[GW2] Make $$$ in weeks

[Aimless]

How do you do it?

[Wraith]

Buy low, sell high.

It's getting harder now, though.

Crafting rare & exotic items is still pretty profitable, though the profit margins are shrinking.

[Lewkowski]

My understanding is that trading CO is universal not tied to one server. With a larger market it will be difficult to make a lot of money that way IMO. Out of curiosity what are using your money for? I've been able to buy all my class trait books through 60, buy gems enough for a character slot and run several dungeons with multiple deaths and I still have cash left over.

[Wraith]

At this point, hoarding, mostly.

Profit margins would probably be better if the trading house wasn't universal, but it's still possible to make cash on it. It does seem to be harder now than it was last week, though. Eventually, it might get to the point where you can only make coppers per transaction, at best, but right now I can still make 5-15 silver per rare item and 50-75 silver per exotic.

[Timbuk2]

Gems buy character slots??

WHY DID NO ONE TELL MEEEEEE !

[Aimless]

Gems buy character slots??

WHY DID NO ONE TELL MEEEEEE !

[Loki]

What is the point of leveling up the crafting professions when you can make as much profit (if not more) from selling a level 125 rare as you can from a level 275 rare?

[Wraith]

Product breadth & velocity, the ability to make stuff for yourself, and exotic creation at 400.

[Loki]

First, the market wasn't working for several hours. Then it starts working, but 2/3 of the things I had on sale are gone, and I haven't been paid for them. Has Obama gained control of the game?

[Wraith]

Sometimes there's a delay in delivery. It's never taken me more than a couple minutes to get my pay/deliveries. Just give it a bit.

[Loki]

I'm still assuming the game decided to add a new 66% tax on top of the existing 15% tax.

Edit: checked again. Still 1/3 of the items on sale, and no extra money. I had about 4g worth of items on sale before, and now it's just a bit over 1g. I don't think anyone bought them either. They just vanished.

[Lewkowski]

What is the point of leveling up the crafting professions when you can make as much profit (if not more) from selling a level 125 rare as you can from a level 275 rare?

MMO crafting tends to have a very distorted economy. Some people really really enjoy crafting. They will do it just to do it with economic gain not being a factor. When you have a bunch of people doing it for that reason they can happily operate at a loss. Not saying crafting can't make money but its typically harder then you would think.

[Wraith]

How to make money in GW2, by Wraith:

Crafting

The fastest way to make money is off the trading post. There's two ways to accomplish this: crafting, and straight trading. Crafting is the easier one to pull off.

In order to start making money from crafting, the first thing you'll need to do is to level up your crafting skill to 125. From the times I've looked, which profession you choose doesn't actually matter too much. There are some differences, for example weaponsmith products seem to do better than huntsmen, but every profession has the ability to make cash off the market. You'll need to get up to level 125 because that's the first point where you can start crafting rares.

To craft rares, you'll need to visit the crafting master (ex. "Master Weaponsmith", located by any weapon crafting stations) and buy some of the recipies he's selling for karma. Recipies that cost karma are the only way I've seen to reliably generate profits. If you're short on karma, you can do a bit of market research into the products they produce, figuring out production costs and sales prices, to decide on which are worth getting. In my experience, people love +power, and for some reason aren't that keen on +magic find or +healing.

When acquiring the components needed for crafting, you should place a buy order (not "buy instantly") for whatever you need. You can see what other people are paying for it, and you should set your price accordingly. Often, this will be 1 copper more than whatever the current highest is, but if there aren't many outstanding requests for the item relative to the trade velocity, you should set it at the same price as the current highest, or even under it. You don't usually want to wait in line behind a bunch of other players unless you're setting the order from the field, away from crafting equipment.

For the same reasons, when selling the product you usually want to set your price at 1 copper below whatever the current lowest is. This isn't always the case though, and if you don't mind waiting longer, you can set your price at an equal or higher amount. You want to undercut by a copper because it gets you your money faster, which means you can produce more stuff to sell sooner, and because undercutting by more than a copper just costs you profits. If you have some ethical reservation against this practice, then feel free not to do it - you can still make money, it'll just be at a slower pace.

When producing, the practice that I've fallen into is to produce the items I intend to sell in bulk, but then only place them on the market one at a time. This prevents me from losing money to relisting fees if the market moves below sale price. Having the items already made means I can restock from anywhere in the game - it only takes a few seconds when running between events to scan through my inventory and sell anything where I won't be competing against myself.

Another useful practice is to keep your product offerings broad. Sell a range of all the rares you're able to craft at 125, 250, 375, and 400. This keeps product moving, as although the velocity on individual items won't generally be too high, with a broad range of products you can usually count on a constant flow of money.

One last note is to keep in mind that there's a 5% listing fee and a 10% sales tax that comes out of everything you sell. So to make a profit, the difference between your cost and the sales price needs to be greater than 15%. Judging from some market prices, this is often missed.

As a reference, my profit margins are usually about 5-10 silvers per rare, and 30-50 silvers per exotic item sold.

