Crafting is both good and bad in Wraith. Good for everyone else, bad for the crafter. You see, it all has to do with what you can get out of your profession. Well, they have some okay green crafting gear that will help you as you level, and some intro 80 blue gear, and intro PVP blue gear that's craftable. However, there are many issues with crafting as it is. Mainly its the fact that the good stuff doesn't require a rep grind like in BC. For example, the leg enchants are trainer learned. Everyone learns it, everyone makes some to level up. Result? Plethora in AH, and loss of easily 50% of your material price.
Enchants can now be sold on AH. Result? You lose half of your material cost to make the scroll (which the vellum goes for 10x more than the material cost). This is the same on two servers, so it may be universal.
The sad fact is that for right now, the thing to do is sell your materials and don't try to level your craft. And there is no reason at all to level it beyond the self-buffs such as the ring enchant and bracer LW enchant. Crafters will actually pay you for those critical 425+ skill enchants, and every self-respecting crafter will be leveling their craft to help their guild/raid out. So don't be a chump, don't level it right now, and enjoy the insane profits. 50-60g from a 10g AH item? You bet! 20g per stack of northend leather? That's cheap! (Especially since you will need thousands to level to 450).
The only silver lining is to figure out which enchants/crafted items there aren't a ton of on the AH and provide those, but I don't see making much profit off it. Sure you make make some gold of the PVP gear, but considering the investment cost, i doubt it's worth it. It has to do with opporunity cost, if the cost is literally a mouse click then you can be sure that the item to be sold will never cost more than the materials.
Update: Fara makes the excellent point that you will need ~375 enchant to DE up to level 80 epics. So it's worth it to keep enchanting for that reason alone. Of course, you'd be insane to drop something and pick up enchanting just so you can DE your northend greens.
You know what else is interesting? Tailoring is the only crafting prof that doesn't require it's raw material to be from another gathering profession. This makes it the only crafting profession that you don't need to hit up the AH for to powerlevel, and further you can easily accomidate another profession like enchanting to pair with it.
Monday, December 29, 2008
High level crafting in Wraith
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8 comments:
I certainly don't see crafting as a profitable avenue right now. The money just isn't there in the gear. So you're spot on when you suggest the person sell the materials instead.
However, for people with 100 alts, there is a benefit to crafting...free stuff! This alt gathers materials, this other one makes it. Granted, it does take time, but you avoid paying 100g for that item since you have characters that can provide all materials.
Really, that's the only benefit I'm getting out of it. I'm leveling my blacksmithing because I can never find one online to make a rod for my enchanter.
The other thing I'll point out for alts is that you can get heirloom items from running heroics/naxx10. I think they are 40 badges and are designed to be a level equivalent blue-level item.
If you are having fun leveling your profession, go ahead. I wouldn't buy mats on AH (not like I know anyone who does that /facepalm).
You are right, it becomes much much cheaper if you have an alt that can provide materials for your profession, or can gather them yourself.
I also predict material prices will plunge once people stop leveling their professions (ie I predict a 4-fold drop in prices in a month). I don't see the dust prices staying at 5g each, there is going to be more and more of this as time goes on and people sell their greens from heroics/leveling.
Excellent post. I have done the same. I have stopped leveling my crafting professions and started selling materials I have accumulated in the bank. I have easily picked up 2000 gp over the last weekend by liquidating all my frostweave cloth and enchanting materials.
Although crafting isn't profitable in northrend there is still ample reason to keep them around. I have enchants at 375 which allows me to DE everything up to purple in WOTLK. Almost every quest now rewards some kind of green weapon/armor which can be turned into enchanting material. Each quest reward is now easily worth 20-30 GP in enchanting material.
Gibbiex...I wont be seeing heroics for quite some time since I'm leveling all my 70's together for the most part...
I don't play all that often either (more on weekends), so my highest level character is 72 right now. So, for me, it just makes more sense to get all the junk myself and make it without the hassle of attempting to spam trade for hours on end (LF Blacksmith!!!!).
=D
Unfortunately I'm leveling again, but this time as a Rogue. I'm not looking forward to Leatherworking at the higher levels, but at least for now the Armor Kits are coming in handy.
Agreed, Blacksmiths are truely rare. However, I know from experience, LW and enchant are far from rare. I imagine that you could get some very nice blues crafted when you hit 80 (and it will come at some point) very quickly.
Further, look at the AH. Level 80 blues are so abundant right now that I picked one up for 10g. That's 10. They typically hover around 20-30g for the usual leveling items. My advice is to hit the AH every once in a while and buy those blues which are useful on the cheap. Eventually the surplus will dwindle and prices should rise (I think), so now is a good time to grab crafted items off the AH.
So, in essence, I would not worry about having useful stuff if you are not crafting. If you are crafting, by all means go ahead! I am after all. It's a big part of the game to gather materials and turn it into something thats hopefully useful.
i kinda thought the point of power leveling was that you never left the auction house to do it (except to visit the next level of trainer). By that token, farming cloth is a horrible way to power level tailoring. You need such ridiculous amounts of cloth that it's just silly. I kept all my cloth drops on a bank alt in case I ever decided to level tailoring (and to help with first aid, etc), and I burned through so many stacks when I finally did grab it for my priest that I ended up spending another 1000 or so to buy more stacks.
At that point it becomes a thing where I could go farm scholo over and over, or just buy the stacks of runecloth and level past that rut in tailoring. Then I moved onto my 600 or so netherweave, which i blew thru, and bought more netherweave to get out of that rut. I'm now (finally, happily) able to use the northrend cloth, and have stopped buying crap, to let my reserves refill, but i'm just short of being able to make anything really useful (threads, etc).
in all, they're a nice distraction, but rarely "worth it" in any sense of the word.
@Ixobelle
Excellent comments! I guess the whole point is leveling craft profession is never/very rarely worth the cost going into it.
With this said I do see difference between going marginally in debt be distracted from swimming in red ink getting the same distraction.
Personally if I want to blow 6000 gp to get myself entertained I would probably but an epic flying mount for one of my alt first. :-)
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