What do you think is the most profitable tradeskill?

My most profitable is my Sage, followed by the Jeweler and Alchemist.. But only because of the adept3 spells they make. Otherwise, my Tailor beats them hands down in sales. Level 40 and 50 MC gear sells like hot cakes right now. My Wife has a lvl 80 provie and altough she never spends any coin for the raw ( I harvest everything for her in exchange for food) she has not made more then 40P in a year..On the other hand, I have made several 100s of plat selling all the rares my crafters don't need in the same time.

J.C.

Belaythien wrote:

then how do you make money? I agree about the waste of time. In WOW I made ALOT of gold just selling my leathers at auction... they sometimes sold before I left the building. I was rolling in 'money" just from harvesting.

In LOTRO, I didn't make as much and also I had to 'boil' the leathers before selling and convert the ore to bars (you could do this while afk and no I didn't have a bot) , but I did make some money (I am talking about money to use ingame, not selling my plat)

I am fairly new to EQ and I am making almost no money. I am used to every mob dropping something, but they don't in this game. I totally hate the time spent sitting staring at icons while crafting.. gets me in a bad mood. I would rather be out exploring and killing. I don't even like 'arts and crafts' in real life.

My items at the broker rarely sell (yes I do a check price before listing) and prices are so low at the vendor that I wonder why bother.

later: I just sold something at broker for 14 g (2 items for 7g each) and all i got was 3g total! That is outrageous. How can they get that huge a cut?

So... do you have to spend hours in a craft hall sitting and watching icons pop up to counteract them to ever make money in this game??

dixieladye wrote:

You should probably stop trying to smack a square peg into a round hole and try something different. Crafting isn't for everyone. If you're after money without crafting, I'd suggest harvesting and selling the rares or becoming a shiny hunter. You can get just as rich doing those things while adventuring. Do a bit of research on the broker as to what's the most profitable rares/collection items at your tier, sharpen your mining pick then go out and about.

Kaisha@Permafrost wrote:

I've never seen one of your posts before, so I just cracked up at your sig ... especially in context of your post-- that is so funny.

Out of all my tradeskills, hands down Jeweler makes the most.

Jeweler gets to make spells AND jewelry. I have several customers who send me a tell everytime they level their scouts and need spells, or any class whenever they hit a new tier and need new jewelry. I have long since removed my jewelry box from my broker slots since pre-fabbing jewelry and spells rarely turns a profit (I may pull in a couple plat each week or so pre-fabbing).

A lot of people like to think woodworker and provies make good money because all their products are consumables and therefore need to be purchased more often. However realistically, on PvE servers when you search for food or woodworker items... you'll find pages upon pages of their product listed, and the price warring brings the profit WAY down. Sure these two tradeskills do provide steady income, however the total income is abysmal compared to others.

My Carpenter goes in bursts. He'll be broke for 3 weeks, then suddenly living high on the hog. But that doesn't last long. Best sellers are salemen crates, however people save up once to buy the max storage, then never buy again. And Tailors get the shaft because Str and encumbrance is so outa whack that any class with high str just buys strong boxes instead of bags from tailors.

Armorsmith... sure my armorer gets custom orders, and some repeat business. However my jeweler matches that with jewelry and still has spells to sell on top of it. Same with weaponsmiths and tailors.


The only tradeskill that comes close to Jewelers are Alchemists, since they too make spells, and have consumables to sell. However their consumables suffer from the same market problem that woodworkers and provies suffer from. Saturation.

I haven't worked up my other TSers to the point of making broker sales yet (most of them just hit T3), but I know my woodworker can make fast money in a short time.

Arrows sell like hotcakes, some of the other ammo too. Invis totems. Wolf totems. Good grief, do wolf totems sell. I had one time sitting at my crafting station at home with my broker window up - I'd make a dozen wolf totems, stick them on the broker, and before I finished my next combine they'd all sold. At level 80 I'll still grind out a few dozen every once in a while, and they still sell that fast.

Add to this that we get 3 totems per combine and 100 arrows per combine, even small markups add up fast.

most of them are profitable,


in no specific order...

alchemist for one, why? they make fighter adept 3's and fighters are tanks, they are the classes where havng atleast adept 3 even at lower levels is most important, plus they get to make poisons which one can sell for complete ripoff prices.

tailor is also a good one, atleast in t8, why? because there is almost no gear for brawlers from quests or drops.

provi.... used to be crap at making money due to noone haivng a need for food and crafting bots ruining prices for drinks, wih rok where mobs are harder its once again possbile to sell food and the number of crafting bots has gone down as well...

sage, well, making spells for 50% of the classes (and prolly something like 70% of the population) pays off.

