Any money to be made in Fletching?

[menaya]

I just spent a lot of time skilling up my fletching to 300 and made about 200k or so selling Druzzil bows. Well now the competition on quellious is such that they sell for 45k avg and the Favor of Druzzil sells for 20-30k. Not worth the risk of failing a combine if you ask me. Has SOE really left fletchers to hang out to dry while Smithing and Tailoring brings so much $$? While I made some pp doing fletching I did spend 100k or so leveling it up. So maybe 100k profit. I found it more profitable to sell the treant branches I could forage to a buyer who took over 140 I sold to her in buyer mode at 1k pp each. The foraging is easy when you have two toons who can do it. No risk, no cost, just time. Im trying to work on Smithing but Mistletoe cutting sickles are pricey to make.

[Xodar]

I have stated several times in this thread fletching is not a great tradeskill for moneymaking. I may back off that statement a little as I see the market continue to develop. The attuneable tag is a godsend for tradeskills. The market for elemental bows was continually pushed down since none ever left circulation (well ok, I tribbed some for 45k but you know what I mean). The fact that every ranger twink will have to buy a fresh new one I make will help long term sales.

The favor is the bottleneck, but the combine it's used in is 250 trivial, and the final bow combine is 200 so I have had good success rates at 302 modded.

Competition on Trib is pretty stout, I sold 3 (edit: windowed out, there went #4) for 35k, 35k, 40k, and 39k. I bought 3 favors today for 11, 15, and 20 and failed 1 string (failing green combines irks me). Still a nice income. I forage/kill for all my treant branches and glue components, and have a tinker and enchanter for cams and purified mana.

Let me qualify the next statement by saying I know some of you play the buy/sell game. I know some of you make excellent pp that way. I still hate paying you 15k for that favor because you got to the vendor selling it for 11k 3 seconds before me and immediately relist it. No, it wouldn't hurt as much if you popped off and then had a bow to sell (i.e. used it in your tradeskills), and no that doesn't make much sense. Over the years I have paid entirely too much for silks, shadows, acrylia, velium, grease, furs, and numerous other components because of the bazaar quest game and consequently probably stubbornly farm most of my own components.

I find that having 4 bows on my trader tends to make people want to dicker me down from my already competitive price, or makes them place a lesser urgency on buying it since it looks like they are readily available. This also keeps the above mentioned resellers from exploiting me and other people. Today reseller_01 came and bought my Druzzil for 35k (good price, 2.5k under closest I had seen and that trader was not on at this time). I ran and grabbed Druzzil #2 I had in the bank. A couple minutes later the same guy is back, and I see the other trader that had one listed at 40 is still up with no bow. He buys my 2nd druzzil for 35 k, then heads away and logs off.

I only had two made so I log on my main, and use the 2 favors I had picked up earlier in the day. I break everything down in advance so I grab 2 cams, a compound staff, knife, threads, and a mana and make them in 2 clicks. I make 2 more, then head back to my trader. I now see a new character with 3 druzzil bows losted for 50k each. I take one of my new bows and reset my price at 40, 10k low on the reseller. He runs over and buys druzzil #3 and adds it to his stack.

I run back to the bank, pull out druzzil #4 and reset my trader up. Shortly I get a tell from the reseller "Want to price your druzzil's closer to 45k?". HAHAHAHAHAHA <deep breath> HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. I consider explaining the market over the last week, and that I had not sold one for 45k in that time, but stopped myself. As I said above I do harbor a pretty deep resentment of resellers taking advantage of tradeskillers, even if the money I am making in this instance renders it less painful. I just sit back and realize I know what he has in them, which is a higher figure then I can make comfortable on, and silently thanked him for his patronage. I did sell that 4th bow for 39k as I was typing this and am feeling pretty good about fletching tonight, lol.

[Lucian Celeste]

Has SOE really left fletchers to hang out to dry while Smithing and Tailoring brings so much $$?

Smithing and Tailoring isn’t the great windfall of cash that people think it is. While I have sold several big ticket items in each I have yet to recoup cost of reaching my skill level yet.

Not to mention that the prices in the economy are player driven. Sony has no control over how much platinum somebody will try to sell an item for and they have no control over how much platinum somebody will buy an item for.

[Ysall]

Love doing that to the resellers, had a similar story on my server. Got 7 Favor of Druzzils at 15kp each, so Ive got 7 druzzil bows ready to go. Like Xoder, I only put 2 up on my mule, for 50kp (they've cost me 20kp to make tops). Only other bow on the market is at 75kp.

