Can a successful/sustainable Crafter give me a break down of their thinking?

AckerZ

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Im really beginning to enjoy crafting but at my level it is horrendously expensive and wasteful, I am for now residing myself to the EP1 on quantity afk grind, letting my crafting skills build while I get on with work elsewhere around the home.

Looking forward I would like to begin to understand how the more experienced crafters in the game think so as to avoid pitfalls beginner crafters make.

When you pick an item to craft, how are you calculating the needed success rate to be sustainable?
How important a BP Quality and Crafting skills in relation to that success rate?
Before getting into a niche how can you tell if it would be worthwhile, like what markers do you look for before you pick items to craft?
What do you look to avoid?

Then as a crafter when you get the 'formula' correct how profitable can it actually be?

And any general advice to beginner crafters in terms of DO's & DON'Ts?

(Im not asking you to expose your edge or markets you are involved in, merely your thought process in what to craft and why)
 
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Your asking for people to give away money making secrets that some have taken years to do.

Wont happen as despite what 1 person who always complains about crafting (name begins with A) crafters even now make a good profit :) . A wise player called Messi once said 200 years ago sweating when you first start is good as you can spend a lot of time reading learning (and you get beheueeu evade when sweating).

It was said in another thread you could go big ship and repair. Did you ask them?. THat is cheap and easy way to get up crafting skills (cheap but takes a lot of time). Maybe other MS ship owners could have you as repairer all MS owners especially 1 are coool. GL though :)
 
Your asking for people to give away money making secrets that some have taken years to do.

Wont happen as despite what 1 person who always complains about crafting (name begins with A) crafters even now make a good profit :) . A wise player called Messi once said 200 years ago sweating when you first start is good as you can spend a lot of time reading learning (and you get beheueeu evade when sweating).

It was said in another thread you could go big ship and repair. Did you ask them?. THat is cheap and easy way to get up crafting skills (cheap but takes a lot of time). Maybe other MS ship owners could have you as repairer all MS owners especially 1 are coool. GL though :)
depends on what you call cheap... getting skills with no returned product to actually sell is considered cheap by some but not by others.
 
No what i mean is 'real' crafting skillys engy + others which you can get from MS repairing which OP was directed to in another thread.

Which he has NOT done :). Is no harm in asking a MS owner can i repair on your ship (s). All they can do is say no. As at least 2 stream i highly doubt they would refuse.
 
No what i mean is 'real' crafting skillys engy + others which you can get from MS repairing which OP was directed to in another thread.

Which he has NOT done :). Is no harm in asking a MS owner can i repair on your ship (s). All they can do is say no. As at least 2 stream i highly doubt they would refuse.

In that other thread it was also suggested to do the Monria Daily using a low level BP such as EP1 for cheap crafting skills (which might be what OP is doing...but doesn't really say).

IMO mothership repair skilling is a waste of time to get your crafting skills up.
Sure it does give you Engineering skills which allow you to unlock BP comphrehension, but thats about it (other than small intelligence attribute gain which is minimal help).
Doing the Monria daily gives you 0.75 pec of engineering for completing 500 success, which can be done for around 30ped with a return of somewhere between 25-35 ped (maybe more if you hit an (L) BP.
It will get you to BP Comphension cheaper than what repair skilling will do as you get no return on repairing other than skills.
Crafting EP1 or other low level BP's also provide you with the other skills related to the associated crafting category.

Before the Monria daily, repair skilling was the way to go, but everyone suggesting it nowadays is using outdated info and have been teaching new crafters wrong.
I was taught to go repair skilling when i started and I wish my mentor at the time had never suggested it as the way to start crafting.

In saying all this, new players should not get into crafting. Go hunt, go mine, learn about those things first, then attempt crafting.
Crafting is expensive, and can go sideways extremely quickly if you don't know what you are doing. By hunting and mining, you will learn what people use and what you should be crafting, and the small areas where there are not many people capitalising on and you could take advantage.
 
IMO mothership repair skilling is a waste of time to get your crafting skills up.
Sure it does give you Engineering skills which allow you to unlock BP comphrehension, but thats about it (other than small intelligence attribute gain which is minimal help).
...
Before the Monria daily, repair skilling was the way to go, but everyone suggesting it nowadays is using outdated info and have been teaching new crafters wrong.
I was taught to go repair skilling when i started and I wish my mentor at the time had never suggested it as the way to start crafting.

