Binksie Posted January 15, 2012 Share Posted January 15, 2012 (edited) I'm only 43 atm, but I had 2 million credits by level 39 because I had carefully chosen which Cybertech things to craft given what I thought the highest demand would be, and what wasn't easily available from vendors. I'm now primarily sticking to ship upgrades, and currently have about 1.6 million credits but I bought all my bag slot upgrades and 1 extra bank slot as well as both speeder trainings. My main point is that you can still make money in this game and you don't need slicing to do so. I was Cybertech, Scavenging, and UT. You just need to put some time and effort into understanding the supply and demand of the GTN and the playerbase. I am by no means an expert but I'll quickly go over what I would consider the best profits for the crewskills I'm somewhat familiar with: Cybertech: Armoring and mods work, ship upgrades are what work best. Grade 2, 4, and especially 6 make amazing profits. Artifice: I'd go for color crystals, enhancements and hilts. Generators and focuses might be good as well but I don't know too much about that. Premade lightsabers might work (I'm not even sure you can craft them at lower levels) but you should be aware that a lot of people use orange moddable ones. Biochem: Implants while leveling and then adrenals (if thats the 2h one, not sure on name) at max level. Armstech: Barrels barrels barrels Armormech/Synthweaving: These are a bit harder because like I said earlier I think a lot of people are using orange gear. Check to see if you can craft any cool looking orange gear and they will probably sell. If not go for the off pieces that don't usually show up on vendors like belts, boots, wrists etc. With all of these you should always try to RE to purple because that is never available on vendors, but its not enough to simply RE to a purple. You should check what is currently available on the GTN, then if you want to put even more work in, keep in mind as you're leveling and visiting vendors what items are available for each level. If the commendation vendor for a certain world/level range sells level 30 items, try to make stuff for level 28, or 33 etc. Keep in mind which classes are being played most often as the demand is probably the highest, but also don't forget the classes/specs that are played less often so that you might be the only one providing what they need and your items will sell. Try to remember your own personal leveling experience, where did it get hard and you wished you had some upgrades. Where did you finally have enough credits to sit at the GTN looking for some items to buy. Try to cover those level ranges in the items you make. And finally try to keep track of what sold if you can, then you know which items are working and which are not. Its a pain to navigate the GTN but once you get used to it you can use that to your advantage. Look for items that are posted way too cheap and buy them to repost. I know a lot of people just use the recommended price instead of dealing with the absolute wreck that the GTN is currently. And if you don't have a lot of credits to play with, start with REing items that you would actually use so if they don't sell, you still get a nice upgrade. My last tip is one that I hesitate mentioning because I know my big mouth will just make it harder for me to make profits later on lol, but for any of you that haven't discovered this yet.. the key is mission discoveries. I can only talk about Underworld Trading in detail because thats what I've been working with, but let me give you an example. The grade 6 ship upgrades are made with grade 5 UT materials. It takes 2 purples and 6 blues plus some green scavenging material I won't cover (but they add up to about 6k). These grade 5 purples are selling for 10k a piece, and the blues are around 1.5k. That means not counting the vendor or scavenging mats the cost is around 29k. And I say this because I have actually tried selling the mats for 10k and 1.5 and they have all sold, so I count their GTN price as that. A lvl 300 purple UT mission takes around 2 hours, and costs about 3k credits. It returns 4 purple metals, 8 blue metals, 4 purple cloths, 8 blue cloths, and a companion gift. Using the GTN prices you get 52k worth of mats with just metals alone. I've regularly found these missions for under 5k on the GTN. You can see what I mean. Paying 5k for the mission plus the 3k cost to send them out, thats 8k for 52k worth of materials (metals alone). Now you can see selling grade 6 ship parts for 30-35k is a great profit. And I'm sure the other mission discoveries aren't as profitable as this, but just buy 1 and see what you get. Compare your results to what the GTN price is for the materials and you can decide for yourself if you want to go this route. I know I have and for the past 10 days I've done nothing but craft ship upgrades and send my companions on these purple mission discoveries. It definitely takes time and effort but crewskills are far from hopeless. Anyway I'm not an