How do you make money with your crafting profession?Follow

Hey All! It is time to update the Trade Skills FAQ with relevant Burning Crusade information.

First up: Making money with a crafting profession. What sells well as an Alchemist, Blacksmith, Leatherworker, Tailor, Jewelcrafter, or Engineer?

Please post on this thread if you'd like to contribute to our Trade Skills FAQ. I will of course give proper credit =D I'll be skimming through the last 2-3 pages of posts for this type of information as well, but any input is welcome.

Edited, Aug 16th 2007 11:33:28am by thermalnoise

Thanks for replying. I suspected this would be the answer for Tailors. I know that most pick up tailoring for the awesome BoP gear now (which I debate dropping Herbalism for every day as a priest, but I'm a potion freak and wouldn't have it any other way). But we do get the "How do I make money" questions on this forum and I'd like to get the FAQ updated.

As a leather worker I have found that there are a few items that are popular. The problem is the mats often equal the amount you get out of them.

Toughened Leather Gloves
Barbaric Bracers
Deviate Scale Belt

These are all low level blue items that sell quite well to people looking for twink-like gear.

Blacksmiths need the Green Leather Armor to make the green mail armor and Gaurdian Gloves for Truesilver Gauntlets. A lot of people need Hillsman Cloaks for the Yeti Fur Cloak quest. Hunters wuold benefit for the ammo pouches and quivers although they may be overflowing the AH.

Once you reach 250 LWing you can purchase a salt shaker and farm deep rock salt and refine it and sell for quite a bit since the shakers have such a long cooldown.

And of course never underestimate the Armor Kits.

Edit: Added some stuff in italics that I remembered from my other posts.

Edited, Sep 5th 2007 4:13pm by AtrophyGFour

The short version? I don't; Outland dailies are my bread and butter since I got my epic flyer, but that's not to say I'm without options:

Enchanting (currently @ 360)

#1 gold maker is D/Eing cheap greens from auction. That is all.

Enchanting my own gear is a loss (opportunity cost).
Enchanting for guildies is (at best) a break even scenario.
Enchanting for strangers would be mediocre profit for mammoth irritation.

Mining (375)

Capped mining + Epic Flyer + Outland = weeee!!

I'm fairly new to Outland mining (dropped 375 skinning for mining a couple of weeks ago) but so far, it seems that the best profit to be had comes from knowing your market. I'm not sure if more established realms see the same price fluctuations as mine, but there are days when Ore sells better than Bars and vice-versa.

Here's the sneaky trick, however:

When ore is priced below bars, the tendancy might be to convert the ore you mine to bars for the added profit, right? Maybe not. If enough people on your realm have noticed the same thing, there is going to be a shortage of ore on auction very soon because other miners are buying it up to convert to bars and trying to flip them while the price is good. It seems like a good idea; it's faster to buy 20 Adamantite Ore from auction than it is to mine it, and if the price difference/stack is 5-8g, that's quick and easy profit, right?

Except by the time they get to their mailbox to pick up the ore and then toddle off to the nearest forge to smelt it, the other half dozen or so people cruising the market for bargains have beaten them to the punch and have already started the undercutting wars. Now, that "cheap" ore has been converted to bars in a flooded market and a break-even scenario is sometimes the best you can hope for (if the bars sell at all).

In other words, it's almost always better to sell the ore as-is. It lets you avoid the above scneario, and also increased the size of your potential market. Other miners might buy your ore to smelt, and jewelcrafters might buy the ore to prospect.

The exception might be Gold/Truesilver/Eternium/Khorium Ore, because it can't be prospected.

In other words (and something that applies to all professions), knowing your market is one of the best gold-production tricks a person can learn. Buy low/sell high, and have some idea as to how fast different commodities sell relative to how many are already listed.

Then you must still be in the process of raising skill or doing something wrong.
Any crafting profession can make money if nothing at 375 when you are done with all you planned to do for yourself with it.

Crafters in high progression raid guilds can often make a killing (for example, nether vortex right now on most servers are 1000g each). So if you get a pattern like Belt of Blasting, you could charge a 2000g crafting fee. But once guilds as a whole on the server start progressing, the prices will drop.

But then the first guilds who were in SSC should be in the black temple, getting Hearts of Darkness, again charging huge fees. Its not something you can just spam in /2 and expect a buyer in 5 minutes, but crafting 1 item for 2000g is quite worthwhile..

