Gathering > Crafting

I just spent several hours gathering materials for, and making lots of HQ Rroneek steaks.
On my server, they're selling for 3750 gil.

Then, I added up the selling prices of all the raw materials to make one. 13,434 gil

So, by crafting the items instead of selling the materials, I lost 9784 gil on each one, plus the time required, and the cost of the crystals.
From now on, I'm doing this check first if I need crafted items. If the materials sell for more than the item, I'll just gather the mats, sell them, buy the competed items, and come out ahead.

It really depends. I certainly think Gathering has become undervalued a bit, and it can be worthwhile because so many automatically buy mats for crafts. For grinding out levels in the Firmament, I tend to buy mats. Spending 2 hours in Diadem for 10 levels isn't super fun to me.

Oh shoot, I just looks up the mats needed for that and a few of those are used in recipes that are for leve quest turn ins and for the recipe you are cooking can be used for the supply mission for cul. A few of those are "higher" right now due to the supply and demand I think but I know I generally always gather myself unless the gil spent is negligible. Spending on the MB almost guarantees you are going to be overpaying for something by at least a little and normally a lot.

It is a common occurrence in many MMOs and is called "if I gather my stuff myself, it's FREE!" :)

You know...i only farm stuff for myself and not to put it in the Auctionhouse. Because normally you lose money and time there. Not even counting the people that underbid you constantly. So yeah...fight against windmills. If some of my friends want some stuff i happily do it for a reduced price...but for the auctionhouse? Nahh.

This makes sense in an MMO because unlike in the real world, where raw materials are not very useful to many people and difficult to transport to somewhere where they can be used to make something that's consumable to a greater variety of individuals or organizations (which then must also be transported and make a profit, adding to its cost), in an MMO raw materials can easily, instantly be used in many ways for more things, not least of all which is EXP towards leveling your crafters, something that very many people all try to do at a very predictable time.

And those things you make with the raw materials are just as often useless beyond their specific time where they're useful.

Having an economy function like real life a video game would need the video game to reflect incentives we have in real life, I think, and that's probably not a fun idea for games trying to be focused on getting to do things we probably don't get to do in real life.

In the real world it's a bit silly to say Steamed Catfish is objectively a worse dish than Carrot Pudding, but when you live in a world where the effects of things can be boiled down to numbers on a character sheet, it's only a matter of time until something is obsolete and worthless.

Even when gathering to craft stuff for yourself, you can often come out ahead if you just sell the materials, and then buy the completed items.
If I did this with 20 Rroneek steaks, I'd come away with 20 steaks and 195,680 gil, plus a time saving by not having to craft them myself.

Just ran a test with 20 steaks, taking 15 minutes to gather and sell.

Materials income: 18,411 Down significantly from morning
Completed steaks: 140,000 These are nearly double the price this morning.

This is a huge flip. making the crafting profitable, and now I wonder if I got my math wrong in my original post.

With respect, your story doesn't demonstrate that gathering is better than crafting; rather, it demonstrates the importance of making an informed decision. Because in the overwhelming majority of circumstances, nobody is buying materials for less than they can sell the finished product for. That suggests that there's a more profitable use for those materials than the product you chose to craft them into.

The lesson to be learned is: before you turn X into Y, check the prices for both X and Y first to make sure that's a profitable decision.

Honestly, depends on the craft. Lower level/easier crafts are going to be cheaper on the MB than the components because people bulk-craft them to level. However, a lot of the master crafts can easily net you +500% profit. There's a specific glamour piece on my server that sells for 200k, for only 10k investment on the market board. The reason why nobody bothers making it themselves is because it's a master craft locked behind high level... *gag*... Leatherworking...

Three things in this world are certain: Death, taxes, and the laziness upcharge people pay for high level LTW crafts.

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Originally Posted by SamSmoot

I just spent several hours gathering materials for, and making lots of HQ Rroneek steaks.
On my server, they're selling for 3750 gil.

Then, I added up the selling prices of all the raw materials to make one. 13,434 gil

So, by crafting the items instead of selling the materials, I lost 9784 gil on each one, plus the time required, and the cost of the crystals.
From now on, I'm doing this check first if I need crafted items. If the materials sell for more than the item, I'll just gather the mats, sell them, buy the competed items, and come out ahead.

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Welcome to markets, my friend.