Armorer, lack of chain and plate quest rewards / drops in t8 plus twinking of tanks in lower tiers does create a market for their products.

woodworker, well, invis totems sell faster than candy at a overweight kids anonymous meeting...

jeweler, well, scouts like their adept 3's, plus the str imbued rings with their dps proc always sell.

that leaves us with carpenter and weaponsmith, carpenter doesnt make anything that is required (repair kits are useless, raids have tinkered menders, everyone else doesnt die often enogh), some of the stuff carpenters make does sell, nothing with much profit though, slow but steady is what i would call it. then the red headed step child of earnings... the weaponsmith, well, with some luck he might sell some lower level stuff to some scouts, but thats about it.

I must say that although my stable of craft toons (7) are only about 30th level each, my earners rank:

1) Jeweler -- I make a good profit from MC belts and rings
2) Provisioner -- laugh, but I can whip up a combine (of 2 items), which cost me approx 2 silver (guesstimating) to craft, then sell for 25 silver. I think that's pretty decent markup. And that's for food items that are 1) T2-T3, and 2) only about 1 hour 15 min duration items. If I craft higher duration items, they get sold for more. And they are selling

My other crafters are getting trickle gold.

My least profitable so far are:

1) Carpenter
2) Alchemist -- although to be fair, I haven't spent any time crafting any CA's (except to level)

My main toon (for adventuring and crafting) is a WW. I'm hit and miss on this one. It seems, to date (about 2 1/2 months since creation), that I only make coin from arrows and some MC wands/staves. I must confess that I haven't tried to sell any MC bucklers. I haven't sold any totems, but I figured that because I'm only making up to T3 totems, they aren't actually needed by anyone -- disappointed that Totem of the Otter isn't moving faster)

dixieladye wrote:

No.
You don't need to counter to craft effectively, and anyway you can making money by harvesting or adventuring.

Mariss@Nektulos wrote:

That is wrong.
There are often gaps where you can make decent profits with much high volumes of sales.
E.g. there were a couple of weeks in December when there were usually no invis totems on the broker on Splitpaw.
My woodworker made loads during those two weeks.

I agree with everyone that harvesting is the #1 way to make money. In each tier, I have my favorite harvesting spots and when I am short on coin, I spend about an hour in one or two of them and I am rolling in the plat a few hours later. The other day I made 9pp off of what I harvested the night before. Granted I spent several hours harvesting, but I was having a crap day and it was relaxing.
As for my crafters and who makes the most...I have to say hands down its my Tailor, Sage, and then running no so far behind, my Provisioner (there are days I just can't keep up with the supply/demand). I had a Woodworker and she did do good with her consumables but everything else just sat there collecting dust. I have a Carpenter but she is too low to determine if her sales are good, I guess they are for the level she is at currently. I have tried a Jeweler, but for some odd reason just can't do the combines, so I give up.

dixieladye wrote:

The only thing I sell with my provisioner is the +str adornment. I make most of my money with my alchemist, tinkerer and transmuter. Basically: the more money you invest the more money you'll earn. If you invest little in common crafted products, you won't get much profit. If you are ready to invest a lot in rares/components, you will earn more. Of course you are also more prone to loose money because of fluctuating prices. It's all about knowing how heap rares get and how much people are willing to pay.

I don't know any equally good sources of income if you don't want to craft. I'm sure they're there but I like crafting, so I don't care about income while adventuring .

I have a Jeweler, Alchemist, Woodworker, Sage, Provisioner and Tailor.

Of all of them, my most profitable is my Woodworker. I don't know if it has anything to do with the fact that I'm on a PvP server or not, but my Woody makes bank just stocking totems and daggers. They sell immediately.. literally. I price them and they're gone before I leave the broker window. Whereas my potions may sit there for a month before selling out suddenly over night. My Tailor just suits up my cloth and leather wearing alts or makes bags for newbies. My sage is just there to create adept III's for people who need them and have the rare. And, my jeweler creates scout spells on request, but nothing worth listing on the broker.

Granted none of my trade skillers are T8.. T3-7 currently. But, I blame the beginner armor and weapons that came out with TD on the lack of business for my Tailor which is by far better than the MC she creates so people typically don't shop for MC till T4.

