I do it for a couple reasons; 1, I enjoy farming/fishing as mindless relaxation; 2, there’s money to be made in vendor trash and BoEs; I get XP; and finally, I suck at arbitrage. I don’t risk losing my pants when gathering over buying and processing.
what early classic has taught me is that my gathering and crafting are all centored around the default vendor
i have skinning and lw
really early it was recommended to vendor all gathered mats- and i can see why- not many players were buying mats off of the ah and mats like skins whilst questing in barrens will quickly overwhelm bank and alt’s bank slots
but i was always of the mind that even the lowest and most humble of crafting mats can be utilized to craft from raw materials items that, even when “revendored”, still make a profit vs raw mat vendoring
i found a couple of items in light leather, medium, and heavy and though the profit margin was really tight it was still there
so i would craft my lowbie boots or chest
i would vendor 10/12 items crafted and post 2 (i would get sales for each item though not all the time)
my lw was stuck at level 28 just flipping the raw mats my druid would send in the mail
just the other day my druid started encountering mobs that drop thick leather
think leather crafted items have a pretty decent vendor price so…
time to check if vendoring the crafted item is more worthwhile than selling mats in ah (as thick leather becomes the skinning mat many are recommended for players to start posting rather than vendor)
i could sit down and really crunch the numbers but i am more of a visual guy so i went to ah and bought out several stacks of the lowest priced thick leather (had extra gold because that minimal profit margin from lower tier lw still made me 100gold)
i crafted dozens of lw items (and finally realized the long crafting timer is to blunt the potential abuse of buying low mats and mass craft to vendor with little time used)
i invested 20 gold on mats, crafted, and sold to vendor; i made probably 2 or 3 gold profit but it took 30 minutes to craft all of the items so the cost vs time element needs to be investigated further
but at least i know where my ah price cutoff roughly is if i choose to buy mats off of the ah
now this is just for “crafting to vendor”
although i have a few items i have crafted that have sold nothing is really exceptional
crafting to vendor is my sweet spot atm
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Great analysis. Yes, if you can turn over items quickly for a profit then crafting is very nice. It all depends on the relative prices for the materials, vendor, and AH. Finding those items that give you skill and turn a profit are key, of course you can make money on crafting but often items are not worth the extra effort over simply farming more.
As with most things, a bit of thought and research maximizes your reward per amount of effort.
To be honest, i am not very good with mathematics. So for some crafting profession, engineering especially, where multiples of mats and parts are involved, my brain would explode.
Problem with crafting is that all it takes is one person willing to sell items at barely a profit to make the profession useless.
There’s very little in most professions that actually sells for more than the mats, apart from a few highly valued recipes or highly rare ones- though in that case you’re likely spending a lot of time ‘gathering’ those recipes.
That isn’t to say you can’t make money by playing the AH, turning underpriced mats into goods. But keep in mind you’re combining two skills- the profession you levelled of course being one, but the other being the ability to play the AH.
Which effectively answers your question. Most consider gathering better for gold making since it’s guaranteed- you go out and gather it, and you put it on the AH and you make a profit regardless.
Most players don’t know how to play the AH though- and if they did, it’d make playing the AH considerably more difficult.
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i will sit with my iphone calculator and scraps of paper with scrabbled notes on them
i dont use ah addons as they really seem to slow down my performance so it is just cave man tech
one thing i really recommend is an addon that will show the vendor price on everything- that way you dont show up to uc ah and wonder “wth does this even vendor for?” and then have to race away to find price then run back
it isnt complicated; in fact, it is very logical but you have to take it step by step; very methodiacal to wrap your head around it
for example, if i have a stack of light leather (20 and this stack will sell for 3 silver to vendor) i need to first figure out what my crafted item will sell to vendor (embossed leather boots sell for like 2silver 50 copper)
great- if i can craft 2 boots per stack i will profit 2 silver per stack (2.50 x 2= 5 vs 3 silver just for vendoring)
next you need to account for the coarse thread or any other crafting reagents in a recipe (this is where all the scrap paper comes in)
eventually when you get bogged down with all this you do what i did yesterday
make a note of current gold
buy crafting mats and reagents
craft all the items
sell all the items to vendor
look at total gold now
is it more than what you started with? hurray
is it the same? not bad at least you learned and didnt lose gold
is it worse? oh well, knowledge is power, use it as learning experience
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And I disagree with your opinion that crafting ISNT volatile. On my server, currently one of the highest population servers, the AH is FLOODED with crafting materials. So much so that demand is not even close to keeping up with supply. It is literally cheaper to buy bags on my server than it is to buy the materials and craft them.
