Trade Skills? worth it?

[Sibora]

hi all

i am thinking of continue training my tailoring skill. I started simply because i was looking for some fun other than raids and quests, and I stopped simply because it costs too much for a newby.

however my skill was only 50, maybe too low to gain any profit. But would the profit generated in high end tradeskills, enough to satisfy the time spent? Or shall I stick to raids and quests and sell the loots and rewards?

thanks and happy new year~!

[Wyrdlan]

Stick to raids and sell the rewards.

[Liwsa]

IF you like to farm and do skill trades and are of level to farm easily then yes continue your skill trade career. However if endless hours of farming greens is not your idea of fun then maybe skill trades such as tailoring or blacksmithing are not for you. Some trade skills can be done entirely on store bought materials such as jewery might be more up your alley. Those however take a lot of pp to acomplish.


Liwsa 60 Druid
205 tailor
Terris-Thule

I wouldn't go to tradeskilling for profits really.

You have to spend a LOT of money to get to a place where a profit is possible.

For example, Wu's armor which is 130-160 trivial sells for 5-30pp depending on the piece, if you can sell it at all.

The price of components is:

2-6 pieces of silk, which if you didn't combine you could sell for 5pp each.
4 heady Kiolas, 4pp each if not combined and sold as ingredients
1 vial of viscous mana, 10pp if sold without combining

So if you sell the ingredients you could make between 36-56pp...

Thats a rough example, and it doesn't really get much better til your 30-40k into it if you've farmed most of the stuff yourself.

Basically right now I'm supporting 1 skill, by selling extra ingredients for other skills, rather than making many finished products, hehe.

[Khoren Stonefall]

The trick with becoming fantastically, or reasonably, wealthy through tradeskills is to be a grandmaster in the right place at the right time, and to be willing to plow in your time and investment as soon as you see a good opportunity pop up. Right now, unless you're a Tier 4 crafter, or unless your server has very unamibitious tier three traders, there really aren't any such opportunities.

But they may pop up. When they do, if you're a grandmaster in a hard skill like Smithing or Tailoring, you may be paid back richly. But in general, it is not a good idea to expect your time and platinum investment to be "paid back" in money. I found tradeskilling very rewarding even without the wealth it generated (I had a human smithing monopoly on May 8th, 'nuff said), but I may be a bit quirky when it comes to these things.

If you want to Tailor, tailor because you want to tailor, and assume you are likely going to lose money (or hundreds of hours of your life) doing it. It's not a guarenteed wealth generating mechanism, although if you keep your eyes out for new recipes and quests, there may be few-week periods where you can use your grandmasteries to make a lot of money. It takes some doing, though. You have to be fairly aggresssive to make it when those opportunities come up.

Just remember, basic economics always applies. The days of servers having "only one 250 tailor" and few or no grandmaster blacksmiths for certain races are mostly over. There are more GM's every day, and they probably increase in number faster than they decrease from retirements. To get rich with tradeskills, you're going to have to do something the other grandmasters don't do (fast service, friendliness (goes a long way!), develop a good network of farmers, etc), or you're gonna have to keep your fingers crossed for such a gigantic market for some product that you can all do well.

[Yalum]

To get rich with tradeskills, you're going to have to do something the other grandmasters don't do (fast service, friendliness (goes a long way!), develop a good network of farmers, etc), develop a good network of farmers, etc), or you're gonna have to keep your fingers crossed for such a gigantic market for some product that you can all do well.

I'll add one to that: reaction time. When the wood elf illusion crown was finally spoiled on the Safehouse, I bought up 26 mastodon furs in the Bazaar at 150pp each. I made a decent profit reselling them, but if I had been a tailor... (I bet some folks got stupid rich off that, the Crown of Deceit was solved shortly after PoP came out, but not spoiled until weeks later. Lots of time to stockpile an apparently worthless item.) Similarly, watch the boards on patch day, and then go vendor mining, you never when someone will sell something that will be worth 10k in a day or two.

[Sibora]

Thank you all for your advices,

i started tailoring because i wanted to tailor, but i didnt expect it to be so expansive.

I might continue it some day, but I will go into brewing as drink is essential for me in game and real life :-)

happy trading folks~!

[Kelanthor]

Greetings,

Lots of debate on the profitability of tailoring, but you have to do it as a goal in itself, rather than as a route to money.

I've supported my tailoring career with 2 main things - hand made backpacks and tailored large bags. They don't make a lot of money (about 40 - 50pp profit on the backpacks, about 10 on the others), but they do sell steadily. If time isn't important to the speed of your advance (and it isn't for me!), they can provide enough funds to keep you going.

Also, now I've passed the 'Wus wall', I'm making acrylia studded cloaks - these go for about 1200pp on my server, sometimes more, sometimes a little less. As I can't farm the ingredients yet, Each cloak sold allows me enough profit to attempt another one.

This slow but sure approach probably isn't to everyone's liking, but I'm in no hurry. There's lots to do and see in Norrath, and I visit there for more than a manic levelling-up session. Find a style of play that you like, and play that way. If tailoring and other tradeskills don't fit in at the moment, then put them aside until you feel inclined to give them a go.