Levelling Crafting the Profitable Way, Part 6

Continued from my previous 'Levelling Crafting the Profitable Way' journals.

By this point you should be fairly comfortable in your approach to levelling your crafting disciplines, you'll be hating that some level brackets eat your money but seeing that the profitable brackets cover that nicely. Levelling in this way is a slow process, which is why many just get lazy and throw their money at it to be done but I find doing it this way far more rewarding in the long run.

While crafting I ensured to keep making items that would progress my level as much as possible, as such my profits are the bare minimum of what I could make using this method. It requires very little effort to keep remaking profit-worthy items from brackets that no longer give you XP alongside those that do, maximising your profits as you go.

At the (roughly) quarter way stage of my levelling I had a total of 1g 30s 28c to my name. I say roughly as while my Huntsman was at 100 my Jeweler was at 150 as I got carried away and forgot I'd meant to do a 1/4 way progress report!

By the time I got to the halfway stage of both disciplines at 200 I had just over 2g in the back pocket of my new Krytan trousers (bought as a lovely friend gave me a gem card as a gift). On top of that the lovely Amber is now level 13, that's 7 levels earned without stepping foot outside Divinity's Reach.

I'm going to be taking a break from 'Levelling Crafting the Profitable Way' for now to focus on other guides and projects for Golden Griffon. I feel like I've given enough tips and shared my experiences enough that a person could comfortably get to their 400 crafting while maintaining a profit. That said, Amber won't be forgotten! When I have the time I'll be back to this project so you'll get at least one more post on the matter in the future even if it's just an end count on my gold!

I'd just like to thank my friends at GW2-Market for their encouragement in writing these guides, it was great getting your input guys and I was especially pleased to hear that from shiggidyshwa that my advice had been of use and that they were not only levelling their armoursmithing but using it to make money. I'm so glad to know the advice translates to other crafting disciplines!

Levelling Crafting the Profitable Way, Part 5

Continued from my previous 'Levelling Crafting the Profitable Way' journals.

Crafters love karma. While working away at my crafting today I got annoyed at myself for doing this project as a starter character. My meager starting funds had been painful but the blow I was dealt today was down to lack of karma:

These are items I could make at my current crafting level in Jeweler, lovely profit to be made all around. Unfortunately these recipes all require Embellished Intricate Jewels, the recipes for these can be bought with karma from your master craftsman.

I decided to stick with my original idea to show that anyone can do this and scrolled down (and down) the list of profit-worthy items and got to here:

A couple of these don't need Embellished Intricate Jewels so there is still profit to be made in this level range, just less of it! Of course I could run out and do an event or two and get some karma to buy one of the recipes but I'd rather show that you don't need to run content to make money and level your crafting discipline. Though going out into the wider world will of course augment your earnings, earning karma allows you to buy recipes and picking up resources from nodes is cheaper than buying them outright on the trading post.

Another Tip! When looking at crafting it's sometimes worthwhile checking the vendor price of what you're about to make. Take this necklace for example:

If I make this amulet for 1s 19c I'd make a loss when it came to selling on the Trading Post. However, the vendor price for one of these is 1s 36c. Selling to a vendor bypasses the fees involved in the trading post so I have the potential to make 17c per amulet for as long as I can keep crafting amulets at 1s 19c or less!

Levelling Crafting the Profitable Way, Part 4

Continued from my previous 'Levelling Crafting the Profitable Way' journals.

Getting through that 25 - 50 gap in jeweller was very painful. It ate almost all of my money and I had to make items that were no longer giving me XP to cover this downfall. Once I hit 50 however my pace merrily picked up with so many profit worthy items I could craft and sell comfortably, before I knew it my level in jeweller was 75 and I continued onwards with ease.

One thing I did discover while crafting and selling was something you'll see crop up from time to time while crafting; immediate, easy money! I was crafting adorned garnets and as I was selling I spotted the highest buyer's offer:

Looking at the numbers requested and the difference between highest buyer and lowest seller this looks like someone wanting to flip the garnets. However I was in need of some immediate funds and I know what it costs me to make an adorned garnet:

42c. So if I make them and sell them immediately I make instant coin! In the end I sold all 175, the filigree went up to 14c a piece but even if I had made all of the jewels for 44c each that would still be a profit of 9s 27c, funds claimed immediately and no risk of anyone undercutting me. My profits would have been more if I'd listed as the lowest seller and waited but that would have left me open to gambling what the demand for the adorned jewels would be.

Besides, my buyer was offline/not near a trading post/crafting the adorned jewels into finished trinkets as I kept an eye on the market and sold a handful more of adorned garnets at a time at the 95c 'lowest seller' price comfortably. Some would argue that I put eventual profit in my buyer's pocket rather than my own but I quite like using this approach, profit is profit and sometimes you just want the immediate satisfaction of a quick sale to the highest buyer.

Levelling Crafting the Profitable Way, Part 3

After following steps in my previous two entries I've done enough to be at 25 in both of my crafting professions and have 21s 8c, I'm rich! (Well, not as poor as I was!)

At this point you'll start to see that some of your recipes won't give you XP any more. This is a big problem as far as my rank in jeweler was concerned. Here are my recipes as a jeweler:



All greyed out (and ignore the number next to the copper ingot refining, that's just copper in storage and not part of this little crafting experiment). Now I go to GW2Spidy to check my level 25 recipes and see this:

So anything that I make that will progress my level will lose me money no matter what I do, ouch! When I hit stumbling blocks like these I can see why a lot of people see levelling crafting as a bit of a money sink, an endeavor that just eats up their gold and doesn't even say thank you all that often. But if you look past this hurdle you'll see what's beyond. Here are the level 50 jeweler recipes:

Now that looks a lot healthier. All I need to do is be able to afford to get from 25 - 50 and I'll be back on track. This is where levelling two disciplines at once can be handy, the plus sides of one can cover the downfalls of another. And on the plus side some of my level 0 huntsman recipes will still get me XP:

It's all about keep an eye on things and balancing profits and losses when you hit a point like this. Or, if you started off with more seed money, powering through to more profitable grounds!