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I leveled my Alchemy to 300 a couple days ago. Used TSM to check the profitability of all my recipes. Literally all of them were a heavy loss compared to just selling the mats.
If you’re just crafting and selling blindly, assuming that the crafted item must be worth more than the mats, then you may be losing money.
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Give Skillet a try. It really helps with all the items required to make complex items. There are also addons that will help with pricing each item that goes into making something.
The answer to the OP’s question is simple.
Crafting in MMO’s is almost never profitable. This is true of almost every MMO ever made, and is a strange quirk of their economies.
You see, raw materials typically have greater value than crafted goods. This is because the act of crafting does two major things - it turns a resource usable by many into a niche item usable only by a select group, and it also removes some of the value by “using up” some of the potential use for the items… leveling a crafting profession. When you add in that crafting takes essentially no effort (unlike in the real world), the natural result of crafting an item is to reduce its overall value.
The only time this isn’t the case is when you have a rare yet highly demanded recipe. Take the frostweave set for example - it is highly demanded by frost mages starting around level 46, yet the recipe drops in level 55+ dungeons and the mats required drop from level 51+ mobs. With the number of leveling frost mages, one could make a killing on this recipe… but that will wane as more people get the recipes and fewer people are leveling.
Depends.
Gear items before lvl 60 : No one cares about them. Usually matts cost more than end-result gear.
Maybe you found a niche, but don’t worry people with addons will catch up fast and adjust matts price.
The millions of gold I’ve made from crafting on retail says this is false. In classic I’m already making 50g a day profit on average and am still ramping up, most of that comes from crafting.
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I do both farming and crafing, in both retail and Classic.
The problem with crafting is simple: nobody buys it. If nobody buys it, you make no gold. If you vendor it, you lose gold. It’s very hard to find anything that makes a profit by vendoring.
At the start of Classic, people bought some things I crafted. Soon after, prices dropped to vendor prices. The same happened in BFA: the first 2 weeks crafted armor sold. Not after that. Didn’t even break even on skilling up the professions.
Gathering? You can sell anything on the AH, and if it doesn’t sell you can vendor it. Your mats cost is zero (it’s just your time) so you can’t lose money.
Some “gold-making gurus” say you should simply vendor everything, and that’s the best way to make gold in Classic. They say by the time you hit 40 you’ll have the 100 gold for your mount.
I made millions from crafting in retail too. What crafting profession(s) are you using to make gold in Classic?
I’m sure you do a lot better at level 55 than I do (my highest is 22) but I’d like to plan ahead: what crafting is good at high levels?
Everyone is saving gold for mounts. Since things aren’t selling for a lot over vendor a lot of ppl found it’s just easier to farm and vendor. After mounts are bought things will pick up
i have found leatherworking recipes that make gold when compared to vendoring gathered mats
it works for light, medium, heavy, and thick
and it involves no ah selling (only a tiny bit of buying if applicable)
i can craft an item and sell to vendor for a profit
some profits are very humble - maybe 2 silver per stack but 20 stacks is a gold
others are better
most involve gathering my own mats (which i would have done anyways as a gatherer)
some involve my mats and a couple of ah buyouts (for a few gathered reagents)
i have found the price that makes a profit and if ah has it at that price i buy
all the profits are based on selling to the vendor
so i can squeeze gold out of the game
i can squeeze more with help from gatherers
based on what i have experienced in playing the last month tailors are everywhere and peeps not knowing price points, not knowing how to use addons, or whatever, has totally saturated that market with goods below the cost to craft - not great for making gold
but is there not a lowbie tailoring recipe that makes some gold - even a 50 copper profit- vs the raw gathered mats?
i am not in the current cloth markets but leather is so abundant that ah prices vs vendored were almost equal; i see cloth probably sells for more as it is harder to gather
anyways
that is what i do
i craft to vendor
the market will sort itself out but i dont need it
i can bring in the mats from the world (as i play and grind- what i like to do) and then turnover a bit more gold with my prof vs just gathering
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As long as I’ve been playing this game, even in classic, crafted goods rarely sell for more than the sum of their mats.
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You’ll never proc a regular recipe that generates a BOE epic. I mean, world drops only happen…out in the world. So farming for gold has the chance for rare drops.
Plus it’s fun to pay your character too. But don’t get me wrong, I love crafting too, but I also like to farm.
Thanks. Its very insightful. Will try that.
i am seeing this but is this not the most fundamental, the foundational factor in crafting for profit?
if you can craft a raw mat into something that sells for more and makes an overall profit that is the “i win” button
you have found a way to take gold from the game without relying on other players
it is hard
i was losing my marbles having to determine if the cost of that “coarse thread” - a cost i have never had to consider in my wow history- will break a profit
but it is a start
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