Low level market seems to be dead

[JagerForrester]

I make more money per hour on tradecraft leves than my items on the market boards… unless it's the weekend.

[SarcasmMisser]

I am also a level 50 GSM, a week ago I noticed that Tourmaline Chokers were up to 3600g each, with only a single HQ item on the market board and a sale history that showed strong demand from a handful of crafters leveling. I made some and went to list them to find that someone also listed some at 2800, undercutting the one item being listed by 800g for no reason at all.

Well actually there is a reason for this, if you consider that when prices are deflationary there is no confidence. So everyone is basically doing a run on the banks and not investing this money back into the economy at all, as the running assumption is that things will be cheaper. Prices of La Noscean Toast and Buttons in a Blanket on Tonberry have actually fallen below the cost to make them.

[Astarica]

So everyone is basically doing a run on the banks and not investing this money back into the economy at all, as the running assumption is that things will be cheaper. Prices of La Noscean Toast and Buttons in a Blanket on Tonberry have actually fallen below the cost to make them.

Well for a long time the cost of items are backed by the cost of the shards. A level 50 food requires 12 shards, which held at the 50 gil range on my server for a while, so you can reasonably price it at 600+ gil. Recently it seems like even the shards market have collapsed (probably because people realize there's no need to level up a new crafter and only new crafter needs them in large numbers). It's not exactly a secret that any gathered item really has a constant value of 1 gil since it takes exactly as much effort to gather 1 shard compared to 1 thanalan tea leaves, or anything else.

[juniglee]

I am also a level 50 GSM, a week ago I noticed that Tourmaline Chokers were up to 3600g each, with only a single HQ item on the market board and a sale history that showed strong demand from a handful of crafters leveling. I made some and went to list them to find that someone also listed some at 2800, undercutting the one item being listed by 800g for no reason at all.

Hah I saw Electrum Earrings HQ were at 5.1k a week ago. So I decided to craft one to try and sell. Kept getting under cut...I eventually sold it for 1.5k.

A lot of people undercut for the sake of making a quick buck. They don't care about the economy at all. "The economy be damned - I just want to pocket what little amounts of gil remain out there."

[Starlord]

I gather my mats and use them for armorer .

[VisRalis]

More like economy be damned, I need more inventory/retainer space.
If I can make even a bit more $ than selling to Vendor for 1-2 digit sums and it sells fast, let's undercut undercut undercut!

Inventory space! It's the bane of the economy really!

[Mags]

I've not seen crafting in a modern MMO that wasn't profitable when dealing with consumables and raw crafting materials. I'd never look at crafting, especially at level 15 gear, and say to myself, "why isn't my wares selling!?!". That is because I'd know why. People do not need level 15 gear that could cost twice or three times as much they could buy from a vendor, or get free with better statistical numbers from dungeons.

Consumables.
Materials.
Profit.

[Onnslaught]

Well, it was about time I opened a thread with a genuine concern. So here it goes.

I've been leveling my Leatherworker after maybe a month of being stuck in lvl 10 or so, and I'm hitting a bit of a roadblock. This is: crafting is a waste of gil, since I don't get a profit from my crafting. I spend and spend gil on materials but then noone buys my crafted gear. Granted, I'm only making lvl 15 gear, but it's still quite an inversion money-wise, and I've had things on the market go unsold for over a month now. I know it will probably get better later when I'm doing high level HQ gear, but right now crafting feels like I'm just wasting gil. Anyone else feel the same?

That's what happens when the game gives you gear after nearly every quest. There is also dungeon gear, which you are required to do for your first play though which is easily accessed via a queue albeit slow for dps classes. Not to mention there is GC gear but the main problem is how often you get gear in quests.

Then you have the problem of so many people fate grinding to level because you can play every job on 1 character. You get plenty of seals to buy the GC stuff doing this to 50. People doing this method also sometimes have gear already in their armory for their new class to level up with. Long story short, the game design doesn't really lend it's way to needing a low level crafting market.

[juniglee]

More like economy be damned, I need more inventory/retainer space.
If I can make even a bit more $ than selling to Vendor for 1-2 digit sums and it sells fast, let's undercut undercut undercut!

Inventory space! It's the bane of the economy really!

Oh definitely this too.

There needs to be a more efficient way of managing retainer space. Sometimes I'll have 2 separate stacks of the same item across 2 retainers, which can be easily merged to form a single stack on one.

[SarcasmMisser]

...

The cost of shards has been stable between 15-20g on Tonberry for a while. It's important to consider margins, even with high shard costs the profit margins were 100%+ on many things, probably why shards had such strong demand (The shard market depends on the crafting market, so it's an indicator of the health of crafting if anything). The margins on those things now are basically nothing, so when you consider the opportunity cost compared to gathering or farming mobs it's a loss. Volume of sales is also important, there are some things that have very high margins but never sell. You need high volume or as soon as you list stuff you will tank the market, and the number of things that have the volume that can support the amount of people trying to sell right now is shrinking, and mostly moving to gathering.

Gathering of course also depends on the crafting market, so by shifting to it you're really just trying to stay ahead and profit before other markets react. Shards react first because it's a very efficient market, other things take a while. As I said it's a pyramid scheme.

This isn't much different from most online games though, which is why the smart people who understand this get in as early as possible and profit the most. I know people who made thousands of real dollars in the first months of the Diablo 3 RMAH.