Smithing a viable way of making plat?

[Seanm]

Well, I suppose I'm interested in making money AND in smithing.

It's really exciting to think of being able to someday make night terror chain armor, or just any halfway decent armor to outfit all of my friends, alts, etc. But I also want money.

So I think I'm going to use an alt to get brewing up to a decent range, and then start selling those products to fund smithing a bit. I'm afraid I'm going to have to take the no money Shadowscream armor route for my smithing - but I figure that if I just keep on leveling and progressing, occasionally spending a day or two to work on smithing, it won't feel like such a drag. And if I get to such a high skill that I can start making those armors.....well, the high level smithing stuff is SO much better than what I'm wearing that it might even end up making my leveling go faster. =) It would certainly be nice for my Ranger to be able to take a punch now and then.

[EQRipclaw]

You can make phat plat with smithing! Dont listen to the nay-sayers.

But then again you have to be high level to do this. The money now is in the Planar armors. Cultural is nice, but Hurricane and the other elemental armors are amazing! The trick is just to get to 65, get flagged, and start xping, but while you do this; throw out an occasional /ooc for the pieces you need. In some cases people will only let you have those Electrified copper bricks for some plat, but its normally way less than what you would pay in the bazaar, because its money in hand. Ive found i get way better prices for stuff this way. Drop of pure rain 500pp easy =).

Get levels. Trade skills are remarkably easier at 65, where you have gear that can maxx out your stats much eaiser.

[Aandaie]

Its a viable way to SPEND plat, thousands and thousands of plat!
You will LOSE tons of money before you can get to the high level stuff to make money with. So you need to be a successful adventurer first, anymore.

People don't get 40,000 or 100,000 and spend it to GM smithing. They get 3,000 plat here and there and try to raise some skill, get 3,000 more later, etc.

As an option to gear yourself, you'd do better to spend the 3k plat on a barbed ringmail bp or something. You'd burn through it smithing fine plate in seconds, while still having a long ways to go just to get to max skill of that. Its the highest of STR, WIS or INT (highest of any one of the three) which affects your chance to get a skill up. As a melee type, even though a hybrid, its likely your str will be higher than wis. So I'd not start buying a wisdom kit.



"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."


This ain't it You have to MAKE the money first for tradeskills, then lose tons of it skilling up while practically none of the things you make would sell except to NPCS at a huge loss to you. Your best way to make money, if that is what you are shooting for, is out adventuring. Group where teasure like gems drop or loot drops and make sure everyone is able to role on each drop, etc.

Once you are making the uber items, like the Planes of power things mentioned, then you start to make the money back. Cultural plate might be a good way too, since other people charge way more for it than I'd pay. A barbed ringmail costs around 3200 plat on my server sometimes, so if you sold a cultural BP which is better for 4k or 5 k I'd buy it. Call me cheap but at 10 k or more I'd probably say no.

I only got up to I think 179 or so on a couple characters in smithing. After then dropping a few thousand plat to try to skill up more, I gave up for now. I still plan to maybe get my dark elf up to making the blue diamond cultural plate stuff, but don't feel like trying to farm that amount of cash with my druid at the moment.

[Stark]

adding my 2 copper here..

you want to do trade skills to make money.. but dont have a lot of coin yourself to start with.. think on this.. Smithing takes a few other tradeskills to help it, brewing for the temper and tailoring for the leather padding. so ..start small and build up... build up coin and skill in these other tradeskills, how.. here we go.. spiderling silk in it self is worthless yes? wrong.. you need it formost to make the silk thread for Leather padding .. silk thead is no fail combine.. sell this for 5pp each and after a short bit you will have coin.. i know.. Meegot on Bertoxx has made over 45k selling just silk thread to folks to make leather padding why? cause they dont want to farm it.. yes it takes time but i farm it for two hours at a time after i get off work and when no raids are scheduled that i want to go on in guild. set up your own time and you can do this as well, brewing.. heady kiola is another item folks buy and is a low trivial think .. 46 or so.. save those low quality pelts, medium quality pelts as well, here is a chance to make leather padding as well build up that tailoring skill, and can sell these as well or save and start your smithing.. when you get to Fine steel you will have the leather padding.. as you build your skills you can find things you can sell that make a profit, Rangers can track the bears, cats, wolves for pelts and spiders and such easily.. offer your tracking services as well... folks will pay for that too... there are alot of ways to use your skills, tradeskills , low and hi to make coin.. you just gotta look whats there.. and what ye are willing to do IN YOUR SPARE TIME away from LEVELING .. lol.. ok this is more then two coppers worth but had to do it..

