Worth it to craft anymore, in this economy?

[Septimus]

How can RMT make money if they undercut the market?

Here's an example, it's easy to undercut the sushi market if you also run fish bots. Since the fish make up a large portion of the price of sushi you can afford to sell at a much lower price and make up for it in sheer volume.

But we all know that RMT would never do anything illegal like botting...

[½pint]

He's actually telling the truth.

The only profitable way for somebody to make sushi is buy buying ingredients from limited-supply vendors in Lower Jeuno / Port Bastok / Norg (or buying them off the AH, which comes at a loss).

For starters, the RMT's always have hordes of characters at the vendors to buy out the stocks in minutes.

When it comes to selling the sushi on the AH, RMT will ALWAYS undercut so that theirs sells first; the only reason the price doesn't plummet to nothing is because sushi sells so fast, and eventually the price will rise (generally, the price is 10k cheaper outside of JP/NA primetime).
In this way, even though they are not making as much money per stack as they could be, they're shifting way, way more of the product than 'genuine' crafters. And since they're logged on and crafting 24/7, they can make as much of the sushi as they like. Whereas for normal crafters, we aren't going to spend all day grinding sushi so that we can sell 100 stacks at 2k profit each like the RMT do (as opposed to say, 20 stacks at 10k profit each).

It's called flooding. Eventually people stop bothering to make and sell sushi, and the RMT's profits start crawling up.

[Sheeny]

How can RMT make money if they undercut the market?

I'm not friends with any RMT's to give me their point of view, but *my* theory has always been that their goal is "if we undercut everything to the point of no profit, players can't profit either - and have to go buy our gil that we make elsewhere."

It's the only thing that makes sense to me. I imagine if they did *not* kill sushi prices and let cooks profit from it, they'd make MORE money by just botting and selling the fish. But then those player-cooks aren't miserable and tempted to buy gil.
Botting doesn't help them profit on making cookies, yet it doesn't stop them from killing Wizards too.

[aurik]

The RMT are happy to make 2k a stack of product, because they're running 10 crafters with 1 human. 10k/hr on one crafter is 100k/hr overall. It's in their interest to push you out of whatever market they are running, because a sale for you means no money for them.

[Kimiko]

Just wondering what some of the more experienced crafters think, the type of person with multiple 100s. I'm a nab at crafting, my main is only in the 70s, and I only have a couple even at 60. It just seems like it's not such a great way to make money anymore... all the synths I've depended on in the past are worse off profit-margin wise, and I find I make better money selling hnm drops or stuff from bcnm or assault.

I've kinda been thinking about making a crafting push to see what it's like to master one, but it's looking like a waste of money, to be honest.

Just depends what your crafting I suppose. For me (Clothcraft 69 atm), I'm currently using fairly cheep synths to skillup, manily b. choco feathers. For profit, I use mainly silk cloth for a reasonable profit (15-20k/stack dependent on market/material prices). I'm hoping soon to switch over to spider webs which are easy enough to farm and make into rainbow thread at little to no cost to me.

[Medivac]

weskit went down so bad, i remberwhen i got mine for a steal at 6m at the time....i see them for 90k and its like a slap in the face IS3000 [thank you] ; ;

[Rilu]

Its all about timing with selling stuff-

for instance, with regard to our LS bank mule- I went to the AH and saw that there were NO weskits on sale one sunday night, none at all. I placed 2 on sale for 50K more than the asking price (100K at the time) and they both sold like within 45 minutes. Then I went back to put 2 more up, and there were 15 weskits up, all for less than 100K.

The problem isn't RMT, the problem isn't prices- the problem is the point of view you take at your crafting and what "profit" is for you. Profits right now in most crafters eyes are being compared to the prices that were here about 6 months ago, where talons were still 2M or so each, along with most of the other materials, and you could make a good chunk of money off NQ synths. Now with dumb people that just undercut, you have to sell your stuff for cheaper-

So, if you're wanting to make money crafting, DON'T craft those items, find other items to make money on (even if its not alot). you have to take a look at % of profit, not actual numbers because of the deflation of prices-

If you used to spend 2.1M to craft a weskit, and you could sell it for 2.2M for a profit of 100K -which is roughly 5% of the cost of the item. Now in todays market, lets say you spend 100K to craft a NQ weskit, and sell it for 110K. you are actually making a larger % of profit on that sale (10%), then you did on the weskit you made "100K" profit on, because your cost for materials is so much lower. People are just so used to being able to make 100-200K per synth, not recognizing the loss on breaks, and the % of profit actually make it more "profitable" now.

Sorry for the Wall-o-text, but in short-

Crafting is not as lucritive for sheer Gil amount anymore, farming raw materials generally will give you a better return for time spent.

[Lordender]

alchemy died a very horrible death on carbuncle lol.

[Legolass]

alchemy died a very horrible death on carbuncle lol.

same on shiva lol

[Stilgar]

alchemy died a very horrible death on carbuncle lol.

You guys not seeing any pickup in business at all, with Salvage and all now? People seem to like buying lots of Hi-pots and reraisers and stuff to take in with them.

[Tovaud]

alchemy died a very horrible death on carbuncle lol.

You guys not seeing any pickup in business at all, with Salvage and all now? People seem to like buying lots of Hi-pots and reraisers and stuff to take in with them.

