Is Tailoring Obsolete?

[Paniscus]

Wow, I guess it depends on what you call "profitable"

I estimate I've made around 400k pure profit on tailoring thus far. Certain pieces sell very well, and consistently.

Velious leathers are almost always in demand, ppl seem to twink with it. Black pantherskin and haze panther armor can generate quite a bit of profit---yes the fail rate is high. So I price accordingly.

Velium mastodon fur cloaks literally fly off my trader at 10k each (my fail rate so far is about 1 fail out of 3 tries--am I lucky?).
Robes of Tempest are a steady seller as well.
Ice silk caps, I can hardly keep around.
Cobalt drake hide belts have nice wis on them, ppl do buy them, but they move more slowly than the other velious tailored goods.
Robes of haunted dreams can generate a nice profit also, for relatively small investment.
For a larger investment (assuming you buy components) but good profit potential, Tae Ew leather pants.
I have not yet tried earthweave, etc. as I am still hunting components.
Heck, even lemming fur backpacks net me a couple hundred plat each time.
I dunno, tailoring has been very good to me. Oh, and I bought just about every single pelt/brick/temper/silk I ever used, at bazaar prices...farmed almost nothing (unless you count farming vendors!). In my case, tailoring has paid for itself and then some. It's a pretty good gig, I think.

[filobeto]

tailoring = profit? YES

Umm, you can still make darn good money in tailoring. Yes, I had Haversacks to use to somewhat support it once my skill was level high enough for >50% success rate. However you don't have to be a hobbit to make coin, my profit does not come bags now.

As previous posters have mentioned, Some velious stuff is still in demand. Acrylia Leathers sell like hot cakes IF you stay away from the majority of the 1 boning / 1 stud combines. Most people who click those are looking for skillups and flooding the market with those items. Prices for 2+ boning / studs still get you a profit, sobeit a small one - why complain, it's still profit, which you can reinvest into your skill to make more profit / raise your skill.

Fleeting quivers. Skin for 1k, mana for 250ish, feather and oil self farmed, or ya can even buy for under 100pp combined. Sell'em fast for 3k. These can now be traded in for Tokens which make them easier to move..... That's >double your investment. Again, not a huge amount of profit, but it adds up.

PoP tailoring - this is extrememly pricey if you fail, but the earthweave stuff sells very well at a *large* profit.....again, only if you don't fail. I'm not flagged for most of these zones so I must buy the majority of the items needed to click'em.

I really have no idea how much plat I have made via tailoring this year (when I began working on the skill), but looking at the gear that I have put on my toons and my wifes main, I can say with 100% certainty that it has more than paid for itself.

[Razj]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: I would Suggest

Originally posted by Tudamorf
LOL, hook me up with those suppliers! I regularly see acrylia at 50+, small pieces of velium at 75-100, CVT at 40+ (if you can find it at all), superb rockhopper at 150-200 -- you get the idea. And the finish products sell for the same as you're quoting or less. Overall a big loss if you buy the ingredients and try to sell the finished products. Frankly, I'm amazed that Aid Grimel hasn't completely trashed your skill-up-recipe component prices.

If your server has such low prices on supplies, yes I can see how you can make a small profit. However when you consider that at level 65 just one NPC kill nets you about the same profit -- for about 0.0001% of the effort of tailoring -- I fail to see why anyone would take up tailoring for money.

Less than a month ago those were typical prices. Yes, tradeskill ingredients were climbing in price, but if you watched rather carefully you could get plenty of supplies at the appropriate prices. Sure, I see lots of sm pieces of acrylia at 90+, velium at 60-80+ (don't even get me started on brick prices) and the like...but if you watch carefully you see that many of the same traders are listing close to the same amounts of the same goods all the time...either they have a very steady supply, or their stuff just isn't selling. It's the goods on the vendors with normal prices that are getting snapped up. On the superb hopper hides it's been kind of backwards. I remember a few months ago the prices on them being fairly high (the 100-150 you mention) with Flawless only slightly more expensive. The trend seems to have reversed on EMarr with superbs often at the 85 I mention and flawless at 350-500. I really wonder how many are selling at those prices, though, and how many are just mules with the same stacks of stuff over and over again.