I would like to say something about this statement. I don't think this is true in all cases, repair skilling still has it's place imho.

Years ago I was trying to level up my Armor Engineer profession so that I could make Zombie (L) armor, which I believe has a 17.5 requirement. It seemed like I was never going to get there. The majority of armors and plates I could craft (I think I was level 14 at the time), were mostly useless and impossible to sell, especially since the changes that were made to armor with Loot 2.0.

Someone told me about repair skilling, I went and tried it and saw that my Armor Engineer skill was going up and the cost actually wasn't too bad. In the end I only did it for maybe a week and managed to raise my Armor Engineer skill to where I wanted. It was very helpful to me back then.

Now that we have the Tech Gizmos, I would not recommend to someone to go repair skilling like I did, but there are some crafting categories that have no gizmos, namely Tools, enhancers, furniture and Vehicles.

So, if you are trying to raise your crafting skills to a certain level and there are no Tech Gizmo BPs to help you do that, you might want to consider repair skilling on MS, it's still relevant.

Legends
 
In saying all this, new players should not get into crafting. Go hunt, go mine, learn about those things first, then attempt crafting.

I have to disagree, if you can find a decent niche as new player, then crafting can be a lot better than hunting/mining. Also hunting/mining knowledge is mostly worthless when it comes to crafting. @OP Just stay away from what others/everyone else is crafting, find your niche.

Crafting is expensive, and can go sideways extremely quickly.
Just like hunting and mining.
 
Sure it does give you Engineering skills which allow you to unlock BP comphrehension, but thats about it

Already have BP comprehension unlocked, do you believe it is a waste of time if I already have that?
 
Your asking for people to give away money making secrets that some have taken years to do.

Im asking for help as a new player, I've have tried to make the questions as vague as possible so as to not give away secrets. Also I'm not asking about skilling in this thread i'm enquiring about how the more experienced crafters think about the game.
 
Im really beginning to enjoy crafting but at my level it is horrendously expensive and wasteful, I am for now residing myself to the EP1 on quantity afk grind, letting my crafting skills build while I get on with work elsewhere around the home.

Looking forward I would like to begin to understand how the more experienced crafters in the game think so as to avoid pitfalls beginner crafters make.

When you pick an item to craft, how are you calculating the needed success rate to be sustainable?
How important a BP Quality and Crafting skills in relation to that success rate?
Before getting into a niche how can you tell if it would be worthwhile, like what markers do you look for before you pick items to craft?
What do you look to avoid?

Then as a crafter when you get the 'formula' correct how profitable can it actually be?

And any general advice to beginner crafters in terms of DO's & DON'Ts?

(Im not asking you to expose your edge or markets you are involved in, merely your thought process in what to craft and why)

I'll take a crack at this, though there are definitely more experienced crafters, I think my process is workable and could be a good start for anyone wanting to get serious about crafting in EU.

So first a few 'truths' to get us oriented. I've said some of these things elsewhere and I stand by them no matter what anyone else says:

Axiom #1: The only thing that has ever proven viable with crafting in Entropia in the long-term is Quantity crafting

Axiom #2: If it doesn't give you something that you can sell to another player for markup, don't craft it


Ok so now that we have these first 2 axioms as a starting point for our crafting career, we will ignore any other strategies that don't align with the above.

1. PED Turnover/Cycling (aka volume crafting):
One of the biggest challenges for crafters is that it is incredibly easy to make items, but often times, not so easy to get rid of them (sell them). So before I start, I often look at what the sales volumes are in the past week. The Market History for individual items will be your friend for that. Here's an example using items that all have the same TT value, Widgets:

index.php

Now, having these all side-by-side like this, it's easy to see which ones sell more, and which ones don't sell much. When you look at the history for Widget 1, you can see that in the last week, 4k PED of them have actually sold on auction, this is significantly more than for all the other Widgets. If I was going to get into the Widget crafting business, I would probably just focus on the Widget 1 and ignore the rest.

