What’s the best way to make money with Alchemy/Herbalism?
Most flasks sell for less than the materials to make them, so I’m kind of at a loss. Is transmutation worth it maybe? I haven’t started on that tree yet but I’m about to
I see people making lots of money with actual crafting professions that can make gear, but alchemy feels like it’s kind of left out of that loop.
Flasks aren’t made 1 to 1 with respect to materials. You get multicraft and resourcefulness procs. In bulk I generally have made profit on flasks due to these procs. Aside from that I do a lot of Thaumaturgy on the side which can also be a way to make some money out of materials by transmuting them to more expensive ones. EDIT: All on my alchemy alts, this toon specifically doesn’t do alchemy.
So you need to do the math. Let’s look at an example:
Flask of Alchemical Chaos is currently selling for 879.88 g.
If you buy R2 mats, you’ll pay 639.09 g to make 2 of these flasks.
With R2 mats, you can use concentration 6 times on this recipe every 4 days. Since this recipe makes 2 flasks, you will get 12 flasks for a total cost of 3834.54. Selling these at 879.88 g each yields 10558.56 g. You profit 6724.02 g. Minus 5% AH cut, is 6387.82 g profit. This does not count the extras you’ll make from multicraft. This is the safest way to make gold.
So, literally just did this, I got 12 flasks (32% multicraft… but no joy lol…ramping flask spillover suuuuckksss…). Resourcefulness returned 236.59 g worth of materials. And it sold instantly. Profit. Seems easy enough?
If you buy R3 mats, you’ll pay 2417.35 g. With multicraft and resourcefulness you MIGHT be able to make a profit, but currently, on average, my spreadsheet shows a negative result here (I ran it out to 700 crafts but it was still negative). But it varies from craft to craft.
I have made gold with thaumaturgy (> 1 M gold). But that was at the beginning of the expansion. The profit margins now are verrrrrry tight. It’s butthole tightening anxiety when prices fluctuate.
Flask making is much safer! You have so much margin! You just need to think about your concentration like it’s free gold that Blizzard showers upon you every 4 days.