OK, I gotta vent. Are people stupid or... Stupid?

[Zezlar]

My only answer to this are the Laws of Supply and Demand. If you do not understand how they work you are shooting yourself in the foot.

Undercutting doesn't exist... that is competition. If someone can provide the same product at a cheaper price. They are your competition. If you can't beat their price then you either have to find a different means of making the same product or find another product that is in high demand and that isn't in surplus and sell that instead.

Instead of buying materials from the wards, gather your own. You will make nothing but profit.

There's a difference between smart, and dumb competition though. All they do is ruin revenue for themselves, and for others as well by destroying the market price when they undercut by 75%. Generally some other idiot will undercut them back by a huge margin.

[Riv]

It's called gathering. The only way you'll make any money is doing everything yourself. Sad but true. I too am kind of miffed at the prices of components vs. finished item, but it doesn't really affect me because i gather my mats most of the time.

Also, a lot more people have crafts at max lvl here than they did on XI...mainly because it's pretty easy and there wasn't much else to do for such a long time. So there is a lot more competition and undercutting going on than there ideally should be imo.

[TheVedis]

It's called gathering. The only way you'll make any money is doing everything yourself. Sad but true. I too am kind of miffed at the prices of components vs. finished item, but it doesn't really affect me because i gather my mats most of the time.

the issue goes deeper then that

why bother ever doing anything but selling raw materials if you want to make money at all, ever?

why is it that ore sells for 3k each
the ingot sells for 3k(but cost 3 ore to make)
and the item that you make with said ingot also cost 3k(even though it took alot more then the ingot to make it)

the pricing has gone semi retarded due to crafters who just do not want to or know how to play the market and just want to dump everything at any cost asap
it doesnt matter how slow or how fast an item will sell, its happening across the board and its making it really hard to want to make anything for anyone ever

[Firon]

Can someone point me in the direction of the Dislike button?

If you think paying 400k for any crafted gear is a smart then you are stupid. None of it is worth 400k not even +1. No point in paying high price for item's when materia does all the work on crafted gear.

[viion]

I made my millions in Shards.

- Tons of them always up
- Easy to make
- Im lv 40 lolz
- Undercutted like shit

But until they go down to about 10k/stack its all profit =D

OP dont bitch.

[MeeYow]

It's pretty basic crafting in every MMO ever to know that you make money by watching market trends and knowing when you are going to hit a good profit margin on something. HQ are far too easy to make in this to just expect to churn them out for much profit.

I personally have made ~10M in half a week (not during the pre/post patch price mania) just converting mithril ores into nuggets.

The market is part of the game so....play it. If you dont do that you are just as stupid as everyone else that undercuts to the point of making a loss.

[darkstarpoet1]

It's pretty basic crafting in every MMO ever to know that you make money by watching market trends and knowing when you are going to hit a good profit margin on something. HQ are far too easy to make in this to just expect to churn them out for much profit.

I personally have made ~10M in half a week (not during the pre/post patch price mania) just converting mithril ores into nuggets.

The market is part of the game so....play it. If you dont do that you are just as stupid as everyone else that undercuts to the point of making a loss.

don't feel bad. i have my main and my alt. my alt has only materials on it for sell. i've made 26mil on the 2 retainers on that alt. my main has the gear that those materials make such as felt cowl's, ivory staff's, new mega potions, and raptor skin satchel belts and it has made a total of 2.2 mil. once i empty my main off from the finished gear i have made it will not be put back up with finished gear because all 4 of my retainers will be nothing besides materials.

[MeeYow]

I'm pretty sure you missed the point.

There are times when converting raw mats into half way materials is significant profit (the above example quadrupled the value of the ores - and still allowed 990 finished products per retainer).

Not exactly sure which part of pointing out to look foor good profit item before you craft/gather/farm I should feel bad about.

[Mortikhan]

Simple Map:

DoL>DoH>DoW/DoM

If you are at the beginning of that map you are more likely to spend less money and make more. If you are at the end of that map, the likelihood of you making more money than you spend narrows...you can still do it but you don't have nearly as many options. If you have all three types leveled and are willing to spend the time, you make nothing but money.

My advice to correct the OPs problem is find a battle class you like first and map backward then work hardest on the DoL. What I mean is, let's say you like Archer/Bard. You know the armor you are going to use is primarily leather and the bow and arrows are primarily wood. Ok leather is mainly the skins of mobs you kill so you got that covered with the damage from Archer so level leatherworking as you can with the hides you collect (might have to do a minor amount of mining). Work on woodworking for the bow and arrows to slim your costs there for yourself and sell surplus on the side. Now the biggest thing you are going to have to do to get that whole system kicked off is to work on Botany so you can farm your own materials. Simply put, stop trying to make money off the MWs by buying and selling. Eliminate what you have to buy by farming it yourself...you will see a world of difference in your coffers.

[SirOleas]

The only thing I find stupid is when material prices are so undercut that it's actually not profitable to put them in the wards.

Silver or on Gysahl got as low as 120 gil per ore. That's less than 12k for a stack of silver considering the tax for putting it in the wards.

If it were to drop any lower one would either have to wait for the market to completely crash or just NPC/use the silver.

Undercutting is only competition until no one is making a profit at all. Lol