Here's another example, albeit a bit more complicated because in this one, the TT values are different:

index.php

The numbers in the 'Sales' column is the total TT amount and doesn't take into account the markup amount. So the TT is the only thing we care about for the math we need to do. Now, the amps shown here are the 6P, 10P, 13P, 17P, 20P, 23P, 25P and 28P, in that order. Which one has had the most volume in the last week? You'll have to go figure out what the TT is for each one and divide the week 'Sales' amount by the TT for 1 of them to arrive at that number. Believe it or not, I have done this before for all amps. It's a good exercise to do, it will reveal a lot about volumes of sales for items and this will help prevent too many failed auctions.

Typically, if something has no sales in the last week, I ignore it and don't craft it, because the risk is too high that I will have failed auctions (the max auction duration at this time is 7 days).

2. Reverse Engineer your crafting career, think long-term:
There is a tremendous amount I could say about this, I could spend 3 hours or more just on this one tip, but I don't have time today so I'll have to just give you some pointers and leave it for you to mull over on your own.

a) Skills don't have the same value. Look over the value of each 'Manufacture' skill and consider which skill you might prefer to work on. In the end, these have value and if you ever get into trouble during your crafting career, you might want to sell some of these skills in order to make yourself solvent again so you can keep going. But if you are working on skills that don't have much value, it might be hard to convert some of these skills back to PED again, so think about that:

index.php

b) Think about your long-term plans; do you plan to buy a shop eventually? What would you sell? What's the competition like? What are the margins like? The more competition there is on something, the tighter the margins are. For example the margins on ArMatrix guns are getting very tight these days and there are already a few shops that sell ArMatrix guns cheaper than auction. That would be a tough market to get into. Same goes for Damage Enhancers, and with those I would say it's even worse because the BPs are UL, so those that have BPs with QR 100 are at a huge advantage and there's just no way to enter this market while keeping your crafting returns in the green initially, you will have to invest a certain amount to get started (either by buying QR 100 prints, or by getting your own up to QR 100).

There doesn't seem to be as many Furniture or Tool shops, but these are also low-volume items, which will greatly affect your turnover/cycling capability. All these things must be considered long-term. Do you want to have volume? Do you want to have exclusivity? These 2 things are usually diametrically opposed and cannot be achieved together, you have to chose one or the other.

Another thing that should enter into your long-term planning process is the amount of PED you will be able to dedicate to this. Armors and Mining Amps for example take huge amounts of PED to do successfully. If you don't think you'll have at least 20k PED to dedicate towards your crafting endeavors, you might not want to get into certain markets

So think about where you want to be in the long-term, then knowing that, you can figure out what you will need to do in order to get there. That is how I got to where I am now.

3. Start at the beginning: Components
Almost anything you might want to craft eventually will require some sort of components. Weapons, Armors/plates, Amps, etc... These all require some sort of Component in order to make them. So it makes sense that you might be better off starting with raising your Manufacture Component skills at the start as these skills will be useful to you in the future, even if you don't plan on becoming a Component crafter long-term.

As seen in the previous image above, out of the 3 component crafting skills, Manufacture Metal Component is the most valuable and sought-after, and with good reason. Many of the higher-level Metal Component blueprints are expensive to max out. There are a lot of Metal Components which are needed for many Armor plate, ArMatrix weapon and ArMatrix Amps and so the volumes that you see on things like Basic Sheet Metal reflect that. I personally go through thousands and thousands of Basic Sheet Metal in a matter of minutes when I'm making armor plates for my shops, so it's a pretty reliable thing for anyone to craft, it has volume and it has decent mark-up.

If you were going to take that advice and start making Metal Components, here are the current volumes for all of the Level 1 and Level 2 BPs:

index.php

Some pointers here:

a) If there are no sales in the last week, leave it alone
b) At first, Volume is more important than MU
c) The skills you get will be a function of the cost/click; the higher the cost to click, the more skills you get

You can ignore c) above when you are just starting out, but eventually you will be looking at this more closely in order to achieve certain milestones. Lots of people click Simple Plastic Ruds for the skills and so these are often very cheap on auction since more of them are being made than can be used up for a given time period. So stay away from those as long as your bottom line is more important than the skills you get.