Maybe if the Assaults you have to complete to even do Salvage didn't drop all those meds in obscene quantity, you'd have a point.

[Gemera]

Is anyone else noticing a large amount of fishers and cooks gone from their server due to the earthquake near Taiwan about a week ago? Squid sushi +1 alone is back to 40k/stack vs. 23k/stack from a week ago.

[Stilgar]

alchemy died a very horrible death on carbuncle lol.

You guys not seeing any pickup in business at all, with Salvage and all now? People seem to like buying lots of Hi-pots and reraisers and stuff to take in with them.

Maybe if the Assaults you have to complete to even do Salvage didn't drop all those meds in obscene quantity, you'd have a point.

When I do an assault, I typically see 2 drops, and they're just as often remedies as hi pot tanks. Every assault you run takes 3 people. Most assaults don't put out enough meds for 1 Salvage run for each person. You need 2 assaults per salvage run per person? OK, in those 2 assaults you got more or less sufficient meds for one salvage run for one person, unless your salvage runs are like mine, where monks might pop 5-10 hi-pots before any tanks get weapon/ability unlocks or any mages get magic unlocked.

Can you see the disparity yet?

[Sanoske]

More and more, the answer is simply becoming "No".

[Lordender]

reraisers aren't craftable, bcnm/low tier HNM drops only. Hi-potions have been terrible since assault rewards them + tanks.

[Tovaud]

alchemy died a very horrible death on carbuncle lol.

You guys not seeing any pickup in business at all, with Salvage and all now? People seem to like buying lots of Hi-pots and reraisers and stuff to take in with them.

Maybe if the Assaults you have to complete to even do Salvage didn't drop all those meds in obscene quantity, you'd have a point.

When I do an assault, I typically see 2 drops, and they're just as often remedies as hi pot tanks. Every assault you run takes 3 people. Most assaults don't put out enough meds for 1 Salvage run for each person. You need 2 assaults per salvage run per person? OK, in those 2 assaults you got more or less sufficient meds for one salvage run for one person, unless your salvage runs are like mine, where monks might pop 5-10 hi-pots before any tanks get weapon/ability unlocks or any mages get magic unlocked.

Can you see the disparity yet?

The fallacy in that logic is that you assume everyone who does Assault also does Salvage. The 30 Hi-potion tanks and 10 Hi-ether tanks on the Phoenix AH currently state to the contrary. Demand might have picked up somewhat, but increased supply has outstripped that demand.

[Lordender]

Bottom line is SE hasent helped crafters much lately, The Ashu Talif drops HQ gems which goldsmithers used to make quick profit, Assaults hurt alchemist hi-potions used to be quick and easy profit that you could throw on a mule. ISNM's hurt bonecrafter's with the dragon talon drop rates. When people finally learn to farm salvage efficently enough to get salvage gear i think crafting will take a harder hit.

[Tovaud]

Well, the best way to fix the crafting situation is to make a way for all the armor and weapons currently in the game a way to exit the game. Item decay would be the best way to fix the issue and involve crafters more, but I imagine that would only cause more complaining once you lost something big, like say a Ridill, to item decay.

[Wizerd]

Bottom line is SE hasent helped crafters much lately, The Ashu Talif drops HQ gems which goldsmithers used to make quick profit, Assaults hurt alchemist hi-potions used to be quick and easy profit that you could throw on a mule. ISNM's hurt bonecrafter's with the dragon talon drop rates. When people finally learn to farm salvage efficently enough to get salvage gear i think crafting will take a harder hit.

I have to disagree with this one. If anything, it helped Bonecrafters. Talons are now 50-100k on Remora, with other materials adding up to maybe 30k. 130k per try and 1/100 HQ (which is a low rate for T0) is 13m spent if you NPCd all of the weskits, which obviously isn't the case (most crafters get back at least half of it on each sale, unless they flood). As far as I know, Weskits are still well over 15m on Remora. Maybe 20-25m, I'm not sure. It's not the fastest money but it's a profit nonetheless. I could be wrong, but judging by the lack of Weskits in comments/bazaars, and having no sales on the AH since October, it looks as though they are still in demand.

My point? Lowering the price of materials (and therefore lowering price of resulting items) isn't always bad.

I've seen a huge hit in all other aspects of crafting though.

Item decay is a bad solution, but there does need to be a way to consume all these items that get crafted several times a day, HQ included. The best way in my opinion woulda been something like Salvage, where several pieces are required to make a rare/ex piece. Add, say, a Scorpion Harness +1 into the mix for one of the melee body pieces, and you suddenly have 1 less item worth 3 million gil. That's 3 million gil the player can't get for selling his/her gil when they quit. 3 million gil they can't get and then recirculate into the economy. However you want to look at it. Either way, it would help balance out the items vs gil predicament the game is having.

Items go up up up up up, gil goes down, prices drop like they are now. When do they stop dropping? When farming and selling items to NPCs becomes more profitable than AHing items. Then supply goes way down, and prices start to float back up and re-balance to prices just slightly higher than NPC selling prices, but lower than buying from an NPC.

[Scorp]

Items go up up up up up, gil goes down, prices drop like they are now. When do they stop dropping? When farming and selling items to NPCs becomes more profitable than AHing items. Then supply goes way down, and prices start to float back up and re-balance to prices just slightly higher than NPC selling prices, but lower than buying from an NPC.

So the best solution would in fact be re-balancing NPC prices.