Economics for a beginning crafter

[kiri]

I thought this might be helpful to other newbies who are considering crafting.

Background: This was my second time crafting anything, but my first time crafting a texturizer blueprint. I did not think to do this for my first attempt, which was basic shirts. Anyway, while I started out with some tailoring skill, it was very minimal, so it was almost like I started with nothing.

Blueprint: Large striped cotton fabric texture (purchased from the technician).

blueprint requirements: 1x wool cloth, 1x inferior cloth extractor = 1 attempt

In order to make this scientific, I chose to do a controlled sample size of exactly 500 attempts. Therefore, I began with 500 wool cloths and 500 inferior cloth extractors.

500 wool cloths are worth 300 PED at TT value.
Because the process returned 163 inferior cloth extractors during partial successes, I actually only used 337 inferior cloth extractors. Those 337 cloth extractors are worth 3.37 PED at TT value.

Total expenditure: 303.37 PED (or $30.33 truncated) at TT value.

My result: I received:
5684 tailor remnants worth 56.85 PED at TT value.
3767 metal residue worth 37.67 at TT value.
5867 large striped cotton fabric textures worth 117.34 PED at TT value.
ONE BLUEPRINT (priceless, as far as I'm concerned....)


Total gains (excluding blueprint) - 211.86 PED (or $21.18 truncated) at TT value.

(also received return of 163 inferior cloth extractors, as mentioned above, but these are not counted as gains because I subtracted them from costs instead)

Total economic loss - 91.51 PED (or $9.15) at TT value.

Because TT value is not market value, the actual final loss might be different. Both the expense of purchasing materials (or however you calculate the expense of hunting them yourself) and the final selling price if you should choose to sell all the materials gained at market value will be higher, and probably not in direct proportion.

Also, because the process is random, the exact loot will vary for the next newbie who does this.

Even so, it should give you an idea of what it costs to start a crafting career.


Of course, in addition to the goods, I also gained QR on my blueprint and skills on my avatar, which means that my next attempt should give me better results, eventually closing the gap between the TT value of expenses and the TT value of the result.... in theory.

I hope this information helps somebody else somewhere

[Ionar]

Sounds about right. With max COS on a blueprint you will get back about 80-90% of the TT-value you put in. I would guess the same rate goes for all profesions when only TT-value is considered and the equipment you use is maxed.

It's all about markup after that. Carfully study the market price of the input material and the ouitput products to find something that will yield minimum losses.

GL on your crafting!