With experience you will eventually understand what the true cost to make these things actually is but as a general rule, the SR will tell you 2 things:

- the percent fails you get (95% SR means on average you will have 5 fails in 100 clicks)
- the long-term average TT returned (if you have an 80% SR BP, you will on average get 80% TT back, long-term, but short runs could be devastating)

I hope this helps.

Legends
 
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typically, if something has no sales in the last week, I ignore it and don't craft it, because the risk is too high that I will have failed auctions (the max auction duration at this time is 7 days).

Depends on the item, i made so much profit of items which even had a N/A in the yearly ^^ It's still possible that there's quite the demand but simply no supplier for a year.
and ofc, It's risk vs. reward.
 
Depends on the item, i made so much profit of items which even had a N/A in the yearly ^^ It's still possible that there's quite the demand but simply no supplier for a year.
and ofc, It's risk vs. reward.

Sure, but my advice here is aimed at a new crafter/player, and I think in most cases, you are speaking of items crafted using rare and expensive limited BPs or higher-level things.

I think in general, my whole narrative about volume over mu will hold true for newer crafters with few crafting skills and knowledge about the economy, and the game.
 
Sure, but my advice here is aimed at a new crafter/player, and I think in most cases, you are speaking of items crafted using rare and expensive limited BPs or higher-level things.

anything that has N/A in the yearly history, because, many people, like you, go with low quantity of sales or N/A for a month and then every crafter considers it a dead craft while the demand for it increases over time.
This can hold true for pretty much every craft.
The tricky part is ofc to figure out how quickly the demand builds up. And then just go with rotation, personally, i have about 100 different crafts on my list, most of them with rather low demand but due to rotation still getting quite constant sales on a daylie basis.

I think i may be giving too much details now :LOL:
 
anything that has N/A in the yearly history, because, many people, like you, go with low quantity of sales or N/A for a month and then every crafter considers it a dead craft while the demand for it increases over time.
This can hold true for pretty much every craft.
The tricky part is ofc to figure out how quickly the demand builds up. And then just go with rotation, personally, i have about 100 different crafts on my list, most of them with rather low demand but due to rotation still getting quite constant sales on a daylie basis.

I think i may be giving too much details now :LOL:

If you're not going to share the details, then why even mention it?

I have experimented with this for a lot of things and the conclusion I came to is just that, you need to do a lot of experimentation, which means a lot of failed auctions. So, for that reason, it would not be good advice to tell a new crafter that they should try to craft things that have no weekly/monthly sales and put them on auction and see if they sell. And this is why I chose to stay away from that and focus on those strategies that have a much better chance of working out for a new crafter.

I don't understand why you can't just give me a thumbs up for my post, it is very sound advice, it is the culmination of several years worth of crafting experience and I spent a couple of hours on it, making screenshots to provide visuals for better understanding etc...

Instead you insist on finding the one thing that you can disagree with and argue about, I don't know if it's an effort to try to put yourself above me and show that you somehow have more knowledge, or you just are unable to appreciate something valid and positive and absolutely have to find fault with it. Or maybe you don't like that I am actually helping others figure out ways to craft in a sustainable way, who knows.

It's ok for others to know more about crafting than you, and it's ok that other people have good advice to give about crafting, deal with it.
 
just to point out that there's a lot more to crafting than what you're stating.

Of course there is, I never said that this post was the be all and end all about Crafting in EU, now did I?

It's just a little bit of advice for someone just starting out crafting, that is all. And it's damn good advice. I wish I had a mentor or soc mate that could have taught me as much as that post has in it, when I first started.
 
As it goes for me, crafting components for sale, never did end well... i had a higher rate of failed auctions on commonly crafted stuff, like the ones you've listed, than on stuff with N/A. That's why the advice to the OP to find his own niche in the game.

Don't take it personal, the market is simply dynamic. And the more people start crafting something, the harder it will be to sell it + lower MU. It is what it is.
 
As it goes for me, crafting components for sale, never did end well... i had a higher rate of failed auctions on commonly crafted stuff, like the ones you've listed, than on stuff with N/A. That's why the advice to the OP to find his own niche in the game.

Don't take it personal, the market is simply dynamic.

Well, your experience will vary, ofc.

