New to the game - Is there $$ in this?

[Ndaara]

yup yup. i HATE making celestial essences and routinely buy 100-200 at a time at 5pp per. I make TONS of them while hunting myself, but it's never ever enough. Any time i see em lower than 5pp i buy em all up but that's almost never. any more than 5pp, on the other hand, and i'll wait to do my combines til i find em at 5pp. just cuz i hate making em doesn't mean i'm stupid rich :P

in fact i buy any subcombines i can, i already wear tape on my wrists, no need to make them any worse than they are. i'd be happy to do my own combines if there were a way to do em without injuring myself!

[Moonlilly]

The trick to making PP AND still doing tradeskills (If you want to do that) is LOOT EVERYTHING.

I've made at least 500,000pp on that simple principle. I head out to farm components and if something else drops (thats not used in tradeskills) it gets stuck in a bag to sell to a vendor or other players. I have the 100k horse, a ranger twink with 10k worth of gear and 5 tink bag on top of that and a good 150k spread out over my character's bank accounts just by looting and selling that FS sword most people would usually let rot.

[splunge]

I too am a member of the 'loot everything' coalition.
Youd be surprised sometimes when you see something that looks like junk, itll actually sell amazingly well to a vendor.
Acrylia Caverns is such an example.
The grimlings there drop acrylia, research stuff, acrylia runes and junk weapons.
The research stuff is the older type, and of probably a normal value.
The acrylia runes drop in bulk, and have no useful purpose whatsoever.
You are probably used to them dropping in Teneberous mountains or Hollowshade moor and not worth a lot, but most of the ones in AC are worth 3-6p each. a Stack of them ends up being rather valuable.
The weapons are completly unimpressive as weapons go, and have no secondary use like Fine Steel does (melting down into ore).
But they sell for 142p each to a vendor. :shock:
In just 2 hours of me, a 62 ranger and my 56 shaman bot, we scored 3000p in 'junk' as well as bags upon bags upon bags of acrylia.

[Koru]

Another tip about being a supplier, it can also pay off to stock some of the 'companion' items to what you are primarily selling. Example: You make a lot of heady kiola to sell, get a couple of stacks of silk, or if you have a baby chanter make some mana vials and put them up for sale too. Someone rich person after tailoring imps looking for vials for this may come take a look, see you have a good supply of heady kiola for sale as well and decide that hey, here's a one stop shop for Wu's combines and buy you out.

I've noticed my vial seller will get first someone buying a stack or two of vials, then coming back and getting more vials and the kiola as they get tired of making it. Some items seem to work well with each other, like for HIE clerics/WE druids imbued emeralds and celestial essence. Mana vials and enchanted clay. Coldain temper and velium ore. Leather padding and silk swatches are gold though, good way to make money using low skill trades.

[Ladnia]

Everything that people have said here has been excellent advice! I have upgraded a few pieces to the 10k range items, financed my tradeskilling (slowly but surely), and even gotten a cheap horse from using strategies like these.

There's only 3 other things I can add...

1.) Definitely loot everything! Those no-drop items you find on mobs can sometimes either turn into a nice upgrade for yourself, or a nice sellable item in the bazaar through quests. I usually keep a list of the no drop and lore items that I pick up from a night of hunting, then go look them up to see what kind of quests they're for. There are some decent items that can be easily quested, then sold in the bazaar for a few easy pp. The worst case scenario with a no drop item that you loot is that you destroy it when you find it won't do you any good, and you haven't lost anything. The other advantage to this is that you'll learn about more zones as you work on the quests for those items.

2.) If you're not intending on tradeskilling for the enjoyment of it, then just get your skills up to 100-ish. That level of skill will allow you to make the easier things (like leather padding), without a lot of failures. I've also found that there is a market for the things like baking utensils, cheap arrows, fish rolls, heady kiolas, zone-specific fish, and of course the leather padding and silks.

3.) Vendor mining! Check all the vendors you can as often as you can and look for those rare items. You can usually pick up pelts, silks, and other goodies for high end tradeskilling on vendors, if you check everything they have. Buying an item for 5 gold from a vendor, then selling it for 10-20pp in the bazaar is a tidy profit. Some days are better than others, but sometimes, it's worth the effort.