How can I make gold with the Enchanting profession?

Gameplay Professions
1

I’m asking because I’ve leveled up Enchanting, and I’ve noticed that all the crafts I can make are selling at the auction house for less gold than the cost of the materials required to make them. For example, the materials needed to craft oils are about 30% to 40% more expensive than the oils themselves, and the materials for actual enchants are around 40% to 60% more expensive than the enchants they produce.

Given how big the gap is between material costs and the final product prices, I feel like I must be doing something wrong, and that’s why I’m not able to make any gold with the profession.

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2

It’s not much gold, but use your concentration. Every 3 days use rank 1 or 2 mats to make 4-5 rank 3 enchants. You could make 10k every 3 days from that if you have decent patterns.

I know that’s not much, but you aren’t getting tips for enchants since you can just buy them off the AH.

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3

it always pays to source your own materials.

I have a max leatherworker & skinner who provides my enchanter with her materials for enchanting.

But as you mentioned, the price of buying from the auction house throws everything off because instead of crafting a set of cuffs for say 15-20 leather and 5 chitin for 125gp bought off the auction house and breaking them down with disenchating myself wouldn’t be worth it because we can just buy the gleaming shards for 50gold or less each.

like the guy above said, making gold from enchanting comes from using your concentration to create rank 3 enchants.

again, it pays to source your own materials.

4

No it doesn’t pay to source your own materials. There’s an economic concept called “opportunity cost”. Basically what you would have done instead with an resource. So let’s say you have a recipe that turns 5 storm dust into an enchant. If you have 5 storm dust, you can do that, or you can sell them. The money you didn’t make selling them is the opportunity cost If the enchant sells for less than the storm dust does, you have lost money by making the enchant. Basically, if you can’t make an profit on an enchant by buying the mats off the ah, you always lose money compared to just selling the mats

However on do make an lot of money off enchanting. Several million this expansion so far. On use an add-on to calculate what enchants can be sold profitably, make those with ah bought mats, and sell them. Relist several times a day. Do not make more than 1 or 2 at an time, as typical be undercut quickly and they won’t sell. It takes time but a good day will make you 30 or 40k profits

5

yeah your right, its cheaper to buy the materials than to farm them for free for yourself. my bad.

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It is. If the mats sell for more than the enchant does, you lose money by making the enchant. This is basic economics.

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7

Best way is to be ready for seasonal change. Make a stockpile to list in the first weeks of a new raid tier. Lots of gear gets replaced, they need enchants. Spark gear that carry over season to season usually keep their enchants… Until some number cruncher tells em otherwise . Keep an eye on the number crunchers also.

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Only if the value of the gathered items per unit of time is higher than anything else you could be doing - otherwise, it is ‘cheaper’ to just buy the mats and use your time on higher value activities.

1 Like
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@Dawnpaws,
I agree 100%. Since this season started I have pretty well completley given up farming for anything.
Nearly all of my professions are maxed out and its only trivial things that I might need to craft now anyways.

Bottom line its time vs value regardless what you are doing. Yes, it is much more efficient to buy gleaming shards from the auction house to craft enchanting things but it is still “cheaper” to source/farm your own.
The time spent gathering could be spent doing something else of greater return value, use that gold to buy mats, yes, but it is still cheaper to farm your own.
free is still cheaper than 30 gold per unit.
time vs cost folks, time vs cost.

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No, it isn’t cheaper to source your own. If dust is 10g, an enchant is 60g l, and it takes 5 dust to make, buying from the ah and selling the resulting enchant makes you 10g (60-50). If you have 5 dust, you could make the enchant… Or you could sell them. So your profits on the enchant is 10g (the 60g enchant minus the 50g you could have made selling the dust).

This makes a big difference on items that sell under cost. Let’s say that enchant costs 40 on the ah instead. Now creating it is a 10g loss. Even if you have the dust already, you can make the enchant and have it for 0, out you can sell the dust, but the enchant for 40, and have 10g left over from the sale.

The lack of understanding that even mats you own aren’t free is shocking. How do you actually keep your real life finances in order if you don’t get basic things like that?

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not sure man, not sure what to say here.
let me just get this straight, you are saying it is cheaper, even if the item only costs 1 gold, it is STILL CHEAPER to buy the item off the auction house than it is to go out and gather it myself at the cost of zero gold?
is that what your saying?

lets just say i dont want to craft anything at all and just want to save up raw materials. are you saying that its cheaper to BUY the items than to gather them for FREE?

if you read my statement above, its time vs cost, it might be more EFFICIENT to buy the materials IF you have the gold to do so, but that dosent change the fact that FREE is still cheaper than BUYING

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He meant your time while gathering isnt free, it has its cost.
That time could be spent on AH buying mats, craft item and sell it with profit.