There are times you could do a 400 click run on Basic Sheet Metal only to realize once you tally your returns that you'll have to sell them at a loss. That's just the way the fluctuations in the game are designed and it sucks but it happens all the time. But hey, at least you are selling them and moving on. If you do things that have no volume, it might take a few weeks or months to offload, before you can get that ped back and move on to the next thing.

Axiom #1 still holds true here in this case, the only thing that has ever proven viable in the long-term is quantity crafting. And there is a reason I've worded it this way. You need to make a lot of something in order to get that mean avg result. Once you get that mean, you start to see the true cost for things and that's when you actually start to rise above and are able to make stuff for a profit anytime you like, because now you know. All of the best crafters in the game are at that point, they know, it's no longer a guessing game.

So the advice about volume has more to it than meets the eye at first. Volume will eventually result in experience and knowledge. That's another reason why it's so important.
 
Once you get that mean, you start to see the true cost for things and that's when you actually start to rise above and are able to make stuff for a profit anytime you like, because now you know.

I've always extrapolated what the true costs are going to be without having to actually run that super large amount of clicks. Worked out just fine. I very rarely had to play the guessing game.
 
I've always extrapolated what the true costs are going to be without having to actually run that super large amount of clicks. Worked out just fine. I very rarely had to play the guessing game.

Hmmm, well... there's a lot of contradictions here, where to start...

You just stated above that component crafting did not work out for you. If you were able to predict the outcome, why didn't it work out?

Some months ago, we had a chat in the game and you told me the same about Tech Gizmo crafting, you said it didn't end well for you, implying that you had big losses. Why not? I mean if you could predict the outcome or returns, why didn't it end well?

You also told me, last time we spoke in game, that you were flat broke. How could this be if you have ALWAYS been able to extrapolate the cost and had access to what things sold for via market history? It doesn't make sense.

If you are (always) have been able to make money with crafting, why are you flat broke?

:scratch2:
 
the monria daily is the easiest way to create money and gain skills for basically free. i "lose" about 2-3 ped per day on the inventory value but gain 0.75 ped engineering skill which is worth an easy 1000% above ESI value resulting in a minimum of 4 ped profit per day. its only 120 ped per months but earning an easy 120 ped a months is probably more than 95% of the playerbase does... as they are losing money in general.
 
Hmmm, well... there's a lot of contradictions here, where to start...

There's not, you're just mixing things which don't belong together.

Fyi: the stuff that ended badly, was stuff i predicted to end badly, but where you, Darth Revan and Evey kept insisting it would be good, to my regret, i let myself get talked into bad stuff by you folks a few times.
 
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back to original topic. Pricing and what you should make is dynamic but in general you want to make things that have a sell MU of at least 2x of the input MU, simply cause you get around 50% of the end product.
 
I would like to say something about this statement. I don't think this is true in all cases, repair skilling still has it's place imho.
Years ago I was trying to level up my Armor Engineer profession so that I could make Zombie (L) armor, which I believe has a 17.5 requirement. It seemed like I was never going to get there. The majority of armors and plates I could craft (I think I was level 14 at the time), were mostly useless and impossible to sell, especially since the changes that were made to armor with Loot 2.0.
Someone told me about repair skilling, I went and tried it and saw that my Armor Engineer skill was going up and the cost actually wasn't too bad. In the end I only did it for maybe a week and managed to raise my Armor Engineer skill to where I wanted. It was very helpful to me back then.
Now that we have the Tech Gizmos, I would not recommend to someone to go repair skilling like I did, but there are some crafting categories that have no gizmos, namely Tools, enhancers, furniture and Vehicles.
So, if you are trying to raise your crafting skills to a certain level and there are no Tech Gizmo BPs to help you do that, you might want to consider repair skilling on MS, it's still relevant.

Legends

The thing is, repair skilling HAD it's place, like you mentioned as well as others that you didn't. But for someone starting out today, it is not sound advice to give. No one should start out their crafting career in armor/tools/enhancers/furniture, that's for more experienced crafters so that you don't break your wallet (just like other areas).
If you want to raise crafting skills in specific fields (like ones that don't have tech gizmo's), then sure it could help, but for a new crafter, they should not focus on these fields.

