Most Profitable Tradeskill?

[Madbakerhobbit2]

Koru -- You are exactly right. I sometimes tend to forget how much money it cost me to get going with the tradeskills... I was also one of the fortunate ones to be a GM baker very quickly after the Solstice earring came out.... That was when you could get 500p per misty picnic, and Halas meat pies sold FAST at 400p a stack.

It's kind of funny now though... The very skills that made me money to move forward and GM more skills are the very ones I can no longer stomach As a GM baker/brewer, I cannot tell you the last time I mande my own food/drink. Heck, last night on a VZ raid I actually ran out of food, and had to summon some!

I guess there really is no such thing as a profitable trade... until you GM that trade!

[eniamn]

Originally posted by Mdaisy
So at 12 pp per picnic (which btw cost less than a pp to make), repeat business, and a growing customer list... I would say it is a money maker.

eh? i average about 1 pp per picnics in cost and about 1 minute per pinic in time. make a run of 200+ in 3 hours time. spend little over 200pp in alchemy components and farm my own eggs and get fruit veggies from guildies. can make 2k profit per run easy at 10pp each. how do they cost you 12pp to make? i bought holy cake last night. some at 4pp and others at 9pp. 3 ce's, my precious winter chocolate, and a 4pp alchemy component and i can't make them for that. /shrug i make it if its cheaper for me too. starting to fund gear and other tradeskills with picnics.

That was when you could get 500p per misty picnic, and Halas meat pies sold FAST at 400p a stack.

i beleive the old recipe didn't have multiple yeilds on teh subcombines. 1 mammoth meat per pie and 1 brownie part and picnic basket per picnic would make me charge more now too.

[OutcastAssassin]

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If tradeskill items were No Drop, meaning you could not sell them, or twink your chars with them, if you actually lost a fortune doing tradeskills that you knew you could never get back doing them, would you STILL do tradeskills?
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That would be Prayer Shawls and Aid Grimel

When I stated that, I was referring to ALL tradeskill items. Not just a few.

[cmcsess]

An odd thing I find in the bazaar is that the more you have of something, tradeskill-wise, the more you can charge for it. If you have many Spiderling silks, or silk threads, padding or pelts, those types of items, you can charge a pretty penny. These are just a few examples from one tradeskill but what I'm getting at, at least on my server, is you find alot of folks with only a fewe each of items such as these competing with each other on price. However if someone is out to do some skilling up do they want to spend alot of time buying three silks here, two silks there, running all around the bazaar trying to get the best price? No they are willing to spend more, and in some cases twice as much, for the quantity. If you can save up your items and sell when you have over 100 of the items like I listed above, you can put them up at a premium and they will go, usually to one person, in no time.

[Serenya]

Originally posted by eniamn
eh? i average about 1 pp per picnics in cost and about 1 minute per pinic in time. ... how do they cost you 12pp to make?

She said they sell for 12pp and cost 1pp to make......

[Kytelae]

Originally posted by cmcsess
An odd thing I find in the bazaar is that the more you have of something, tradeskill-wise, the more you can charge for it.

i know for myself, when I'm looking for a quantity of something, I'll pay more not to have to run around the bazaar getting one here and one there. If there is 100 of something I need on one trader, then their prices have to be way out of line for me not to use them, rather than picking up 5 here and 5 there. Time counts as much as money, or even more for us casual tradeskillers.

[Lunasombra]

Very simply.

Determine your market. See what is in demand. See what it REALLY costs you (money AND time) to a) get up the skill and b) market it. Many things are so cash intensive you'll swing like a No Limit Texas Holdem player.


personally I go for small profit, large number of sales. I make MTP's buy the truckload and sell em at 10pp. I don't invest a lot of money or time, but my trader makes a killing. Another good one IMO is grobb drinks as they are quick to make a large batch and sell fairly well to sub- elemental players.

Another is (believe it or not) Alchemy. Gate potions on my server sell fairly well and I have the full time vendors buying my 10 shots off me and marking them up more (increasing my own market because I charge less and look good doing it).


But I agree with the consensus. If you want to make plat, go to Seb and farm it.

[eniamn]

ah now that my glasses are on she does say that. nevermind, my bad.

[Gryfalia]

I made most of my money on Underfoot armor and Kaladim Constitutionals.