Person selling for 75kp comes and buys my 2 bows. He now has 3 bows at 75kp. Go get two more out of stock. He buys em both. I get two more out. He buys both again, so he now has 7 bow, and is starting to feel the squeeze. I get my last bow out and put it on my vendor.

At this point, reseller realises I might well have unlimited bows in stock, and he has a ton of stock he can't shift. He now lowers his price to 45kp to try and shift them. I lower my price to 44kp. Over the next 2 hours, in 1kp increments, I continually lower my price to be lower than his. At one point, he even sent me a tell asking if we could stop competing with each other, and offer them for the same amount. Finally, he's got his bows at 34.5kp, utterly desperate to shift them. I log on 3 different chars, buy one each of his bows, and when he restocks with a further 3 bows, I buy em all again.

I then put my bows back up to 50kp, let him sell the couple of remaining bows hes got at a loss, and over the following weekend, sold every last bow I had at 45-50kp.

I've not had so much fun since I got my first epic.

[Bobaten]

A few weeks back a reseller bought a bow from me for 75k, and marked it up to 160k. That's nothing exciting normally...except at the time I had 4 in trader at that price and he left the other 3.

[Bupper]

Making the drops foragable has been a huge boon to those who use bots while afk. Elddar Forest is typically empty except for one or two toons standing silent in safe locations, motionless for hours, day after day. Sometimes, bag-shaped overflow can be seen collecting at their feet.

[Xodar]

I am a mean guy, and respect the integrity of the everquest economy as best I can.

An afk toon with bags at his feet always makes me want to try to fight challenging see invis mobs I could never solo before. Sadly, they are often in a nice safe area, like where I pull a mob to try to solo it, and I usually realize I can't win and WS/gate out.

I often surf while I forage, but I am here and can be aware of my surroundings in about 2 seconds.

[Ikken]

Sometimes, bag-shaped overflow can be seen collecting at their feet.

Hmm, maybe I should go find these people and pick up these extra bags! Haha!

-Ike

[Elyssanda]

Sometimes, bag-shaped overflow can be seen collecting at their feet.

Not all bag shaped overflow is OVERFLow.. I routinely just drop roots and sometimes berries or fruit rather than deleting them or destroying. though usually I'm on the run as I forage so the bag wont' be at my feet but rather somewhere behind where I've run.

[Xodar]

Hmm, maybe I should go find these people and pick up these extra bags! Haha!

-Ike

Probably not worth your time, *if* I was going to do it I would stack 20 slots with 1 desireable forage each so I didn't drop anything I was trying to farm.

And I drop things sometimes too, although more often destroy them, but then again I am not afk with 9 items stacked in front of me in a pile anyway. Self correcting though, if you are at the keyboard you won't be bothered by random wandering see invis mobs who randomly get rooted near you.

My personal perspective is that these people are at keyboard, because of course they wouldn't violate the EULA by macro foraging. That said, they must be pretty bored since they have been there 6 hours and their bags are obviously full, so I take it upon myself to try difficult solo attempts near them as an attempt to keep them entertained. I recommend other people try it, although for the truly difficult mob having a gate ready is handy. So join me folks, in the "Amusing Foragers by Killing red cons" movement. You can see fans of this byt the "AFK" after their names.

Fight a red con near a forager so they can see the fun and excitement of playing Everquest instead of foraging for hours and hours on end /nod

[tatanka7th]

Love doing that to the resellers, had a similar story on my server. Got 7 Favor of Druzzils at 15kp each, so Ive got 7 druzzil bows ready to go. Like Xoder, I only put 2 up on my mule, for 50kp (they've cost me 20kp to make tops). Only other bow on the market is at 75kp.

Person selling for 75kp comes and buys my 2 bows. He now has 3 bows at 75kp. Go get two more out of stock. He buys em both. I get two more out. He buys both again, so he now has 7 bow, and is starting to feel the squeeze. I get my last bow out and put it on my vendor.

At this point, reseller realises I might well have unlimited bows in stock, and he has a ton of stock he can't shift. He now lowers his price to 45kp to try and shift them. I lower my price to 44kp. Over the next 2 hours, in 1kp increments, I continually lower my price to be lower than his. At one point, he even sent me a tell asking if we could stop competing with each other, and offer them for the same amount. Finally, he's got his bows at 34.5kp, utterly desperate to shift them. I log on 3 different chars, buy one each of his bows, and when he restocks with a further 3 bows, I buy em all again.

I then put my bows back up to 50kp, let him sell the couple of remaining bows hes got at a loss, and over the following weekend, sold every last bow I had at 45-50kp.

I've not had so much fun since I got my first epic.

Priceless!!! Kudos to you

Tat