Smithing a viable way of making plat?

[Seanm]

I am a result oriented person. I would love to make money off of trade skills, but I don't have 100k to pump into a skill....so I started looking at the cheaper options such as brewing and such, and it sounds as though the reward for most trade skills is either extremely small or nonexistent....sometimes it seems as though I would be paying a ridiculous amount of time and money to make some very unimpressive equipment which would sell for less than I made it for.

So I'm considering smithing and tailoring...I am a level 49 Ranger of Tunare with very little money, around 3k, to spend. I have a WIS of 110 with KEI, so I would probably also need to get some gear to increase it.

So what's the bottom line? I realize that at this moment I have very little cash, but that's really the point. I just don't have a decent way to make money right now. I really want a market which can consistently make me money. And I figure that with smithing, at least I could make some interesting things....hell, I could even craft things once I reached the mid 200 skill area that would be better than what I'm wearing.

But is that even a viable option? I've heard of people spending 40k or even 100k to grandmaster smithing, and I often hear that you make very little money afterwards. What I'd really like to know, of course, is where people are getting that 100k in the first place.....but sticking to the topic at hand, is there any chance for me to use smithing as a money - maker?

[Leana Soulwarden]

Smithing a viable way of making plat?

First off, If you are looking to do trade skills in order to make money, I recommend you reconsider. Trade skills are a HUGE time sync. You will spend amazing amounts of time farming in areas where you will get little or no experience. You will watch as people who actively hunt for experience while you farm gain more levels and have better equipment than you do. The only reason to do trade skills is because you enjoy them. If you are not prepared to pay this price... run, don't walk, to the nearest exit.

The path to upper end smithing is slow and expensive. It takes hours and hours building your skill. It takes a fair amount of making items and selling back to vendors, or going with slow marketing in the bazaar in order to get your skill up. When you get to about 184, you may be able to make cultural armor. Otherwise your choices are limited on skilling up to Acrylia, Shadowscream, PoP, Tae Ew, and cutting sickles. I guarantee that whatever path you take will be long and arduous. Some paths are cheaper, and require more farming of green mobs, while other paths are faster and much more expensive. If you were to skill up entirely on cutting sickles, and assuming no sales, it would cost you approximately 700k to get to 250.

You will have to take time to market the items you make. I am not the best salesman in the world, so I have worked out a deal with a friend that sells the things I make for a 20% commission. That way, I don't deal with the headache of marketing stuff.

Are you still here? Ok, then there is hope for you. I am currently a 242 smith. With my trade skill trophy, I top out at 252 skill (the best in the game). I make excellent profits. Currently, Tae Ew Armor and shields are easy to make and are sweet profit makers. I can make any piece of Tae Ew Chain armor or Shield for under 1k and sell it for upwards of 23k, minus commission. It takes some farming, but my guild is willing to help.

Typically, I hold raids in CT. The raids have targets for items that are good for the guild and I make a piece of chain armor or a shield for those that can use them for helping. I keep the extra Tae Ew blood to make items for sell.

I also farm and make PoP armor. I sell it for very good profits as well, although it is much slower to get the materials to make than Tae Ew Armor is. It sells very well and I make very good profits on it.

On the current low margin end, I make Mistletoe Cutting Sickles. I can often work out deals with people in my guild that want to skill up smithing. They make the parts, which I pay production costs on. I then complete the sickles. These I use in guild to help people get the Earring of the Solstice, as well as selling surpluss sickle blades for profit. For about 5k of materials, I can generally sell 20k of finished cutting sickles. If someone does skill up, I only need to imbue emeralds for them and make the final combines.

I actually cut my teeth on sickle blades. I formed a trade group when this quest was introduced. We sold the sets for the Earring of the Solstice for 23k. My partners and I made upwards of 200k each before the introduction of the bazaar. After that, sales of sets tapered off. I still make sets for the guild, and will continue to do that until the bazaar makes that path unreasonable.

I have a side business making cultural armor. It is more tedious to make, and therefore is not nearly so lucrative. Maybe, it is just that I have never focussed on it. I have so many other ways of making capital.

I have made and sold Black Acrylia Weapons for mediocre profit. The black acrylia is hard to get hold of, and the weapons are expensive to produce.


BTW, I don't just sell the items I make for profit. I sell most of what I make to my guildmates for barely over cost. I consider my talents a great benefit to my guild. In return, they farm materials for me, which helps me to build my skills. Were I to sell everything I make at market prices, I'd be very well off. I don't, but I do very well anyway.