What was more important was WHEN I sold them. On the Underfoot armor there was always one other vendor selling the same items. He and I had a non-verbal agreement to not undercut each other. We both slowly moved our prices down as others sold a bunch off, but we both sold our gear and both made good money. The price got too low for me to waste my time doing it, so I stopped. But I kept accumulating Blue Diamonds. When I finally saw that everyone had pretty much stopped selling them regularly, I got back into the market.

The same holds true for the Constitutionals. My wife farms the stuff from Kaladim, and I give her a cut of the profits. I sell a bunch, use some for raids, and just in general make a ton of PP on them.

Gryfalia

[Cendorly]

Want to know what the most profitable tradeskill is?

ALL of them.

Simple answer to a simple question

Now if you wanted to know HOW to be profitable at tradeskills, or a particular tradeskill, then the answer lies in the preceeding responses.

If you want to know how to make millions upon millions of plats in tradeskills alone like I have, then continue reading my response.

First, before you start farming, start clicking, start doing ANYTHING tradeskill related, spend some time doing the following:

1. Determine how much time you have to devote to tradeskills in EQ, and therefore, EQ in general on a consistent basis. Also factor in how flexible your schedule is in relation to when you can log onto EQ. Once this determination is made, double...no TRIPLE the amount of time. Seriously.

2. Determine how much pp you have to spend on tradeskills. The amount you have available will directly affect everything tradeskill-related from that point on (from what and how much you farm, to what skill you work on).

3. Determine how profitable you want to be. Do you want just enough money to buy that "special" 30k, 40k, 50k item or do you want to be the richest character on your server and have more pp then you know what to do with?

4. Determine how FAR you are willing to go with your tradeskill(s). One at 250? 6 at 250? Just high enough to make subcombined items? High enough to make everything in the game?

5. Determine your tolerance for tradeskills - not just the repetitive clicking/combining, but everything else that goes with it. Are you willing to level up x number of mules/alts for tradeskills? Are you willing to compete with other farmers in certain zones? Are you willing to farm endlessly on end? This will directly affect how much money you're going to be able to make in the long run.

6. Determine how FAST you want to make the money. Need it in a week? Sorry charlie, start farming for plats, and mid-high end drops to sell. Willing to wait and slowly build up your bank? Then you're on the right track.

7. Determine what your class is and how it fits into tradeskills - are you a druid/ranger who can forage? Are you a human who has excellent smithed armor they can make? This will affect how much pp you can make, and what you can make.

8. Determine what your "arsenal" is. What characters are at your disposal, (alts, mules, etc.,) what level are you, how many accounts do you have, where can you farm/kill, and what availablity do your friends have and their ability and willingness to help you farm/gather tradeskill stuff.

8. Determine if you are ready for this, and have done your homework. Research your bazaar for tradeskill prices, availability, supply, etc. Not just one day, 5 days, a week, more. Research EQTraders.com for recipes, difficulty levels, availability of items, etc. KNOW what you are about to embark upon.

9. Determine your technical situation - do you have more then one computer? If so, how many? Can you dedicate one computer to a bazaar trader 24/7? What kind of internet connection do you have? Is it stable?

10. Determine WHY you want to do tradeskills to make money. If you are doing tradeskills because you hear about everyone else making tons of plats, think again!! Those of us who have made hundreds of thousands of millions of plats have spent numerous hours working for every SINGLE plat they earned.

Getting into tradeskills to make a LOT of plats IS possible, if, and only IF you love tradeskills, you love a challenge, and you have the patience of a million saints. There is money to be made in tradeskills, regardless of the current market, but sometimes you may have to be creative in HOW you make the money. Patience, both in doing tradeskills and making money is your friend, along with some ingenuity and good common sense and logic.

Now with that being said, think about the answers to the above questions. Those answers will determine how much pp you can make in relation to how much work it will be on you.

Once you come up with the answers to the above, and know full well what you are embarking upon, have a clear plan of what you're doing, and what your resources are, then you can begin. Where you begin and what you do is directly related to #3 and #4. You can go small, just forage and sell that in the bazaar. Or go medium, make subcombines and components for larger items and sell those subcombined items in the bazaar.