[Xefin]

Fine steel is not expensive. I did zero to 188 not that long ago for like 3-4k. With any kind of 50ish character, you can make that money in a day, farming Paineel guards or Highpass guards or giants or whatever you've gotta do.

After that, Shadowscream is dirt cheap. 240 + Geerlok is still max, no? Shadowscream takes you past that. People that say smithing is this million dollar expedition really mean that they'd RATHER spend plat than spend the time farming Shadowscream. I'm certainly not saying there's a whole lot of entertainment value in collecting 1500 items off greens, but it can be done.

I still think there's money to be made on smithing. On Sullon, acrylia armor sells, BA halberds sell, BD cultural sells (non BD too occasionally). I'm not sure what the market for that stuff is on a_blue_server_39 however. And you're going to make money inconsistently this way.

The key as far as I can tell with making BIG money of tradeskills is to do 1 of 3 things:

1) hit an item when it's brand new
I made a killing off dye vials, probably 15-20k in a few hours of combining. When something is new, the rich players are dying to have it first, and typically don't know what it's worth.

2) provide useful subcombines for higher tradeskillers
Somebody already hit this with a great list of combines. I for one would kill to see somebody selling celestial essence consistently. When I log on knowing that I'm gonna have to make 30 solstice robes to get a skillup, the last thing I want to do is spend my time doing a bunch of trivial subcombines. My time is money at high levels. If I can make 2k an hour farming, I'll pay you well to save me time. I would bet more money is made off leather padding than any other item in the game, PoP armor included.

3) completely dominate the market for an item
You see this a lot on items that people don't want to bother with, or items that represent unusual skillup routes. If somebody makes 500 sickles and is willing to price them at a small profit each, they will slowly, but surely, make a big profit. If you're the first one into an item (see #1), or you flood the market, and your price represents a low enough margin, people will often choose to not compete with you.
-X.

[Zopharr]

Well, I suppose I'm interested in making money AND in smithing.

It's really exciting to think of being able to someday make night terror chain armor, or just any halfway decent armor to outfit all of my friends, alts, etc. But I also want money.

The best way to think of money and smithing is, "Do you want money now? Or do you want the possibility of making good money in 3-6 months?"

If you want money *now*, run screaming away from smithing. To get to where you can start making money in smithing in a week or two will take 400-600k plat.

On the other hand, if you are willing to be patient, work at it, farm stuff for high-end smithing (rather than making mistletoe sickles or buying stuff in bazaar), you can do it relatively cheaply - and sell enough stuff along the way that after the first few kpp it will pay for itself if you are willing to take the slower route.

So I think I'm going to use an alt to get brewing up to a decent range, and then start selling those products to fund smithing a bit. I'm afraid I'm going to have to take the no money Shadowscream armor route for my smithing - but I figure that if I just keep on leveling and progressing, occasionally spending a day or two to work on smithing, it won't feel like such a drag.

Good way to approach it.

And if I get to such a high skill that I can start making those armors.....well, the high level smithing stuff is SO much better than what I'm wearing that it might even end up making my leveling go faster. =) It would certainly be nice for my Ranger to be able to take a punch now and then.

If all you want is to get outfitted in Night Terror Armor or the like, take a look at simply brewing/baking and selling that to make the money to buy Night Terror Chain. Prices on that stuff has dropped a lot, and can be had fairly cheap. You can most likely make the money to buy a set of Night Terror Chain well before you can get the skill to make it. To save cash, try to link up with a GM smith on your server and see if you can get credit for components he needs for other smithing (e.g., Mercury and Lava Rocks for dorfs, various bloods for ogres, etc.) as well as collecting the other components he will need in bazaar and through your own hunting.

If, on the other hand, you want to smith so you can get that special joy of knowing that *you* made it - welcome to the club!

[Zhorn]

Yes it is very statisfying to wear armor you made yourself (or see your friends wearing armor you made for them!).