So, as you see, if you make it to the top, you can make good profits. It is hard work. Much of any trade skill is not fun. But, if you make it to the top, you'll do well.

[wyrmbane_]

another opinion

Can you make money smithing? At high skill, yes you can. it requires a lot of effort even when you get there. It requires either having a lot of mules / twink characters to enchant / imbue / etc or lots of friends to help. It is very frustrating to not be able to smith because you are missing 1 component and you haven't seen your friend online...which is when you start looking for others.


However.....I am personally of the opinion that you can make money in every tradeskill. Right now, I think brewing is one of the best / cheapest / persistence pays off skills.

it costs about 10 hours of time and about 400pp to get to 250 brewing. What do you do when you get there? There are LOTS of options. All of them sell with varying success, but all of them will sell. There is enough room in the market for more than one person. Additionally, there is enough people like me who choose not to take the time to force feed ourselves. Like baking, brewing is the only general tradeskill which procudes something that is consumed.

Are you willing to exchange time for plat? have an account you can keep online for long periods of time? Or have a friend who can sell things for you? if so, I suggest baking or brewing. Baking being slightly more diverse.

The results at 250? You can sell stuff....you may only make 1-3pp per item, 20-60pp a stack. However, if you add that up, over time, 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, you will make the money you want.

For some reason people think making money hasn't happened unless you get 10kpp profit per sale, etc. Trick with tradeskills is to know yourself and your resources. find the one that fits in.

And just so you know - TANSTAAFL - There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. All tradeskills require persistance, have frustrations, and competition. There is no longer a Have Skill make plat. It is have skill, have desire, have time, willing to work, and you will make money.

Pick your poison...er...I mean your Love...and work that tradeskill up.

wyrmbane

[Meirril]

If all you want is to make plat, study the bazaar, find things in your price range, know what people will pay for those items and who's selling for less than what you know people will pay without hesitation. Buy those guys out and resell it for what people are willing to pay anyways. You don't want to price high, as you want things to sell quickly. Constant turn over is how you make plat. If you buy something at 1k that sells normaly for 2k but you don't see many so your pricing at 3k, you've spent 1k and gotting nothing in return till that thing sells. Better to get 1 k proffit and make that work some more now than make 2k proffit a week from now.
All of this takes time, patience, luck, study (lots of study), and some guts. Same thing for trade skills but this results in plat fast. Trade skills is something that builds what you are, not just what you have.

Basicaly, I'm encouraging you NOT to do trade skills unless you want to do trade skills for their own sake. Their a pain in the butt, and a money sink, and a time sink. Their also one of the most rewarding experiences in the game, much like doing an epic. And like an epic, they can wait. Just don't start till your ready, and don't expect to get their quickly.

Btw, there is more plat to be made gathering trade skill components and selling them than in selling stuff made with those components, think about that.

[Perseverence Rewarded]

I started smithing 3 months ago and have spent alot of money on it.

I have made over 400,000pp in the last month but 3/4 of that was reinvested.
My guild loves me as I have given away for free many Tae Ew shields and Chain Tunics/Leggings along with several Night Terror Chain sets. I now have everybody bringing me all kinds of smithing components. Very convenient.
I have been able to purchase the things I have been wanting for awhile now.
Massive Dragonclaw Shard
2 Valorium rings of Gallantry
Amulet of Unseen Horrors
Stacks of blue diamonds
100's of essence of sunlight - muahahahaha
shield of bane warding and an emerald dragonscale tunic to finish off my wisdom suit.
And alot of odds and ends as well as money to bring my JC and Tailoring up.

So smithing is definately a cash cow but it takes determination and lots of patience. Just do the research here and at EQtraders.com and you will be good to go. I did. :P

[Zeralenn]

Unless you have a LOT of money to invest off the bat (and it does not sound like you do), it is going to take you a very, very long time to get high enough in smithing to make the kind of cash you want.

Can you make money? Yes, but not until high grandmaster level when you have a prayer of making the stuff that sells for real money.

There are ways to learn smithing relatively cheaply, but the tradeoff is HOURS of farming. I means several days' worth of hours' worth of farming.

Also, when you say that you are a "level 49 ranger of Tunare" I would assume that you are a wood elf. Wood elves have no cultural smithing except that which supports some tailoring and fletching. Yes, there is Tae Ew armor that is really good and sells well, but that requires blood that drops in CT and you are NOT up to that hunt. Without any cultural options (high end cultural can sell quite well, depending on your server, how many of that culture are already there etc) but the fact is that as a wood elf that is not an option that is open to you. It also limits your post-188 skilling options to shadowscream, acrylia, and mistletoe cutting sickles -- a tradeoff between interminable farming and cosmic buttloads of plat.

