Am I Looking At Things In The Wrong Way

[Flipityflu]

I've just come back to the game, and purchased a two month subscription. One of the reasons for this was to get make it easier to get involved in crew skills (with the ability to get 3 skills). I wanted to make dyes so I have more control over my look.

 

However, what I have found is that it seems to me that most of the dyes aren't crafted, but purchased through other means.

 

Is all crafting like this, because as of right now, I'm starting to wonder what the point really is when the best items seem to be just purchased off the cartel market. It seems its just better to gather, get slicing, profit, and not bother with crafting at all.

[psandak]

Is all crafting like this...

 

No it is not. You are focusing one aspect of crafting - appearance - and yes there are many more dyes and color crystals available from CM sources (direct and pack) than artifice. However, there are MANY dyes and crystals that artifice crafts that are highly sought.

 

Furthermore

• the only only source for augments and augmentation slot kits come from crafting (armormech, armstech, and synthweaving)
  
• High quality buff and restoration consumables are only available from biochem (yes you can buy stims and medpaks from NPC vendors, but they do not offer nearly the stats, they do not last nearly as long (in the case of stims), and they do not survive death.
  
• The only source of non-aligned relics while leveling come from artifice.
  
• And crafted equipment from all crafting skills are superior in stat distribution to comms/data crystals vendor gear.
  

[Flipityflu]

I guess whats making me bitter is that when i first came back, because i only could select two crew skills, i picked a gathering skill and slicing, and made loads of credits. now i have three and started crafting, its been nothing but a money sink. i spend so much on needed treasure hunting missions that i feel like I'm running on a treadmill.

 

thanks for the reply.

[psandak]

I guess whats making me bitter is that when i first came back, because i only could select two crew skills, i picked a gathering skill and slicing, and made loads of credits. now i have three and started crafting, its been nothing but a money sink. i spend so much on needed treasure hunting missions that i feel like I'm running on a treadmill.

 

thanks for the reply.

 

Like every other entrepreneurial enterprise you have to spend money to make money. I said it in another thread on this forum:

 

Crafting has been and always will be an investment. 99% of players will not make credits quickly with crafting. You will spend a lot more credits than you make in the early going just to get to the point where you have desirable schematics to craft for profit.

 

I have been playing MMOs and working their markets for 15 years and in EVERY one it is the same scenario - crafting for profit takes patience. If you do not have patience, you will fail at crafting for profit.

Edited March 1, 2016 by psandak

[Eola]

I returned into the game about month ago after a few years break - consider me a newbie. Money making is a big part of any MMO for me, so I spent a lot of time on GTN/crafting. By now I have all 6 crafters, and I can say that ~1-3 mln/day is easy enough, and crafting, running some profitable missions and playing game itself are giving me roughly same profit.

 

Honestly, the more I play the more I see that crafting is one of the worst money per hour return in game. For example, running heroics (if you do it smart and convert data crystal to money) gives about twice larger profit/hour. It could be different if we had tools similar to auction addons in WoW, with current interface I spent on crafting/missions/selling about 40 mins twice a day - way too long for me.

[Flipityflu]

I returned into the game about month ago after a few years break - consider me a newbie. Money making is a big part of any MMO for me, so I spent a lot of time on GTN/crafting. By now I have all 6 crafters, and I can say that ~1-3 mln/day is easy enough, and crafting, running some profitable missions and playing game itself are giving me roughly same profit.

 

Honestly, the more I play the more I see that crafting is one of the worst money per hour return in game. For example, running heroics (if you do it smart and convert data crystal to money) gives about twice larger profit/hour. It could be different if we had tools similar to auction addons in WoW, with current interface I spent on crafting/missions/selling about 40 mins twice a day - way too long for me.

 

My feeling is that crafting is almost an endgame thing. As I said, I made more money just by having slicing than I have now crafting while leveling. This means not being able to spend money as I level.

 

Thats just not fun to me.

 

I''m sure that would change if I had alts with different crew skills, with my resources all pooled together so that I don't have to go to the market to buy parts to make purple items.

[Pardoz]

[*]The only source of non-aligned relics while leveling come from artifice.

 

Actually you can get unaligned levelling relics from Heroic gear lockboxes (I've gotten a few as quest rewards, too). The crafted ones are generally slightly better in terms of stats (especially the purples, since the lockbox ones are usually blue, and quest reward ones green), and there's also the "RNG hates me today" element, where you run a bunch of Heroics hoping to get some gear upgrades and end up with seven belts and an implant when you really needed new relics and a helmet, but while crafting is arguably the best source it isn't the only source.

 

Between that and the speed you outlevel gear at these days, I haven't had a lot of luck crafting levelling relics for sale (this may well be a case where Your Server May Vary, of course).

[DawnAskham]

Crafting items for credits is in a 'difficult' place right now, with an over-supply in many categories making it difficult to generate large margins, or large overall returns, without selling in high volumes (which equals more time spent).

 

It is still profitable, but to be effective requires having a lot of characters with all skills covered multiple times with high rank influence companions to generate significant profit (which requires a large investment in time and credits), or having access to rare schematics and / or rare (not mission based) materials.

 

While I made plenty in the past selling basics such as augments and kits and dyes and modifications, I rarely bother and tend to only craft items such as 216+ items which require exotic materials, that and sell items like gifts or old CM items I stashed away in the past.