It took me 7 weeks-ish to go from 188 skill to 228 skill. Luckily I managed to get some friends to help me get the large race +10% smithing belt (thus putting me on 250 mod skill).
Now, as a barbarian I have limited market for BD Cultural as only Tribunal followers can wear the stuff I make (and there are 2 other GM Barb Smiths on The Tribunal Server).
I had a good week last week. I sold 85kpp worth of Helanic Tundra Armor and 21kpp worth of Artificers Chain. Also someone brought some Night Terror Chain Legs I made for 9kp.
It probably cost 10 or 12k to make the Helanic Tundra + Artificers. The Night Terror Chain legs cost 4kpp or so to make as I got the ingrediants in the bazaar. So all up, quite a tidy profit (98kpp-ish).

However.. some weeks I can easily imagine myself selling NO armor (the previous week I think I sold 1 Helanic Tundra bracer for 5kpp, maybe two.). Also I would expect Human smiths to sell a lot more BD armor as they can imbue for LOTS of different deities.

Now I can also make mistletoe cutting sickles. Costs about 7kpp and 30 minutes or so to attempt 20 of them. Boring as hell and LOTS of sub-combines (like 320 per 20 attempts IF you make your own celestial essences....!!).
Now for each 20 sickle attempts, at 250 skill I seem to make around 10 of them. Those 10 will sell for somewhere between 13500pp and 17500pp (total) depending on whether or not some ass comes along and dumps a few dozen on the market cheap to quickly get plat back for more skilling up. And yes I've done that too.... most new smiths probably do at some point!
So providing I manage to keep one step ahead of the people trying to sell them cheaper than me.... I can sell those 10 sickles in a day or two.
7 to 10kpp profit for 30-ish minutes work is probably ok.
So I could see myself making a regular weekly 15 or 20kpp UNLESS someone prices me out of the market totally.
Sometimes people will dump 30 sickles on a trader for 1100pp each... those sell fast though so provided they are not churning them out 24x7 you can normally sell yours at a decent price (but not always!).
Also note that some servers sickle markets are totally busted. I'd hope they weren't selling below COST price though...

Can some other race smiths maybe post some figures on what sort of profits they expect on an average week? Human, dwarf, high-elf would be nice to see.

EDIT: Oops forgot to mention Tae Ew Chain/Shields!
Yes these have a high success rate (80% at max skill?) and sell pretty well.
Shields need 1 Tae Ew Blood and 1 Iksar blood and sell for about 15kpp on my server.
Tunic and Legs need 2 Tae Ew Bloods and Tunic sell for about 18 to 20kpp and Legs around 13kpp-ish.
If i am lucky I can score Tae Ew bloods or Iksar bloods for 500pp to 1kpp each. Or I can duo with my 63 Rogue in Cazic Thule (Tae Ew) and Dulak(Iksar) to pharm them.

Also I've started doing Tae Ew combines for 5-6kpp on success provided people hand me the items needed somewhere near a forge

[Reflan]

At 110, your wisdom sucks. As a pre-50 wood elf ranger, your strength sucks too. I wouldn't bother tradeskilling with those stats, because you will take an incredibly long time to level your skills that way, which means much, much more time and money spent BOTH. Choose your poison and then drink both of them anyway.

Since smithing takes wis/int/str, and your wisdom is low enough that a KEI would still take you to trivial wisdom levels, I would skip KEI. Usually you have to pay for it, but even if you don't, 160 wisdom is still terrible. Honestly, I wouldn't dream of doing any tradeskills without at least 200 in the applicable wis/int/str/dex whatever the skill requires.

That said, here's something positive for a change in this post -- you can be at 250 strength at like level 5 with a strength and/or focus buff from a shaman. My shaman has cast countless hundreds of focuses etc on strangers; with my ability to get mana back quickly, it doesn't really bother me when I'm in POK or nexus or bazaar unless I'm in a hurry to be somewhere at the time -- and if I was, I'd probably already be gone. Shaman strength and focus can even stack together to give you added strength, IF you cast focus last, and the strength buff first.

So...don't do skilling unless you fully intend to do it right, or you're just screwing yourself. Get those stats up or you're just traumatizing yourself needless and throwing away your money. For smithing, strength is relatively easy to get up, and a focus, especially since probably most 60 or higher shamans have an extended buff duration item of some sort(any fool can get a quested coldain military bracer for free in an evening's time -- get one yourself btw, extends dots and has 6 wis, if rangers can wear one). There are other classes besides smiths who can cast STR spells too -- clerics, druids, BL's, whatever.