...Zera

[Aanna]

I tend to agree with Zeralenn. If you have limited funds and aren't in a PoP raiding guild smithing is going to be more of a time and money sink than a money maker. For a LONG time. If you're not doing it because you enjoy the process then there are faster and easier ways of making plat.

I highly recommend the Bazaar reseller route for one.

[Fallwell]

Re: Making Money

I decided to do smithing as I was completely burned out on most other aspects of EQ. So not going out and levelling for 5-6 months really didn't bother me. Actually, I preferred it that way.

Especially for those without a lot of money, smithing takes insane amounts of time. If you don't mind switching your play style to hardcore tradeskiller, then it can be very rewarding though.

There are some problems, however. First off, the market changes quickly. What was hot and hugely profitable one day, may not be the next. For instance, I made close to 500k in my first month of making Heraldic armor. Since then, orders are slowly trickling in for less than half the price. There are also a couple more high-level smiths doing business in the bazaar now. Before, there were only two. In another month, maybe six. By the time you GM smithing, maybe ten (depending on server, ofcourse.)

However! When my Salubrious Heraldic BP floated on my cursor that first time, it was my biggest ever thrill in EQ. Making free armor for all my friends is very exciting as well. I still surface a smile a smile when i can answer "Looking for GM Smith!" with "250 Smith, how can I help you?"

Good luck bro,

~Fallwell

[Akassha]

I think if you are a lover of tradeskills and are comfortable with loads of time invested and the POSSIBILITY that you might make some money someday (and you very well may not), do it.

Otherwise, you're much better off spending the same amount of time farming in Seb or other zones for cash and xp.

[Mridule]

My take...

I would agree with most of the above posters that usually tradeskills are a time and moneysink.

But, if your at the right skill at the right time and have a good network for getting components (alts to store, friends to enchant, guildies to help farm) you can ocasionally make serious money.

I made tons of money when PoP was first released, being a GM Fletcher and Tinker and my tinker products are still selling well (collapseable containers and minimizers).

Also as a fellow Wood Elf I would recommend GM'ing tailoring before smithing since the high end of Wood Elf Cultural is in tailoring.

[Velurian]

There is money to be made in smithing. That is certain, and it is not likely to disappear anytime soon (barring a change in available skillup progressions that makes it much easier to reach 200+).

That said, to get there soon, you'll need buttloads of money. To get there cheap, you need buttloads of time. Choose your poison. (Fast: sickles after 188 = hundreds of thousands of plat. Cheap: shadowscream after 188 = hundreds of hours of farming.)

What you need to ask yourself is: are you actually interested in smithing, or interested in making money? If you're interested in smithing, there are lots of great suggestions above for what you likely have ahead of you.

If you're interested in making money, try some of the following, none of which have huge startup costs, and all of which will fit in your budget:

1) Heady Kiolas -- brewed, trivial in the 40s. Nearly every aspiring tailor going through the 130ish to 158 range needs them by the HUNDREDS. Some will make them themselves, but many people just find them too bloody annoying. Components cost about a quarter of a plat, result will sell for 3-5pp. Great recipe if you don't have the money for anything else. Once you get in a rhythm, you could make hundreds of these per hour, so this can be a significant money source.

2) Celestial Essence -- no-fail combine in a mortar and pestle. Components cost about 1p8g, sell consistently for 4-5pp. Not quite the profit margin of the kiolas, but no startup costs to get your skill up, and it's a dead easy combine, only two components.

3) Leather Padding -- tailored, trivial of 31. Farm the ingredients, sell for 20pp or more. Pure profit. Or buy the spiderling silks in the bazaar -- or better, from the vendors in/near Gukta, who sometimes have hundreds for just a few silvers each -- and farm the hides. Or, for that matter, keep an eye out for cheap pelts in the bazaar -- I frequently see them for 5-8pp each. Again, easy combine, two silks for a thread, thread and pelt for a padding.

4) high-end brewing/baking -- Kaladim Constitutionals, Qeynos Afternoon Tea, Grobb Liquidised Meat, and others -- trivials over 200. Brewing can be GMed for less than 500pp. Baking is a bit more expensive, but there are a few recipes that are not much over 200, so if you just go to that level, you can still make a profit. Many of the better brewing recipes at that level require a corking device, which will run you 1500pp or so, but that's not hard to recover once you're making these drinks. All of these still sell reasonably well, but some have been beaten down enough that there's not much profit in a specific drink any more -- check your Bazaar before committing to either of these.

