example, my crafters are either at their own stations, or split between two adjacent stations. My elementalist sits at the TP, using blink + RTL to quickly move to the weaponsmith station to dump it all off. I place my orders overnight and craft it all the next day. I have my "todo" list sorted such that I can do all my inscriptions, refinements and insignias with minimum character switching. Finally, everything I sell is marked with ideal sale price to try and move it quickly (rather than just posting for 1c less, which can mean your item just sits there forever).

I can buy, craft and sell 50+g of stuff in less than 1 hour (though turnaround in the market can take days if things slow down), with target profit of 40%, so 20+g.



Like I said, I've made money leveling my crafters. I have 4+ 400-level crafters in every discipline but cooking, and I made my "seed" money that way. Now I have enough that I can do big bulk crafting sessions.

And I made the 6g+ per discipline BEFORE I wrote a helper-program to analyze the spidy data for me. You can do it by hand, though it goes much more slowly.

This is the GW2 endgame, on display for all to see.

[Humungous]

Soki, on 18 December 2012 - 07:29 PM, said:

This is the GW2 endgame, on display for all to see.

No-no-no, go check out my other thread: I'm repenting and giving up this garbage

Just wanted to say that it's a myth that you can't make $$ crafting!

[Vysander]

Soki, on 18 December 2012 - 07:29 PM, said:

This is the GW2 endgame, on display for all to see.

*his version of endgame*

I prefer the speculations market endgame.

[Humungous]

Vysander, on 18 December 2012 - 07:29 PM, said:

I... might be able to see this. I used the cheapest fine materials as i was buying most of them, so what i crafted didn't have "desired" stats.



Well, thats just good on you then. I recall other posts you've made about this program, and your need to optimize time/money. I say thousands because thats what i would likely have to do to make that profit doing moderately efficient items, as i would just be doing things that i have seen sell for good margins above the material costs. Not combing the market for the most efficient items.

I've thought about publishing my program. However, I really think this crap is unhealthy (kinda obvious, eh?), so I'm not sure I want to "infect" other people. I may just give it to the spidy guys, I dunno. If I do, it WILL make crafting low-profit, because everyone will use it.

I've stopped doing this just recently, and am enjoying the game a lot more. This kind of mentality does not fit in with a full life at all. I barely have time to play, so why waste it amassing gold I'm not even spending?

[Vysander]

Humungous, on 18 December 2012 - 07:35 PM, said:

I've thought about publishing my program. However, I really think this crap is unhealthy (kinda obvious, eh?), so I'm not sure I want to "infect" other people. I may just give it to the spidy guys, I dunno. If I do, it WILL make crafting low-profit, because everyone will use it.

I've stopped doing this just recently, and am enjoying the game a lot more. This kind of mentality does not fit in with a full life at all. I barely have time to play, so why waste it amassing gold I'm not even spending?

I dont think its necessarily unhealthy, but i also dont think something like what you've designed should be available to everyone. From the sounds of it, it can parse info from spidy and show which items have the biggest difference between buy and sell orders, and possibly info on highs and lows over time (probably more technical, but something similar).

It would make the market game too easy, and like you say, would probably ruin alot of the available venues of making money by any kind of enjoyable margin.

Edited by Vysander, 18 December 2012 - 07:41 PM.

[Humungous]

It's a little bit more. I do use spidy for the raw data, but the high/low stuff doesn't reveal the right markets. Basically, I calculate the "likely" profit,  which is a LOT more useful. The craft prices are often inaccurate, as are the sell prices. Not like the numbers are "wrong", but calling those numbers the crafting cost or selling price is wrong.

I don't even do a fancy job of the "likely" analysis, and I turn my 40%+ profit. Someone who wanted to add some higher-level market smarts to it could probably do a lot better. I actually spent most of my time tuning the presentation to make it easier to do the buying/crafting/posting stuff.

Edited by Humungous, 18 December 2012 - 07:46 PM.

[Tregarde]

You can definitely make money crafting. I'm nowhere near Humungous' league, but I have noticed as I've leveled up my crafters that certain items pull in a good profit. It's not hard to tell that if i wanted to, I could easily be making a couple gold a day.

The other major use for crafting is the gear. If you keep your crafting skill up with your adventure levels, you can keep your characters in pretty good gear. 90% of the jewelry my characters wear I made. Also, some foods give you very nice temporary bonuses, it can be worth working up that Chef skill.

Another bonus, for some people crafting is fun!

Edited by Tregarde, 18 December 2012 - 08:27 PM.

[Daesu]

Humungous, on 18 December 2012 - 07:19 PM, said:

Like I said, I've made money leveling my crafters. I have 4+ 400-level crafters in every discipline but cooking, and I made my "seed" money that way. Now I have enough that I can do big bulk crafting sessions.

And I made the 6g+ per discipline BEFORE I wrote a helper-program to analyze the spidy data for me. You can do it by hand, though it goes much more slowly.