 

I guess after several months of selling stuff like ten or more 192 hilts a day for 250-300K a pop with a materials value sub 20K and little to no competition, I no longer find crafting items which list for <40K with similar materials value and lots of competition to be worth the time and effort.

Edited March 1, 2016 by DawnAskham

[psandak]

I returned into the game about month ago after a few years break - consider me a newbie. Money making is a big part of any MMO for me, so I spent a lot of time on GTN/crafting. By now I have all 6 crafters, and I can say that ~1-3 mln/day is easy enough, and crafting, running some profitable missions and playing game itself are giving me roughly same profit.

 

Honestly, the more I play the more I see that crafting is one of the worst money per hour return in game. For example, running heroics (if you do it smart and convert data crystal to money) gives about twice larger profit/hour. It could be different if we had tools similar to auction addons in WoW, with current interface I spent on crafting/missions/selling about 40 mins twice a day - way too long for me.

 

How many characters do you have that it takes you 40 mins a pass? I have 11 characters: 6 crafters and 5 gatherers/missions and it takes me 25 minutes on a "bad" day, more commonly about 17 minutes to go through all 11 characters. The five gatherers take about a minute to...

 

1. choose character
   
2. load in
   
3. collect results from previous pass missions
   
4. open legacy cargo and drop materials into proper tabs
   
5. send companions on new missions
   
6. logoff
   

 

The actual in game play time is roughly 35 seconds (25 seconds of loading and unloading)

 

My crafters take a little longer but not much

1. choose character
   
2. load in
   
3. collect mission results
   
4. collect mail (sales and expired)
   
5. open legacy cargo and drop materials into proper tabs
   
6. send companions on new assignments (crafting and/or missions)
   
7. go to GTN
   
8. search for item X (shift click to fill text search; occasionally add filters like rarity and/or level requirements)
   
9. sort by price (low to high)
   
10. decide on price of my item X
    
11. post sale
    
12. right click each of same item and click create sale
    
13. repeats steps 8 through 12 for each specific item I craft
    
14. logoff
    

 

Maybe I am just more efficient than most due to the amount of "practice." Maybe I am not as picky about what I am crafting; on most of my crafters I only craft at most half a dozen items with any regularity, my artificer is my most diverse crafter with about 20 items I craft regularly.

 

Doing this 20 minute per pass cycle about 10 times a week, I average about 10 million credits profit...that's approximately 1 million credits per 20 minutes of play...no other aspect of the game can generate that many credits in that little time

[wainot-keel]

Is anyone selling lowbie stuff ?

 

I'm under the impression that with the overabundance of data crystals and mods from vendor being cheap, gear lockboxes from faceroll heroics and well, level sync the market for lowbie gear must be quite dead... haven't even tried anything since 4.0 dropped....

[psandak]

Is anyone selling lowbie stuff ?

 

I'm under the impression that with the overabundance of data crystals and mods from vendor being cheap, gear lockboxes from faceroll heroics and well, level sync the market for lowbie gear must be quite dead... haven't even tried anything since 4.0 dropped....

 

I have never been one to crafted low and mid level stuff for sale. When I have had "extra" stuff while leveling, I have posted it on the GTN and it has sold, usually within 48 hours.

[Eola]

How many characters do you have that it takes you 40 mins a pass?

 

I am a new player, and as result I don't have proper routine yet, I need to analyse what was sold, what are current changes on markets I am trying to work on, decide on pricing and further experiments.

 

With my WoW setup I had about 40 positions I worked with on regular basis, and it took about 2-3 minutes to check current situation for all off them, decide what I want to do and about 2 more minutes to post 1-10 items in each position. I don't see how I can do it with SWTOR interface, I have to check each position individually, not to mention posting. With experience on each market it becomes faster, but now working on about 20 positions plus trying to watch about 10 more takes 25-30 minutes.

 

Sending companions is the fastest part and really less time consuming than crafting in WoW.

 

Pretty much your 20 min/day does not include time you spend on market analysis/experiments. With your experience you are not doing it daily, but it is huge time investment, and this is area where WoW addons were very helpful.

Edited March 4, 2016 by Eola

[psandak]

I am a new player, and as result I don't have proper routine yet, I need to analyse what was sold, what are current changes on markets I am trying to work on, decide on pricing and further experiments.

 

With my WoW setup I had about 40 positions I worked with on regular basis, and it took about 2-3 minutes to check current situation for all off them, decide what I want to do and about 2 more minutes to post 1-10 items in each position. I don't see how I can do it with SWTOR interface, I have to check each position individually, not to mention posting. With experience on each market it becomes faster, but now working on about 20 positions plus trying to watch about 10 more takes 25-30 minutes.

 

Sending companions is the fastest part and really less time consuming than crafting in WoW.

 

I'm not sure what you mean by "positions" I played WoW for 7 years. Are you talking about zones you gather from?

[DawnAskham]

I'm not sure what you mean by "positions" I played WoW for 7 years. Are you talking about zones you gather from?

 

I'm assuming he's talking about markets (augments, sims, mods, barrels, hilts, etc and all their sub-categories), and is spending time looking up prices of materials and finished goods to make determinations on which items to craft, which materials to buy, which to sell, etc.