As for the level 65 thing...well, not all of us are level 65...and I'm not sure how many NPCs you can take down that will give each group member the 200pp from a studded cloak or the 6000pp from a mastodon cloak. I'm sure you'll find several to match the lower end profit stuff, and of course an Ornate drop will destroy any profit numbers from *ANY* tradeskill...but don't overlook making extra platinum from tailoring.

- Razj

[Meirril]

If you've been watch the bazaar at all recently, you'll notice that people have way too much plat to spend on 1) high end gear
and 2) trade skill stuff.
Its a fairly good sign that there is/was a plat exploit out there and that the cash is still floating around. Wait until after the next expansion hits and we'll see what happens to the market.

Oh, and the best time to make cash for any trade skill is immediatly after something new comes in. Good example is the Valorium Rings. First two weeks they were going for 65k each, they were still going for 20k 3 months later. Now? 7k is reasonable. Its all about timing, and availablity.

Currently I'm not making items for sale, but if I were I'd still be making Acrylia Cloaks (price varies a bit, I won't sell them for less than 700pp, and I actualy hope for 1k but don't expect it anymore). I know weight reduction containers always sell well and with the new tokens sell alot easier. Just visit Tenebous Mountains and kill the grimlings there for acrylia. Make sure you jump the runner for a little extra cash (ralic pack quest).
Also make sure you sell all the runes and gems for cash to buy the rockhopper hides. Remember a little smithing skill and you can break down blocks and bricks into peices. If your desperate for cash sell the peices for whatever the market will bare, but I'd perfer keeping them myself.

All in all, Tailoring isn't done for plat, or for equipment, its done for a sense of acomplishment and for what you can do for others. Its nice being able to say "Your making a monk? Hey, let me know what you've got and I'll fill in the holes."

[Madbakerhobbit2]

Personally, I do not feel that tailoring is obsolete.

If you do it right, there is a huge amunt of money that can still be made. You have to get your own stuff, and really the bazaar is not a supply option at this time.

I am presently making about 50k weekly from tailoring... sometimes upwards of 100k, but I am also farming all of my own stuff, with the exception of blue diamonds which seem to be the only thing not affected by the unbelievable inflation spike on most servers.

Really though, as with any tradeskill it comes to one thing. If you do not enjoy it... stop it.

Good Luck.

[Scirocco]

It is all about timing, as stated above. Every tradeskill is cyclical. If you can catch the latest "wave," you can make lots of plat.

The trick is catching the wave. You have to be sufficiently advanced in your tradeskill to take advantage of the particular upcycle, and alert enough to realize it exists. That means you cannot wait to decide to increase your tradeskill until you see that the next wave is here...it will be too late, you will be playing catchup, and most of the profits to be gained will go to others.

I also recommend leveling up as fast as possible. As a druid, you have the capability of saving yourself lots of plat on component costs (I know, as I am a druid as well, and made it to 1750 supplying most of my own components). As a level 60 or 65 druid, you will find it much easier and faster to get the components needed, ultimately resulting in further progress in the long run.

I also engaged in trading finished product for components. I made a lot of acrylia tunics and cloaks this way. And then, when the Earring of the Solstice quest came out, I traded a Ceremonial Solstice Robe for components plus a little extra. Over half of the CSRs I made were pure trades, while I sold some of the extras for 15K or so each (this was back when the quest was hot...I was riding the "wave," and was essentially the only tailor on my server making the robes in any numbers). I also made 250 in tailoring, to boot.

What Tudamorf says about selling components also is true. In general, I aim for the high end of the market. If I can't make 2000 pp or more profit per sale on average, I just don't bother making the item. For example, at first I would sell the nightmare silk robes for 30K to 40K, and followed the declining prices down to the 10K region. When it dropped below 10K, I took a hard look at the failure rate and the sales prices of components, and I realized I could sell the 6 nightmare arachnid silks for almost the sales price of a finished robe, and more easily. It was a no-brainer to sell all the nightmare arachnid silks instead of converting them to robes.