Any of these (or a combination) will help you get your funds up to the point where you can reasonably invest in a "stat suit" so that skilling up isn't so excruciatingly slow, or so that you have more resources into dumping into smithing runs, should you decide that you're still interested. These aren't going to make you even vaguely rich, but they can provide a steady income that can fund other tradeskill endeavors or upgrades in equipment.

[Gludorp]

You've all said it takes a ton of money to become a smithing grandmaster, but how much money exactly? Let's assume I start at zero and decide to ramp up from 188 skill through Shadowscream armor--roughly how much plat should I have in the bank to start with?

[Kronepsis]

An often asked question.

Answer: We don't know. It's all up to the RNG.

Expect anything from 300k to 3 million plat.

[Fallwell]

Re:

I went from 188-241 on Freeport cultural, and it cost me in the neighborhood of 120k. 242-250 was done on sickles and BD cultural. I purchased all the gems, ore, mugs of seafoam, molds and some leather padding. Shadowscream would be completely affordable, as component cost per attempt is really low.

If you are broke? Shadowscream
If you have a small nestegg? Old Cultural/Shadowscream
If you are loaded? Old Cultural and/or Sickles

Ofcourse, once you hit 210-220, you can start making sickles for profit and recover some of your costs. So it would be possible to bridge that 20-30 point gap with shadowscream and then go old cultural/sickles and then BD Cultural to 250.

Another suggestion to keep cost down. Smith with a Erollisi Marr Cleric if race/class of the smith is not important to you. You can then imbue Rose Quartz which are dirt cheap (1 1/2 plat abouts i think.) I had to imbue opals at nearly 18 plat each.

It is highly recommended that you invest in your tradeskiller gear once you breach the 188 mark and invest in some cheap charisma gear as well for vendor bought components.

~Fallwell

[Silound]

I skipped a lot of the last posts, so if someone already said this, bear with me.

The best plat maker isisn'the 10k profit off the hours to make item, but the quick easy double the cash invested route. I can spend 1k on baking, and make just over 2k on my cleric. Not a fast route, but keeping a mule well stocked I can keep that coming in for about 9k a week-4k to make. 125% profit, and It took me little or nothing to GM/produce these items with mnmyleric. Not good enough? Well, too bad.

The key to making any cash back is to find a steady 100%+ return market that nearly everyone can partake from. Obviously not everyone will have 10k for some_item_01, but even a lvl levelwould have a few pp to spend on some_item_02 that is only 4pp each (mind you 100+% profit items).

As long as EVERYONE can use and buy, no matter what their lvl/hulevelng habits/guild affiliations, and as long as it is a USEFUL item (of course consumables will always fall under this, stat food is great for anyone) that people will keep buying in fair amounts (1-3 stacks at a time, perhaps 300pp net-150 production = 150pp profit), you have a good business that can quickly add up to a goodly sum of money.

One thing to worry about and watch for is saturation of hte markthe or when there is too much of your product on the market, and not enough people to buy it all. Obviously, if it can make a return, you will have SOME competition. However, if enough people are buying to keep others busy, good chances that there will be an edge you can grab and builf frbuild
Good idea to keep close eye on market, items that some people are selling at or under a vendor's offer probably aren't a good seller (although it may just be a power skiller or someone wil a LOT withspare goods).

Items that require extensive farming are ok if you have the ability to gather them yourself, or if friends/guildies will save for you. If you have to go buy all your necessary components from other people, chances are you won't make a killing on that item (not always true, but I find mostly so).

And lastly, offer good deals on your product, and have a catchy marketing idea. One hting that I athing love is either a good RP'er or someone who has an amusing auction for his/her product. Saying "WTS Stacks of HTPMP, XXpp per" isn't going to grab my attention. However, saying something original like:
"a_player_01's Bakery is open for business, dealt by the baker's dozen. We have your pies piping hot, meats of all sorts fresh from the beast, animal delicacies, rolls of tasty fish, hearty breads, and .... Please contact me if you wish to peruse my humble wares. All purchases of 4 heaps and mounds recieve the 5threceive is more likely to capture both my attention and pocketbook (or at least my congratulations on an original/amusing/nice ad).

Silound
Minstrel of Prexus

EDIT:: Also be generous. If I am having a good day, occasionally I will take offers, or if someone cannot afford my wares I will lower my prices just to meet their needs.