Trading

Straight trading is another way you can make money off the trading post. It has a lower barrier for entry than crafting, since all you need is some starting coin, but it's also a bit more difficult and time intensive. Basically, the strategy here is to look at the buy/sell orders on the market, and whenever you spot something where the gap is greater than 15%, you help to close that gap by placing buy orders and immediately turning around and posting sell orders.

This is simple and straightforward to do, but there tends to be other people who are doing this too. Because of this, it can be harder to find good items to trade in this way.

Another possibility is buying up rares & exotics of level 70 or greater, breaking them down with master salvage kits, and selling the components. If you can get rares for less than ~21 silver, or exotics for less than ~42 silver, this is profitable. This is mainly due to the high price of ectoplasm, which you get from salvaging these. The ectoplasm will cover your costs, and then any runes/sigils and basic components you get out will be pure profit.

This tactic usually doesn't seem too profitable to me, but I do try to keep an eye out for opportunities while in my normal crafting cycle. Occasionally, large profit margins do crop up; for example, I once noticed that soft wood logs were trading at a 9-18 copper spread. It's not much profit individually, but since it's a high velocity item I jumped on that and moved as much as I could at 250 unit increments until the market fixed itself, walking away with about 1g in profit.

Adventuring

If you want to make money and don't want to deal with the trading post (perfectly understandable, I can see how market-whoring wouldn't be fun to most people), there's still an alternative for you! You can make pretty good money just doing events, dungeon runs, and just from the random mobs you come across.

When in events, you should try to use Area of Effect abilities to damage as many creatures at once as you possibly can. Doing this increases the chance of getting drops, which is where the money come from. There's a certain minimum amount of damage you need to do, but if you can hit this before all the critters drop, it's not uncommon to see large piles of sparkling corpses.

A quick guide for what to do with the loot, after checking to make sure you don't want it for yourself:

Junk: Vendor it.
Whites: Salvage it with a crude or basic kit.
Greens: Vendor it.
Blues: Vendor it.
Golds & Oranges under level 70: Check the trading post, sell it there if it's got a good price, otherwise vendor it.
Golds after level 70: Check the trading post, sell it there if it's >= 25 gold, otherwise break it down with a master salvage kit.
Oranges after level 70: Check the trading post, sell it there if it's >= 50 gold, otherwise break it down with a master salvage kit.
Violets: Obviously, you recieved this by mistake. It was actually meant for me. Send it over, and all will be forgiven.

For reference, at level 80 each event with creature waves usually nets me 30-50 silver worth. This is mostly from 1-2 rares, and a bunch of blues and greens.

You can help increase your profitability further by equiping +magic find items, or consuming +magic find foods. A partial list of ways to get these bonuses can be found here.

You may need to adjust prices noted above as the price of ectoplasm moves.

I hope something in this proves useful to somebody.

[Loki]

You forgot one hint: don't have lots of items for sale if the market place decides to crash.

[Wraith]

You forgot one hint: don't have lots of items for sale if the market place decides to crash.

When producing, the practice that I've fallen into is to produce the items I intend to sell in bulk, but then only place them on the market one at a time. This prevents me from losing money to relisting fees if the market moves below sale price. Having the items already made means I can restock from anywhere in the game - it only takes a few seconds when running between events to scan through my inventory and sell anything where I won't be competing against myself.

Covered.

[Loki]

By "crash", I mean it literally crashes and you lose your goods.

[Wraith]

You'll get it back.

[Aimless]

Out of curiosity, what happens when you salvagemaster rares below lvl 70?

[Aimless]

Ah, less ecto?

[Wraith]

No ecto

[Loki]

Looks like Wraith crashed the marketplace with his greedy ways.

[Aimless]

Bummer... I have a black lion salvage kit waiting to be used

[Loki]

Any idea when the market will be fixed? I got 3s today, so I assume it was working at some point.

[Aimless]

Mystic salvage kit may be of interest:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/c..._mystic_forge/

For those running around with high magic find gear and getting huge amounts of lvl 70+ rares

[Aimless]

(good use for karma too?)

[Loki]

And the market dies again.

[Loki]

The price of the exotic armors has fallen by about 10s each day for the previous 3 days. I don't think it's even possible to generate any profit at the new price. What the heck?

[Wraith]

I exited the market. Profit margins had been sinking to far, and it was no longer worthwhile for me to do it. I make decent money doing other things that are a bit more fun anyways. Plus, I still have 50g + 4000 gems left.

[Loki]

I'll wait until the weekend; prices tend to rise then (don't feel like paying a relisting fee). Assuming I can offload everything, I'll only have about 16g. I was going to get 400 in huntsman, but that's probably not very useful now. Any idea what happened? Did Chinese prisoners get bored of Warcraft?

[Wraith]

From what I could tell, it happened last weekend. Some people posted some crafting guides on the official forums and mentioned how much they'd made crafting, and then there were suddenly a bunch of bulk producers drastically undercutting other people. Then the bulk producers would undercut other producers by large amounts. Supply just overran demand, and since people weren't pricing their stuff intelligently, the market fell off. I'm not really counting on it recovering really; I expect that it can be sustained at it's current poor state just by the people who don't understand opportunity cost.