Looking at your 3k, I would seriously consider putting off smithing for a good long while, so you can get up baking and brewing.

BAKING -- Save up your foraged fruits and vegetables for baking, and save as much as you possibly can of everything you make almost. I've sold hundreds of stacks of fish rolls(135 triv) patty melts(196 I think), halas meat pies(212?) and misty thicket picnics, as well as frost giant steaks, etc. Quite a few thousand HMP and MTP by now. Baking has been a great money maker for me. I sell these at 1pp, 1pp, 3pp, and 7-15pp respectively for MTP, FG steaks at 1pp.

The thing is, you would do best to have a friend or a mule or best yet a second account to hold this stuff! You will make endless backpacks full. I would up destroying a great many fishrolls, patty melts, and halas meat pies. I filled up numerous mules with the foods and could fill them up no further. I would easily have sold them all eventually if I had enough mules. Threw away a great deal of plat even with all the goods I was able to sell. If you can't get a friend to help out with some transfers or let you store stuff on an empty bazaar mule of his(maybe created just for the occasion), you may wind up skilling up more slowly or throwing away more valuable product.

It will cost well over 3k to get to 250, but a geerlok can make you effectively 252 at 240. Frankly, you'll probably hit 250 once you see how much you can make on MTP's -- at least on some servers. On mine they go anywhere from 7 to 15pp, depending whether people are dumping them or not. Once you get to 240-ish, an evening or two's worth of work can make you 4k or more a week in profit if you park a bazaar mule overnight and during the day while you're at work or school or whatever if you get lousy prices, and much more if you don't.

Two last hints: try to skill up on stuff that SELLS, like mentioned above. Some people take alternate routes that give them stuff nobody buys. Their skill ups aren't any better than anyone else's either. Go figure! All the stuff I made sold and sold well.

Also, check out jaggedpine a LOT for anaconda and griffon meats. Vendor mining is a big friend of yours! They do not trivial even at 250, people buy the resulting food(slowly), and for some reason I seemed to get VERY fast skill ups on these whenever I tried them. The JP vendors were sometimes good for a stack or two of these; it's an easy combine and a powerful skill raiser.

BREWING -- stopped at 200 skill because I'm working on other skills. Grobbs Liquidized Meats sell very well at 6 to 9pp on my server, and once you get the subcombines going, you can churn out a lot of product very quickly. The mandrake root(baking again!) can put you back 1000pp very quickly, so you'll spend more making these than you will baking products, but there tend to be fewer brewers than bakers, too. At 200 brewing skill I can get more than enough GLM successes to make nice money brewing. Faster money than baking as far as the production part, a little slower on the selling because many people don't even think about stat drinks.

Oh, another note on selling drinks -- you might try going to Ping Fuzzlecutter outside Freeport, the little gnome in the tent on the sand. For something under 2 gold(I forget) he sells Ping Fuzzlecutter drink, a long-lasting drink that people don't mind buying up by the stack. I sometimes run my druid over to him when I'm on a pelt collecting expedition or just don't have anything to sell and fill every last space in my inventory with the stuff, sell it for 1pp each very quickly. Profit over 15pp per stack from virtually no expenditure no matter how many backpacks you fill. This stuff is an absolutely guaranteed sell. If some jerk tries to crash the market, just sell them strictly at cost until he wises up, then immediately put your price back up at 1pp or higher so that it's still worthwhile to sell these things. Folks have tried to sell them at 5g each before, which makes it assinine to make the run to freeport to get them and sell them for a 3g profit each; when they do, I sell at cost until they behave and we all start making a nice profit.

Well, good luck. Don't rush into anything you're not ready for. You need funds for tradeskills, and better stats. You can work both of those things out if you want to do things in a way that makes sense and saves you time and money, or you can stubbornly throw your money and time down the drain, up to you. If it were me -- I'd level some and get some better gear to up my stats, then get some good buffs and go do baking(more variety of stuff to sell and lots of product along the way, almost all sellable) then brewing(it's all crap till GLM but it's lightning fast to get to GLM), and then maybe level some more so that when it came time to do shadowscream armor, I would be able to mow through the greenies like the tasmanian devil instead of having to spend lots of time medding and licking my wounds (from greenies yet!).