Additional Tip! Flip the undercutters.

While working on this journal this happened to me:

That's my pistol sat at 1s 20c and it's been vastly undercut by someone else! Ordinarily in this situation I'd go to my handy TPCalc and check the profit potential (in this case 26.7% or 32c). If I weren't doing this whole thing to look into profits on the crafting alone I'd buy the 70c pistol and flip it in a heartbeat!

Levelling Crafting the Profitable Way, Part 2

I took my teensy profit made in my previous post and decided to make something else. I went back to GW2Spidy after my a small break and of course prices on things had moved around but I decided I wanted to make an actual usable item this time rather than a crafting component. Mighty Bronze Pistols were less profitable than earlier in the day but still had a decent profit margin so I set to work making one.

Which brings me to my next tip on these things; check the details on the item on GW2Spidy, sometimes it's far cheaper to buy already crafted components than doing it yourself:

I realise I'm doing this to level up my crafting, but buying the pieces saves a lot of money and you do get progression from putting the pieces together. So far I've made and sold a couple of these for a little less profit than the prices above (because of undercutting for quick sale).

I kept making and selling pistols one or two at a time for profits between 25c and 60c a piece depending on rapid swings. I could have listed them all at a higher price in the hopes of getting about 60 every time but this way I kept levelling and there was a little less risk involved. I used my profits to get some cheap copper ore and refine some ingots as well which I left to sell overnight.

An extra tip! Advice on profitworthy items when crafting; items made from recipes from renown vendors tend to give steady profit. This is likely due to there being demand for different looking things (the armour pieces are a really good example of this), the fact some of these items come preloaded with runes and that these aren't readily available recipes for everyone, so there's less supply. To get you started on this the some armour sets are;

Tailoring:
     Devout - This is obtained from Vasher Shadowsinner in the Diessa Plateau.
     Shadow - This is obtained from Undercover Agent Tulfar in the Snowden Drifts.
Leatherworking:
     Bloodsaw - This is obtained from Mara Ripsaw in the Diessa Plateau.
Armoursmithing:
     Iron legion - This is obtained from Gon Rageshot in the Diessa Plateau.

The profit on these isn't as great as it used to be (I did sell several of the shadow sets when it was in lower supply for a good profit a few months back) but it is fairly reliable profit. Most items will net you a few silver so if you just make 1 of each item at a time and only make more when demand is high you can easily make profit measured in gold in relatively short order. I really need to get back to this soon, I just got too heavily into flipping and neglected my poor crafters!

Levelling Crafting the Profitable Way

Inspired by the lovely sifrisk at GW2-Market's forums who posted up some great journals and ideas I thought I'd start a journal of my own. I wanted to show how you can level your crafting disciplines and make money along the way.

I'll start with a character who has no crafting skills to show how to get from 0 - 400 whilst still making money and to show that it can be done with any of the disciplines I will be picking two at random for her.

Starting Out:

To make this easier to keep track of I cancel all my buy bids and throw my remaining item stock at the market cheaply so I can utterly clear the trading post and better track how much money I'm making without being excessive with the maths! Then I grab my guinea pig:

Meet Amber Cunningham, level 6 engineer and utterly average lowbie character (if you ignore the fact I transmuted some pretty clothes to her as I'm an RPer!). I didn't even transfer startup funds to her from an alt as you can see so this is the type of character someone could have on a brand new account in fairly short order. Next I picked her disciplines. To make this utterly random I used random.org's list randomizer and plugged in all of the disciplines and picked the two that came at the top after hitting randomize. And the winners are (drumroll) Jeweler and Huntsman.

My next step was opening 3 tabs up on my browser; GW2Spidy Huntsman, GW2Spidy Jeweler and TPCalc. While the third isn't needed persay GW2Spidy isn't always 100% up to date with the fast moving market and I find it best to have my calculator handy to see if an item is still profitable if it's come down in price a little.

I refine my GW2Spidy pages into level 0-10 recipes and organise by profit:

Now I know it seems like I've stumbled at the starting block on jeweler. Not so, what you need to remember is that GW2Spidy assumes you are buying at the lowest market price rather than placing buy orders. -1c profit looks like it could be turned into a way of breaking even or even a teeny profit. So I take a look at the trading post and see that I can place a buy order at 17c per piece of copper ore, so 34c per ingot - 4 copper less than what GW2Spidy thinks, so I throw the numbers into TPCalc:

Ta da! Potential profit. Now I find myself wishing I'd given myself startup revenue for this project. I can only afford with my meager funds to buy myself a few chunks of ore - so I grab myself 10chunks at 17c, refine them into ingots, list the ingots for 43 copper and now all I can do is wait. There are several ingots listed at 43 so it will take a while for mine to sell but as crafting materials are often bought in bulk I don't mind waiting in line for a while. If I was an actual new character I'd go out and do some questing while I wait for my ingots to sell to earn more money but the whole point of this journal is to show what can be done on crafting alone so instead I hop to an alt to pass the time.

NB: Most people will have more start up revenue than this and will be able to hit the ground running, I just want to show that anybody can do this.