Kursa wrote:

Provisioner is profitable, true. People most often tend to dump the lower end grocery node raws, and meats, onto their brokers for coppers. Provisioners are not required to buy advanced books (yet). The only bad thing about a Prov is the time they must spend crafting a stack of goodies and the amount of inventory space they must give up to keep themselves stocked and ready to cook.
I have all 9 of the crafting classes between 40 and 80, and I would honestly have to list alchemist as second to provisioner. The reason for this is simple. Scouts are in abundonce on most any server, given the need for them in groups and raids, and no where is the presence of scout classes more readily apparent than on the PvP servers, which is where I find myself playing 8). As a level 80 alchemist, I have noted that all adventuring classes seek out their spells and combat arts primarily by harvesting rares for adept IIIs or buying the rares for them from the brokers. The rares don't come easily and the brokers are often flooded with undesired materials from two types of nodes, stones and ores. You have loams and metals from the ore nodes. You have precious stones and soft metals from the stone nodes. The primary components for making warrior CAs are the loams, and the stone node raws. These are cheaper than anything else on the broker 9 times in 10.
Not everyone is willing to pay a pretty penny for their combat arts, but I have found that if you consistantly price low, and keep a house with HUGE potential for broker space, you will do better financially than other alchemists who don't make an investment in a house with lots of broker space. If you do the highest level rush order writs, you get reimbursed for your fuels and paid 12 gold per writ. You can easily maintain your home, have a decent cash flow, support your guild, and offer T8 CAs for a flat 6 gold. You make enough cash off writs to really not give a care if anyone buys your CAs or to not have to worry if someone undercuts your prices (you make at least a gold off each one and they have to take less if they wanna try to compete) but they will play heck trying to under cut you on 480 listed combat arts (you can have that many on the broker if you have a 6 slot house with every spot holding an 80 slot scroll stand).
Sages have the problem with resources. Woods and roots tend to get very expensive, especially roots. And a sage by and large has only spells to make (there are a few things I have heard of them being able to make that are not simply spells, but I have as yet to see this in the high 40s). Jewelers have to give up way too much space for mats for all the things they can make. Alchemists are the ones who can make poisons and given that you can buy up to 20 in a stack, and make 10 per crafting run, alchemist is tops in my book for profitability, with provisioner being second.

I have Armorer, Sage, Jeweler, Carpenter in T8, Alchemist in T7, and I recently deleted my T7 provisioner. As well I have a T8 transmuter.

Highest profit per combine is by far T8 adorns, using low cost treasured items for frags/powders and AD3's made by one of the scholars for infusions. I will typically make 5-6p profit per legendary adorn and 1-1.5p profit per treasured adorn. The only downside is my adornment inventory only turns every 5-6 days.

Overall profit armorer is much, much more profitable, even moreso than adorns. Buy a steel cluster for 1p, buy the fuel and raws for 3g, sell finished item for 1p25g. Total time invested is ~45 seconds at the forge, assuming 30 seconds for the combine and 15 seconds averaged out over the run of items I make for bank/broker trips. Steel armor, as an example, turns in 1-2 days for me.

Provisioner made reasonable money, but the profit per combine just wasn't there. Sage, Jeweler, and Alchemist all do reasonably well, alchemist on top for poison/potion sales. There is just too much competition for jewelry, and too few potential customers to risk the opportunity cost on AD3's.

I don't harvest and only purchase rares and raws off the broker. I can't see how harvesting I will be able to generate more than 10p a day with less than 1hr total time invested per day, which is about what I'm doing now with purchasing stuff off the broker.

Disclaimer: This is only valid for the server I'm on, as each market is different. That's where you make your profit - knowing your market and filling voids.

Belaythien wrote:

You can get good profit from some common items.
Last night my alchemist made almost 20g on a T4 hancrafted spell, put on the broker the day before (at half the price of the cheapest listed).
My woodworker typically makes 3 to 6g per combine for invis totems, and 5-10g per combine for harvesting tools.

To th people saying you don't have to counter to craft effectively, how do you mean? If you don't counter, most of the time you fail to create the item.

FlamingGnats wrote:

EEEP! this is an oldie....
There are 6 counters that you have. 3 will increase durabilty and the other 3 increase progress. If you start to lose durability, cast one oft he durability counters... The Event will ONLY occur when you see the numbers float above the table (at the tick).

You can cast teh counters anytime in the process of the combine.. not only when the event happens.

OK...most profitable can be measured in a few ways.
I'd say the Alchemist is the best money maker and here's a few reasons to back it up.
Provisioner, Alchemist, and Woodworker make the most expendible items and will always be able to make some profit. The downside for many of these expendibles is that the profit per combine is low. I won't spend the time to craft something for less than 5 gold profit per combine...and that's pushing it right there. Alchemist has a leg up over the other two because fighter adept 3s sell well and for a large profit per combine, and that is in addition to the poisons and potions which is likely more profitable than either provisioner or woodworker items anyway.

My most profitable tradeskill is my Alchy. Pots and potions are hot sellers and the ring and chest adornments are best selling in game. I have every tradeskill vailable but primrily farm the alchy.