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I’m saying that if the item can’t be crafted profitably by buying the mats on the market, then it can’t be crafted profitably at all. And that even if you have the mats sitting in your bags already, if it can’t be crafted profitably you’re better off financially selling the mats on the ah and buying the already crafted item if you need it. You cannot make an unprofitable recipe profitablr by gathering your own mats, because in doing so you lose the profit you’d gain by selling those mats straight up, which would be an higher number. You end up with less money that way.

14

I get what you are saying. If the only variables you are considering are the AH price of materials and the sale cost of the item… then yes, if the mats cost more than the potential sale price of the item, then sell the AH mats.

However… I think what happens on a craft, and whether it makes sense to craft or sell mats, is going to depend a lot on several other factors:

  • Where have you spent your KP?
  • Is this a one off like a bag or an intermediate material, like a weavercloth bolt?
  • What level of profession gear and tool do you have equipped?
  • What missive/enchant has been selected for your profession tool?

I can’t speak to Enchanting directly as I haven’t put much time into my enchanters. I do have experience with Tailoring in DL and TWW. I started tailoring on my mage very late. Almost a year after the start of DL, and only in the last couple of months in TWW.

In both cases I have skipped going the craft armor route and have concentrated on the unraveling/weaving side. (Looks like that is a mistake in TWW - lol.)

In DL I figured out how to make gold by mostly crafting Vibrant Wildercloth Bolts in bulk. With crafts of Azureweave/Chronocloth on the weekly cooldown. It was completely dependent on Multicraft procs. If you didn’t have the procs on a craft run you couldn’t cover the mats cost. So it would not make sense.

When you start crafting Vibrant Wildercloth Bolts 10000 at a time, pretty soon the 30% to 40% extra (from Multicraft procs) in a crafting session adds up. Along with the Resource procs along the way, that allow a few more crafts at the end. That is where the profit came from. Not in crafting the original 10k bolts.

I have dabbled in TWW tailoring enough to cover my leveling costs (so far) and net maybe 50k gold. I’m super casual, I’m really doing this just to fill the wheels and be done with it.

My guess is that the same method in DL will work in TWW. Just requires some research to figure out how/which procs will yield the best results.

To do this will likely require multiple tools. I have 3 of the Bismuth scissors for my other tailor. One with a Ingenuity missive and Ingenuity Enchant, and two more with Res/Resource Enchant and one Multicraft/Resource Enchant. (As far as I know there is no Multicraft tool enchant? Yeah just looked at my enchanter. No Multicraft tool enchant.)

Also there are crafting additions like Mirror Powder and the Preserving Embroidery Thread.

Enchanting appears to have Concentration Concentrate as well as the Mirror Powder.

The complexity is part of the lure for the DL and TWW profession iterations. I think it’s an interesting way to go. So far I think TWW has fixed some of the problems with DL crafting, but I haven’t really explored all the ins and outs yet.

15

The title of this thread is “how do in make gold with enchanting”. So making an profit is all that matters. But yes things like kp effect the price you get by effecting the rack you can craft, the multicraft chance, and the resourcefulness chance. There are add-ons that calculate the expected profit for you. But it doesn’t change the central fact- if you can’t craft it profitably of ah mats, then you’re not going to make an profit off creating it and should sell the mats (or craft something that is profitable) instead.

And many add-ons will calculated expected profit (that’s profit based off ah prices including procs and finishing reagents). For example craft sim does all of this.

Btw, creating bolts of anything other than dusk weave and dawn weave is pretty much always a loss, even with a fully maxed tailor and maxed equipment. I’m just mentioning this because you use it as an example. And yes I have a fully maxed tailor to have the calculations done with. (I have fully maxed everything except jc, lw, and bs two of whom will max in 2 weeks, bs well max mid June). Even with maxed multicraft and resourcefulness you lose money on it. Most crafts lose money, especially commodities like bolts.

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Thanks for the info on TWW Tailoring. I did experiments in DL, but haven’t done anything in TWW except try to fill the wheels on my tailor and engineer.

Mostly these days I run double gather and call it good.

17

I’ve never made gold from Enchanting, just for my own selfish characters needs for enchants & glow cosmetics.

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18

what addon do you use to calculate what enchants can be sold profitably?

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Craft sim (correcting from previous answer of trade skill master. Although both might, in is both for different things)

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Uh. I use… TI-84 calculator… on my desk. Or Excel. Or, if things get hairy, Python.