Your advice on the volume of craft's is spot on for a new crafter. Sure there are some other things you will learn as you go, but starting out that is what should be taught. Go for the things that have a high volume, yes there will be more people selling those as well, but thats all part of the demand & supply.
But you will not have problems selling what you craft, unlike the ones that have slim to no sales volume.

I would add to this to regularly check the orders tab, sometimes you can find someone who is actually paying a decent price (Auktuma comes to mind) for components and not trying to just trying to rip you off.
I have made many profitable component runs with quick turn around on these. However do note that most of the orders are lower than what you can usually sell for so you have to have a little bit of luck with timing on this.
But it doesn't hurt to check while doing a crafting run as looking doesn't cost you anything when you are stuck at a terminal.

I have to disagree, if you can find a decent niche as new player, then crafting can be a lot better than hunting/mining. Also hunting/mining knowledge is mostly worthless when it comes to crafting. @OP Just stay away from what others/everyone else is crafting, find your niche.

It doesn't surprise me that you disagree, we don't see eye to eye on a lot of things with crafting. That comes down to experience and what we were taught though.
Sure if you have a large bankroll from the get go, anything is possible. If you have a small bankroll, then hunting/mining is better to start out in. Besides from learning how the game works, understanding what people need and are looking for as they progress is one of the key areas.
You will understand what weapons people actually use as they level up, whether they use amps or not and why, what mobs they usually hunt and what armors/plates they are after. What are they looking for when they browse shops. The list goes on.
Sure you can learn this the hard way, but it is much easier and you learn more by going through these steps as well. Plus you do gain some skills for crafting (weapons as an example).
You don't need to do this to level 100, but its experience you won't get elsewhere so going through some levels helps.

I think i may be giving too much details now :LOL:

Please just stop and don't give any more details, we don't need another person complaining about crafting on this forum.
@OP - if you go read through the forum for crafting threads, you will know what i am talking about here.

Already have BP comprehension unlocked, do you believe it is a waste of time if I already have that?

Yes it is a waste of time if you already have that unlocked. Start looking at what components to craft, look at MU's of ingredients, where you can get them from that might be cheaper than AH. Look at orders and what is listed and what you could make a listing for yourself, as its a good way to get ingredients for your own runs while you are logged off.
Look at what sells well in terms of weapons/amp's/armor's and other crafted gear and look at the components used in those. Perhaps you can supply those components to other crafters who make those weapons/amps themselves, etc. Many don't have time to craft the smaller components and will pay someone else for them.
Do your research, read lots, ask lots of questions to different people. Look through the trade channel in game to see what people are selling and buying. Take note of what increases/decreases around events. Look at the AH for other planets, perhaps you can find an area to capatilise on one of them.

Last piece of advice (before Alukat turns this thread into another one of his complaints), track your runs!!!!!
Track TT input and output and your MU for each, what did you buy and what did you source yourself, how many clicks did you do on that run, what your return is (record both TT return and with MU), what you sell things for, what BP's you gained, what skills you gained, what globals you got, what your success rate was, what your failure rate was.
Track everything you do if you are serious about crafting. It will open your eyes as to what really goes on. You will have your own data where you can see what worked and what didn't, your up's and down's....then learn from this.
Over time you will see things change as you progress, you will be able to experiment and see how that changes things. When a new change from MA happens, you will notice it.

Then hopefully you won't become another victim to the crafting game and you will be able to share your own advice on this forum.
 
This is really great stuff! I wish I had been given this information back we hen I was seriously active in EU! I would have saved myself an awful lot of useless and wasted clicks, doing nothing but wasting my hard earned PEDs for no value!

Kudos for this work, mate!
 
It doesn't surprise me that you disagree, we don't see eye to eye on a lot of things with crafting. That comes down to experience and what we were taught though.

i haven't been taught anything, i learned everything and became a successful crafter all by myself ;)

Sure if you have a large bankroll from the get go, anything is possible.

i started my crafting career with a bankroll of 100-150 PED ;)

Please just stop and don't give any more details, we don't need another person complaining about crafting on this forum.
@OP - if you go read through the forum for crafting threads, you will know what i am talking about here.
Still pointing old and outdated stuff i see. MA has adressed the TT-return crafting bug already.
However, i still think it's very silly game design to have high success rate volatility in a game with L BPs.
 
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