Do tell how skills, armor or weapons change what Ma said above? level 0 or level 200... How do you get more than 98% TT EVER? Other than MU...
I didn´t read through all the answer, just want to give the answer from my point of view.
The simple answer is never.
You never will get more than 98% TT return on average, sure you can hit a high HoF or even an ATH, that makes you profit vs TT for a while, but that temporary profit will be gone sooner or later, due to low return hunts (80% or even less). The bad days have to happen, too!
You already see it yourself, get MU.
And here is the reason to skill up and improve your gear:
Skilling up means you can use better gear (higher levels, better efficency, higher DPS), which directly leads to higher possible turnover (more kills or higher level creaturs with higher average loots) that can drop you nice MU things.
Its not all about items, its about the comon stuff used by crafters.
Well farming animal oils is not where you profit, but it can show a trend.
Low level animal oils (muscle, eye, thyroid), rarly get more than 102-103%, the animal oils from bigger mobs (Panc, Kidney, Brain) often have better MU < 105%. Well Panc oil crashed atm, due to Plat Token farming on Spiders.
There is a lot more things than animal oils in the loots that have MU, you just need to find it, and then you can farm it.
Some things are even comon known, and its your own fault not trying that.
Example: Caperon for the shrooms, or bigger robots that drop the stuff for other upgrade missions.
EU is an interactiv universe where you only profit/break even, if you find things needed by other players, that are not available in large quantitys speak MUs below 105%.
You need to check the market befor starting to hunt, to know what is there in oversupply, and know what is in demand. Buyorders at auction can give you that information, too. If there is an order for something at 130% MU it already makes sense to go for that resource.
Then you need to know where you get this resource, asking sometimes helps, if not there is alwas entropia-Wiki and some other sources where you can learn, what mob drops specific loots.
It is not that complicated, think Messi said it somewhere: This game is fairly easy, why make it so complicated.
If you use your brain and gather enough information, you can find profitable mobs for every level.
Edit:
Just noticed that this is an older thread and I already posted here earlyer LOL, well shit happens.