Then maybe you can share how you make money.  I don't see how you can make money at every crafting level.  Take level 25 huntsman for instance, the profits are all negative, but you still need to get from 25 to the next level.

http://www.gw2spidy....sort_rating=asc

This means crafting then selling the crafted goods to the vendor or TP or salvaging them.  All these options would give you fewer gold back than if you would have sold the crafting ingredients outright in the TP, so there is an opportunity cost which you lost.

Unless you are saying, that you try to make up for the loss when you can.  This also has its own issues because whenever people see you dumping crafted goods on the TP for a profit, they would challenge you by dumping the same crafted goods at a lower price to bring the price down.  The profits, even when you can make one, tend to be slim that way, unless you have access to the recipes and materials that are harder to obtain.  That way, it would be harder for others to challenge you and bring the price of your crafted goods down.  This usually means an investment of gold to obtain these harder-to-obtain ingredients/recipes.  For example, you can earn a profit of 13g by crafting and selling a carrion destroyer pistol but not everyone can afford to make that.

Edited by Daesu, 18 December 2012 - 09:03 PM.

[Gilles VI]

HeroYouFear, on 18 December 2012 - 03:50 PM, said:

Does anyone makes their gold out of the crafting system?

In WoW i was a Miner/Jewelcrafter and that wa,s my main source of incoming.

In GW2 crafting it's plain stupid, i used it to level up, and sometimes to craft some weapons to try to get a precursor.

I have never, ever sold anything to anyone or even thought of having crafting as a partial source of income, notice the partial.

Made 130g profit by crafting this week. Even for me that's no small amount.
So yes I'd say there is money to be gain by crafting.

[Bloodtau]

Gilles VI, on 18 December 2012 - 08:52 PM, said:

Made 130g profit by crafting this week. Even for me that's no small amount.
So yes I'd say there is money to be gain by crafting.

We can all say stuff like this, doesn't make it true.

In the end, crafting in this game isn't what I should be. Got some major room for improvements

[Humungous]

Daesu, on 18 December 2012 - 08:37 PM, said:

Then maybe you can share how you make money.  I don't see how you can make money at every crafting level.  Take level 25 huntsman for instance, the profits are all negative, but you still need to get from 25 to the next level.

Sorry if I was misleading: you definitely lose money on some tiers, no question, but you make it back and then some on the rare tiers (every 3rd tier).

Basically, the first tier of new mat is free or better (refinements + parts), the second tier may cost money (if it doesn't, it's almost always due to a rune or bag or something), and the third tier makes money (rares). You may also have a special recipe that can turn a losing tier into a profitable one. There are a half-dozen hearts that I did just for the karma recipes.

Also, the profits listed on spidy are wrong, simply because you can always get stuff for cheaper than they list. They will show things as a loss that actually turn a 20% profit.

Bloodtau, on 18 December 2012 - 09:34 PM, said:

We can all say stuff like this, doesn't make it true.

In the end, crafting in this game isn't what I should be. Got some major room for improvements

Why do you doubt that? Wintersday has been a windfall for crafting.

Edited by Humungous, 18 December 2012 - 09:37 PM.

[Gilles VI]

Bloodtau, on 18 December 2012 - 09:34 PM, said:

We can all say stuff like this, doesn't make it true.

In the end, crafting in this game isn't what I should be. Got some major room for improvements

Did I reply like this when you claimed you're studying game development and saying you know better than Anet?
In my opinion that sounds more stupid than my claim, gold is very easy to make in GW2..

I quite like the crafting system in this game.
It doesn't take months to max it, it isn't based on RNG, there is profit to be made (mostly thanks to worldwide TP).
Can't remember any game with a better crafting system to be honest.

Daesu, on 18 December 2012 - 08:37 PM, said:

Then maybe you can share how you make money.  I don't see how you can make money at every crafting level.  Take level 25 huntsman for instance, the profits are all negative, but you still need to get from 25 to the next level.

Profit is to be made at the levels you make rare armor/weapons (don't know the levels from the top of my head).
Not many people care to craft those, while alot of people wanna buy rares at lvl35/50/65 to make PvE or levelling in dungeons easier, so there is profit to be made.

Edited by Gilles VI, 18 December 2012 - 09:39 PM.

[Daesu]

Bloodtau, on 18 December 2012 - 09:34 PM, said:

We can all say stuff like this, doesn't make it true.

In the end, crafting in this game isn't what I should be. Got some major room for improvements

Actually it is possible, in theory, if you are rich enough to start with, for example, according to spidy if you have access to 20 destroyer lodestones, you can make a 13g+ profit by crafting then selling a carrion destroyer pistol for example:

http://www.gw2spidy....ort_profit=desc

What is possible doesn't mean easy because for those items that are easy to craft, people would have dumped them to bring down your profits.