[loramin]

Originally Posted by DrKvothe [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I'm not sure you read past the opening line of my last post so I'll highlight some important parts.

I read your whole post, but did you read mind? It kind of addressed your entire post:

Originally Posted by Loramin

Only if you don't value your time. It takes both time and plat to level up tradeskills, then it takes (a lot) of time to sit in EC and sell them. When you compare that to how much much you could be making if you went out and killed stuff instead (which, of course, would also come with XP) it quickly becomes obvious that tradeskills make you less money than killing stuff.

Look I am NOT saying you can't make money on tradeskills. What I am saying is, you can make more money, and get some experience while you're at it, by killing stuff. And didn't we all come here to kill stuff, not sit in a tunnel and play EconomyQuest (well, all of us except GreenGrocer I mean)?

Originally Posted by DrKvothe [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I easily sold over 5kpp worth of shrink and IVU pots in KC for the couple of levels I was there. Only about 30% of that is profit, but that's more than enough to cover the costs of alchemy and make the time spent crafting worth the return on investment.

Ok, those potions (the 10-doses) sell for 200 plat. If you sold 5k worth that means you sold 250 IVU potions. 250 is a LOT of potions to sell.

When I sold potions in EC I often went for hours without a single sale, so I think an average sale rate of one per hour (250 hours of selling total) is reasonable. But let's be generous and assume you only sell at peak hours, so you can unload two 10-dose IVU potions an hour. We're still only talking about 1.5k plat for 125 hours of effort, and that doesn't even include the time to run home, buy the components, combine them, run back ....

1.5k plat for 125 hours is not a good way to earn money. By comparison you could earn that same amount of plat in 2-3 hours on Seafury island, or in maybe 5 hours of porting people.

Originally Posted by DrKvothe [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

If I'd started earlier, I could have made similar profits in CoM. I've sold quite a few of these pots in HS as well. All of this was done while leveling. It's quite easy to get mats quickly to you from anywhere if you have a druid alt, or to tunnel with a lvl 9 troll sham alt.

Really, you would have brought 250 non-stackable items to CoM or HS to sell? Or you would have brought the (six-slot only) medicine bag and 250 stacks of components (well, more really since you're guaranteed at least a 5% failure rate)? Because it is not "easy to get mats" in either zone.

My point is that the places you want to XP are far from the places where you can buy components, and you can only carry so many components/potions around (especially if you want to be able to loot the monsters you kill). This means that any potion seller is going to have to periodically run to a Shaman city (and then back) from wherever they are XPing ... instead of just staying there and killing.

And even if we're talking about sitting in EC, it still takes time to run to Oggok, buy materials, and run back. Longer still if you have to log out/in several times to switch to an alt and to transfer the materials from the alt back to your main.

Originally Posted by DrKvothe [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

You don't have to sit in the EC tunnel to sell your stuff.

Absolutely true, but I've tried selling outside EC too: you just do not sell that many potions that often. Is it a good idea for an enterprising Shaman to carry a few 10-doses of popular potions around with them? Sure! But is doing that going to make a lot of plat? No.

And even if you're not in EC sales still take time: you still have to stop what you're doing, go find the buyer, do the exchange, then run back to wherever you were before you got distracted by the sale.

Originally Posted by DrKvothe [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

You will be spending time in EC anyways!

There's spending a couple hours in the tunnel to buy that JBB (or whatever) you've been saving for, and then there's spending ... well however long it takes you to sell 250 IVU potions. We're talking a handful of hours vs. a hundred plus hours. Most players will not be spending hundreds of hours in the tunnel.

Originally Posted by DrKvothe [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

If it's going to take me 2 months of leveling to save 40k for a JBB, and alchemy can make back any money spent on it without even bothering with EC in just a week or two, then why not?

How about because if you spent that time just leveling you'd earn more plat than you would have doing alchemy AND you get XP doing it?

Originally Posted by DrKvothe [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I didn't bother with alchemy until far too late thanks to advice like this from the forums, and I regret it.

You may have noticed I hedged my claim at the end:

Originally Posted by Loramin

unless you just like hanging out in the tunnel ...

If you're going to be a tunnel quester anyway then yes you can make (some) money on tradeskills. It'd be silly of me to deny that. But unless you're already spending a ton of time in EC (and I'd argue most players don't) then tradeskills just aren't that profitable. They can make money, but so can adventuring.

Plus, if you are a true TunnelQuester you should be spending your time on arbitrage not on tradeskills. In a single "buy low sell high" transaction you can make easily make 100x or even 1,000x the plat you'd make on even the most profitable tradeskill transaction.

So look, I <3 tradeskills. I have my Alchemy skill up pretty high, and I have every other tradeskill except Tailoring at Shawl levels or higher. And I'll freely admit you can make some money on tradeskills.

All I'm saying is that "making some money" isn't enough to honestly call tradeskills profitable. To say that you'd have to show that you can make significantly more money crafting and selling stuff than you could killing monsters and selling their stuff.