expert and I know 2 million credits isn't a crap ton, but I just wanted to show that you can still make money crafting and share some of the tips/ideas I've come up since I started. Good luck Edited January 15, 2012 by Binksie Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mooseb Posted January 15, 2012 Share Posted January 15, 2012 (edited) Get to lvl 50 Go to Ilium Buy lvl 23 EPIC modifications (Highest any crafting could achieve is lvl 22 Epics) Edited January 15, 2012 by Mooseb Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kazlowe Posted January 15, 2012 Share Posted January 15, 2012 +1 to OP. Slowly more and more people will realize how much you can make with any crew skill. Part of me hopes not too many do though as they'll cut into my profit margin! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Midnight_Malice Posted January 15, 2012 Share Posted January 15, 2012 (edited) A few people get lucky here and there, but the fact is that most people will use mission rewards to 50, then use drops and Ilum vendors for better gear than most craftors can make. Or some crafters that can make good endgame items (like my epic focus with willpower, crits, alacrity, accuracy) just wont sell. I made a mastercraft and had to settle for 60k, the standard sells for 30k... if im lucky. I only sold 1 at this price, the others expired. As for crystals, I have an epic orange scheme endgame crit crystal, have yet to sell one on GTM using the standard pricetag... any lower and the profit margin would be so slight that it wouldn't be worth it. You have cybertech but then give advice for other crafters? I don't see how that can really work... If you haven't tried crafting another skill, then everything else you said other than cybertech is all speculation. Edited January 15, 2012 by Midnight_Malice Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sarmea Posted January 15, 2012 Share Posted January 15, 2012 Funny, after so many years out, WoW still has many people leveling. We get 8 slots per server, and you think people are going to level 1 character to 50 and stop? Even in Everquest, the leveling grind didn't stop people from making a ton of alts. Seeing as you have a have a ton of alts before you can do all that crafting by yourself, and GTN has a 50 item limit even for hardcore crafters..... TL;DR :There's plenty of market, and the market will always be there. People with alts, and people new to the game need gear/implants/adrenals/ship parts/crystals etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Midnight_Malice Posted January 15, 2012 Share Posted January 15, 2012 (edited) Funny, after so many years out, WoW still has many people leveling. We get 8 slots per server, and you think people are going to level 1 character to 50 and stop? Even in Everquest, the leveling grind didn't stop people from making a ton of alts. Seeing as you have a have a ton of alts before you can do all that crafting by yourself, and GTN has a 50 item limit even for hardcore crafters..... TL;DR :There's plenty of market, and the market will always be there. People with alts, and people new to the game need gear/implants/adrenals/ship parts/crystals etc. Do you honestly see people leveling alts buying all different types of gear when quest rewards and commedations being almost as good til 50, then better than what we can craft at 50? And besides that, most people with alts will be crafting thier own gear from thier mains and sending it to them, cutting the equipment they need to buy (assuming they do) in half? With so many credits needed just to level (buying abilities, speeder training and such) and quest rewards and vendors having comparable rewards, people aren't going to shell out credits for epic gear, when they can just use rare stuff they got for free, some people MAY, but most dont. Edited January 15, 2012 by Midnight_Malice Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mosquitoboy Posted January 15, 2012 Share Posted January 15, 2012 Artifice: Hilts are all that matter to people leveling. What does a lvl 20 care to get that extra +3 to a stat that he will out level in 2 hours. A hilt upgrades his stats and over all dmg. This makes his grinding faster. If your trying to sell lower level items, all that matters is green and blue hilts. People won't pay for the purps cause it costs you a lot to make em, but they will only use em for a few hours. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sarmea Posted January 15, 2012 Share Posted January 15, 2012 I went to the GTN to buy gear, because commendations can't fill the gap at all. You can get guardian or force wielder armors. Unfortunately, those are endurance heavy- not much willpower. As a sage, Willpower is what I need, and quest gear doesn't offer nearly enough. I took biochem. Do I really need to level an alt to make synth armor? Then level another alt to be able to make gear for that one as well? Then level an alt to make mods that aren't available otherwise? Right now the only relics available to me are endurance ones form the light vendor. Yeah, that's useful (NOT). If people didn't buy gear/stuff off the GTN, everything I put up would fall off. It doesn't. I've only had one thing fall off in the last 3 weeks, and it was because I had miss-priced it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mosquitoboy Posted January 15, 2012 Share Posted January 15, 2012 Armormech/Synthweaving: Make only belts and wrists and orange items. I don't know of any orange low level wrists and belts. People always need new ver. of these two items. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jekarta-Aden Posted January 15, 2012 Share Posted January 15, 2012 Dude, I LOVE YOU.... but in a Bromantic kind of love . I was beginning to think UT was worth it more for Companion Gifts other than anything else. Was also beginning to think Armormech (Bounty Hunter) was more credit consuming than profiting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Binksie Posted January 15, 2012 Author Share Posted January 15, 2012 (edited) Dude, I LOVE YOU.... but in a Bromantic kind of love . I was beginning to think UT was worth it more for Companion Gifts other than anything else. Was also beginning to think Armormech (Bounty Hunter) was more credit consuming than profiting. If you were talking to me, don't worry I'm a girl lol. And just to respond to a few of the posts/questions I saw, I said hilts but I meant lightsabers. I saw that hilts are the barrel equivalent which like a poster said, are very very good to make. I edited the OP to say that. As for armoring, even though you can get grade 23 armoring and mods from ilum, they still take time and perhaps money to buy. Since I'm not 50 I don't know for sure, but what I do know is that some people have a lot of credits already, and when they hit 50 they will want to gear our their character asap. The player base isn't as rich as they were in WoW when people would buy tons of BoE's as soon as they hit 80, but they will still be buying some. It takes time to gear any character up, and if you are wanting to raid or pvp with your friends but you are undergeared and have credits, you bet you'll buy some items from the GTN to get there faster. And I know this because I will do it, my friends have done it, and it was done in previous MMOs. That is why even if grade 23 is available, grade 22 will still sell. The question now is whether the price the grade 22 sells at is worth it compared to what the mats cost you. At 30k I am still making a profit from grade 22 armoring and mods, and they do sell. I sold a few at 50k which were of course an amazing profit, but now there is more competition so the price is dropping. With any level, you just have to look at what the mats cost you and how much you can sell the item for. Starting with smaller items/profits and moving up as your bank increases. When I started I was selling some level 15 and 19 epic earpieces. They sold from 7-12k but the mats cost me around 2k tops. The grade 4 ship upgrades are selling for about 10k on my server, and the mats cost me around 3k, so that is a 7k profit per sale. You don't have to exclusively deal with the high cost items, look at the level ranges that are missing purple items, and make some for that range. If the price is reasonable to the buyer, but still profitable for you, then you will sell the item, trust me. I see a lot of levels 10-20 with legacy names, which mean they're an alt. Those characters have the credit backing of a level 50, and so spending 10k on a purple earpiece or hit or implant is a small dent in their total credits, but a nice upgrade for that alt. If that item only costs you 3k to make, you can build up your bankroll easily. Yes I haven't leveled the other professions to max, but I have looked over them extensively on Torhead and other crafting sites and I have my main BH and 3 alts around level 20 all with different crew skills, so already I can see which items I am in need of and which items I am not. If you're afraid to put a lot of time and money into a certain item, try selling the green quality first and see how it does, then try the blue one.. if it keeps selling go for the purple. People will buy purple items, but they won't do it if it costs 20k for a level 20 purple. Make sure the item can be set at a price that is reasonable to the buyer and as long as that price still gives you a good profit, go for it. If the only way you can sell it is to set the price so low you aren't making a profit, or too little profit, then forget that level grade and try another one. There really is stuff to sell at all level grades you just need to find the one that can net you a good profit. Edited January 15, 2012 by Binksie Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The-Light-Shadow Posted January 15, 2012 Share Posted January 15, 2012 You're wrong about armstech. Barrels don't give nearly the profit of techblades and other companion only gear. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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