Then, you can do like I did, and go all the way to the end. Get to 250 in all 7 tradeskills, make everything and anything you can, spend millions of hours farming every zone farmable, level up half a dozen characters for the sole purpose of imbuing gems, making mana, enchanting metal/clay, etc. Have 4 separate EQ accounts, a dedicated 24/7 bazaar mule, at least 2 computers running EQ when doing tradeskills (in addition to the bazaar mule), and a year and a half 95% dedicated to tradeskills.

In the end, it's all up to YOU! You get out of tradeskills what you put in, and the amount of money you make is directly related to how much work you are willing to do.

It's like an old saying goes that I read once, and I found it to be so true with tradeskills in EQ (as funny as that sounds).

Do what you love, and the money will follow...

For me, I started tradeskills because they were fun, and for the prayer shawl, and Spirit of Garzicor quest. They grew from there as tradeskills soon became an additction for me. In the end, nearly 3 years later, I'm still as addicted to tradeskills as the day I did my first combine, and have been rewarded nicely with a very lush bank account

[KyrosKrane]

Awesome reply, Cendorly. We should get that added to the FAQs.

[lupobolt]

Yeps Good write up couldnt have said it better in any form , TS is not for the quick cash or the faint of heart u gotta like it .

The cash and markets come later with todays E.Q. The only way to make cash before fast and lots was to be 250 first in something when that came out . I got lucky was first 250 Tailor on my server by several months when solstice robes came out so i was the only fellow making those robes for all high end guilds.

Lucky me that made me my first few million and allowed me to Power thru every other skill to 250 pronto , even did up a Gnome and did 250 Tink in 8 days , but thats a cinderella story !!!!

All skills have thier niche and as she said its time effort availabilite of that time and i think her write up should be moved to F.A.Q. so save alot of re threads.

[ColdHeart]

I'd say simple money = Brewing.

Kaladim's sell for 20pp on VS and I make a decent living on it. Nothing major but nice enough.
Qeynos Tea sells, not as well but good enough that I farm the bazaar for tea leaves under 25pp.

I did do Grobb's, but the numerous combines for the small profit got me bored too quickly. Maybe when the new UI comes out I'll do it again.

Just my few CPs worth

[milkcarton]

I have been playing EQ for only 2 months now and from day one I have been working on tradeskills. I started tailoring simply because it sounded easy ( /sigh ) and then have since branched to brewing, and baking. I have read many people talking about vast profits or vast costs associated with tradeskills; I think profit will only come with time, patience, and research.

I started a druid on Kayne Bayle with no starting funds, no 65 character to farm with, and no idea where all these items dropped to do my combines... and so far have made a decent profit for a newb.

The other posts in this thread are great for advanced players, but something can also be said for new folks just starting out.

1- read what the pros have to say, they did it first and learned some stuff the hard way.

2- start small - most of the guides have the cheap and the pricey skill-up versions, don't think you can make 250 in a night or you will go broke trying.

3- farm the merchants - learn what sells, what you need for skillups, and what you will want later down the road.

4- find out what you can make with little time/money that everyone else hasnt flooded the bazaar with.

I am not one of the pros. The other posts in this thread come from people with way more experience, but that does not mean the newbs should just give up.

So far all of my equipment and tradeskill points have been free. I sell everything I can find or make and then use the profits to get my skills higher. Its been a blast and I am looking forward to 250!!

Thanks for all the help everyone and good luck to all my fellow newbs

Ianerin of Kayne Bayle
34th season
191 baker, 143 brewer, 96 tailor

[shazbaat]

Originally posted by milkcarton
I have been playing EQ for only 2 months now and from day one I have been working on tradeskills. I started tailoring simply because it sounded easy ( /sigh ) and then have since branched to brewing, and baking. I have read many people talking about vast profits or vast costs associated with tradeskills; I think profit will only come with time, patience, and research.

Your experience sounds similar to my own. Actually, I started out selling items that were used in tradeskills. But I was curious about what you could make with them and started picking up the skills myself. I was really only interested in Smithing and Tailoring when I started, but have since taken up Pottery and Brewing.

So far I have found one item that I can make that is a real cash cow for me. I typically make an investment of 1200p and get a return of 1600-1800p. I'm sure that's chump change to a 65th level with 250's across the board, but it seems pretty good to me at my level with skills in the low 100's.

If you want to compare notes, click on my profile and drop me an email.

Derrack Serilisson
30 Cleric -- Stromm
145 Brewing -- 130 Pottery -- 116 Blacksmithing -- 101 Tailoring