I played at release and just got back into it. I'm enjoying the game and most aspects, I thought I'd finally level weaponsmithing to 500 only to find out theres no real point unless im going to make bound ascended gear or legendary.
I thought surely there'd be some max level gear that was in demand or could make nice gear to sell but there's nothing. Crafting feels kinder pointless?
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You wanna craft? You're free to do so, but don't expect to make spectacular-level profit from there.
When you don't want the truth, you will make up your own truth.
The economy is very strictly controlled and balanced in a way nothing is meant to give you profit, the real way to make money is not crafting; is farm or buy unique-sale skins and such, that will face a frequent increase of price.
It got to a point it's more expensive to craft several stuff than it is buying on trade post.
They only added a real point to Crafting on several professions later, to craft ascended gear; if they ever opened up that to the global economy the same would've happened.
Some gear in the 400-500 level range is actually terrible in terms of profit. When I played a year ago, it might take 8-10 gold to craft an exotic armor piece. They sold for 1.5-12 gold, based on the rune you used. If you made something like a +healing sword, you'd be looking at large losses.
I viewed crafting as something I'd invest my gold in. Whenever I had 50+ gold, I'd spend 40 into crafting mats. Sometimes you'd get 50% of it back through sales. There's not that much to invest gold on in general, so leveling up crafting and making Ascended equipment for yourself is a nice goal.
Final Fantasy XIV. The crafting in that game has its own meta and end game. Crafting is a class that you level in itself (legit levels), and has gear that further improves your art through the mini-game. It also has rotations, BiS and abilities to use. Not to mention a wide array of constantly updates items and materials that gatherers can sell to crafters. In addition to gear being able to be broken down into materia or rare materials.
I've made probably about two billion gil from selling weapons, armor, furniture (during housing patches, don't really bother outside those months aside from new Star items each patch), aesthetic items, etc. Even if I buy materials from gatherers, the profit is still insane, mainly due to the system whereby they have normal items that the game is balanced around, and High Quality items that experienced craftsmen with BiS and proper rotations can sell for 5x the price, easy.
Then again, the game has like five + different types of end games with their own meta. Crafting in itself takes up nearly all my free time, and requires constant supervision of your retainers that sell items (as well as knowledge of the economy) to beat out competitors.
Over the course of working the last six years on crafting (from 1.0 onwards), I'm able to easily make a good 2-5 million gil a night just from casually crafting, since I am able to buy materials and shards in bulk. Spending upwards of maybe 30 million gil each time I need to restock (providing I don't have time to go out and gather myself).
Granted, most players won't have the patience or fortitude to take on the crafting end game of FFXIV, but it is one of the few games that actually has a crafting meta in itself. Not to mention that I, personally, have multiple legacy accounts that I use, with each account having an omni crafter (though I mainly just use spare accounts to create materials, as there are different stages of materials such as Plant -> Thread -> Cloth that you craft before getting into making items that require multiples of the final materials; you are able to set the crafting of materials to auto while focusing on your main to craft the items).
I try to keep my reserves above 100 million in case something comes up in new patches that requires my attention and gil, though I oft buy Free Company mates / friends their own rooms / houses / gear (or craft such; selling 3.4 weapons and armor for 1.5-3 million a piece right now) whenever the opportunity presents itself. Personally need to start crafting seriously again, as I've been slacking since the release of patch 3.3 some time ago -- with 3.4 just being released.
It's amazing to me how well they keep the economy maintained, even after all these years. Normal items are almost always cheap, as it's the HQ market that sells for a lot. So even new players won't be met with the typical "this level 5 item is selling for 2,000 gold", such as on WoW, due to it.
Though I play on very populated realms, so things sell quite fast if you stay on top of it (though Palace of the Dead is starting to cut in on that).
Anyway OP, you can craft legendaries and sell them.
Like you said it's about demand. Obviously there is no high demand for freely available exotic gear.
The crafting in GW2 isn't so bad though, it's more about enhancing your personal items over others.
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Ok.
It seems to me the point of crafting in GW2 is to get BiS gear.
And you can make some money, just not thousands, unless you are crafting legendaries and then you can.
So BiS gear, money and XP while you leveling = useless crafting.
Confused.
Currently playing: GW2
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