Of course, prices and markets do vary from server to server, so your strategies will differ. That's part of the fun of playing the market...

Anyway, to answer your question: sure, there's money to be made in tailoring. But it's in the long run.

[andyhre]

I have made hundreds of thousands of platinum with tailoring.

Of course, I only needed to get to about 80 doing that, as I make 10K per week, or so, selling leather padding (triv at 46, 95% likely around 80). The other 100 tailoring points were just expensive icing on the leather padding cake, though ti was nice this mornign when I was able to make a nightmarewood compound bow and had sufficient tailoring skill for the silk combine. That may have been the first time that i really needed the tailoring points.

I also used to make a decent living, as a newbie, selling 1/150 arrows. I'd fletch up 90-95 at a cost of 2pp, sell them such that I'd get 45pp. When I first started, that fueled a lot of profit, and enabled me to get the tailoring skill ups to transfer to being a leather padding titan.

As long as people smith, low level tailoring can get you rich.

[Oatman]

Reply to Replies

Been away from the board for a while. Thanks to all for the encouragement and information!
At level 51 now (I think I'm a Wanderer now) and the Rockhoppers are falling like flies. (Heh heh; that may be an exageration). But I have regained a sense of the FUN that Many suggest is the bottom line.
As far as the Plat, making money has never really been my focus; as a Druid, trying to maximize Mana And Wisdom has been my intent. But yeah, the pursuit of accomplishment is still driving me on.
By the way, if anyone needs an Acrylia Studded Mask, I'm the guy to see; I've DOZENS of them!
HAPPY NEW YEAR ALL!

[Seedling]

If you want to see rockhoppers die like flies, ask me for a tour

Nothing as amusing as a wizard bursting out of that cave with a train of hoppers, panicking lowbees and request for shards

Usually do them 2 runs of about 12, then let cave repop... if noone if there.

[Optimum1]

Is tailoring obselete? Not by a long long long shot. Im a 250 Erudite tailor so I get to make some nice BD armor, but even doing velious leathers and some Haunted robes you could make a pile of plat. I estimate (very conservatively) to have NETTED well over a million plat from sewing alone. And then there's resales, and loots, and dwarf tossing..wait, no..that last one is for fun not for income.

Optimum
65 Necro on BB
http://www.magelo.com/eq_view_profile.html?num=467713

[Aryse Andenter]

Tailoring was my first tradeskill, originally I only started others when I needed parts for it, but it seems to be one of the harder ones to get parts for. On my server, superb rockhopper hides sell for 500pp in the bazaar and spider silk for 25pp, so there's just no chance of recouping your costs on most items. But I find that if you really pay attention to what is available in the bazaar, you can find niches... for example my wu's fighting gear sells remarkably well because there isn't much monk gear available. And now that they have the token system for selling bags, selling the handmade backpacks is well worthwhile and has a very high turnover rate.

I don't think tailoring is worth doing to make yourself armor, but imo every high end guild needs at least one tailor for special combines, and there's always the specialty items like the folded medicine bags/bearskin potions bags, fleeting quivers, and weight reduction bags that aren't as easily outdone as the armor.

[Galain]

I made 315k selling 3 stonehide items yesterday. I'd say its still profitable.

[Optimum1]

Yes but my combines came almost exclusively from items farmed in the bazaar. The vast majority of folks don't have a guild spoon feeding them elemental drops.

[Galain]

Umm, no. I don't use any guild supplies for personal sales. you do realize you can get this stuff in exp groups?

[drtyaty]

/umm

Umm, what I think he is suggesting is that most everyone playing Everquest is not in Elementals. Even so, if they are, your guild helped you get into elementals to begin with, and often times guild members who have no need for elemental drops will give them to those who can use them for profit.

At least that's what I think.