The difference is, you could sell those bars for tons of money, instead you make almost no money by leveling your jewelcrafting.

My goal wasnt to make money but to raise something that looks like interesting profession without loosing much money.
I make enough money with my main and few other alts.

If I get her to 375 JC and decide its not worth it, I will certainly drop it for something else, but so far she is funding herself and thats all I need for now.

Gathering is boring for me, I like crafting, so I always try to find a way to make decent gold without too many skinning/mining/picking toons.
In my opinion it is possible, though slower and takes more effort.

Thank you for posting, but I am fully aware that the most reliable way to make gold in this game is to take a gathering profession and sell the mats on the AH. This is very much an established fact of WoW.

But people can and do make some profit off production crafts, and the purpose of this thread is to share (if you care to) insight on goods each profession can usually sell to others.

.. .... ..

Thanks so far for all the replies. I'll be working over the week to update the FAQ.

Edited, Aug 20th 2007 9:21:42am by thermalnoise

Alchemy 375

Mana pots always, always sell.

The secondary profitable pots would be Health pots, Elixir of Healing Power, Adept Elixir, Elixir of Major Agility, Flask of Supreme Power. Earthstorm diamond transmute is profitable nuff, if you have mining and fishing.

JC

Perfect profession for those who want to sell their crafts - either cut your gems or cut for fee, most of the designs are useful and demanded. Personally I dont bother advertising my crafts in /2, I sell precutted gems in AH.

The absolute bestseller is Solid Star of Elune, followed by DPS gems such as Delicate/Runed/Bright Living Ruby, Veiled/Glinting/Potent Topaz, Smooth/Rigid/Gleaming Dawnstome. All Nightseye cuts are popular PvPers choice due to +STA component. Tanking and healing gems also sell, but market is usually less than DPS/PvP.

I am Herb/Alch with the Transmutation Mastery. About every four days I do a Primal Might transmute with farmed fire, water and mana. I buy the air and earth usually. So far I have had three procs with two, two and three Primals. This is definitely a money maker. But I do rely on chance here so there is no guarantee. In off days I do an arcanite bar or diamonds if I can find the mats at a reasonable price.

I also discovered Flask of Relentless Assault and so make that one as often as possible. With my flying mount I find it easier to get the more expensive mats by farming.

Also quite likely to be JC jumping at the opportunity to use prospect...

Alchemy (375) and Herba (390) here. I use all the mats I gather to prepare pots (mostly because I want to get discoveries). The only herb I really consider selling is Terocone due to its insance price (about 40g per stack on my server).

Transmutes:
- primal might is not usually worth it unless you're a transmute master (I was and switched to elixir), so I only do it on off days for guildmates
- diamonds make a nice profit but don't necessarily sell easily
- other transmutes can be very profitable, especially some discovered. I got mana to fire and it's a nice money maker (primal mana being probably the easiest one to farm). Water to Air is not bad either. It's pretty much a guaranteed 15-20g per day.

Consumables:
- flasks don't sell on my server, as simple as that
- pots sell nicely but... it's almost impossible to make a profit on the standard ones. Of course super mana pots sell all the time, but for less than the mats! Why bother? (anyway the other reason not to sell them is because I drink them instead :)
- the potion I make the most is haste potion, selling quite well
- elixirs are where the money's at, in my opinion. There are 2 types: the ones with easy mats that will eventually sell (but slow), like Ironskin, Major Fortitude or Earthen Elixir. And the more expensive ones (in terms of mats) but that sell like crazy. Adept's Elixir always sells fast, then Major Mageblood and Major Agi sell quite well to. Major Str, Major Healing Power or Draenic Wisdom sell decently too.

Also as an engineer don't forget that scopes are a very good way to make money, especially if you have a jewelcrafter to help you prospect for the right gems. Scopes are presently the only way to "enchant" a ranged weapon and many engineers overlook this market.

I am finding that enchanting can actually be quite profitable when paired with Enchantrix. I have been adjusting the minimum profit values slightly and been able to score a lot of old-world 50-60 level greens, which disenchant into highly valuable illusion dust (which goes for as much, if not more than arcane dust) and eternal essences (which are more valuable than planar essence). Even with an opportunity cost (trying to get to 285 so I can start offering Icy as well as Fiery), I'm still ahead 300g or so since starting using my enchanting skill to disenchant for profit with an initial outlay of 100g.