If all you're trying to do is turn a profit: Don't craft. You need Medium or better UV's to make a profit. Low UV's are mostly junk and will usually only help to break even, not profit.

You have to get really lucky to profit from crafting usually. You can craft 20 of an item, and get no UV. So generally it's not worth mass crafting, unless you either wont log on that day and don't have time to do dungeons, or you're looking for a specific UV, and you're having a hard time finding it. I personally had some good luck crafting. I couldn't play for about a week. So I crafted about 8 Wolver Coats. Ended up with 1 High Shadow, 1 High Poison, 2 Low UV's, and the rest were plain. But I did make quite a large profit. 3k CE for the Shadow, and 25k CR for the Poison (Just dumped it on the AH for a low price).

So really, if you like to gamble, then crafting is a good way to get that addiction running. On the other hand, it's more "efficient" I suppose, to run dungeons. Simply because you're guaranteed profit, as well as materials you can use. Also, my guess is you made Caliburs, because they're the most commonly used #2 sword in the game. So it's easy to get rid of them, it's a sure thing to sell these. and if you happen to get an amazing UV on them, then they'll sell for far more than other swords with the same UV. Don't make Caliburs. Not unless, you're really hoping to make it big, they sell quite cheap, because everybody and their mother is mass producing them for UV's.

i only craft if i dont feel like playing that night. then i just spend my daily ME and make a profit off that. but its never worth it to spend CE anymore

First, Schwa, let me just say how much I enjoyed your rant. Remember, Spiral Knights is giving you the equivalent of 6,000 crowns per day in energy. You can easily make more than this in crowns and value of materials while playing, or at least, you soon will be as you get better at the game with better gear. or you can use it to craft, significantly reducing the cost of your item. I craft quite a bit. I know exactly how much it costs and never sell at a loss. I craft both the 2* and 3* version. This gives me twice as much chance for a UV. Also, the 3* market is much less competitive and has a higher profit margin. If someone has flooded the market with below cost gear, i simply don't put mine up for sale. Check to see the lowest priced item and sell just under it, never more than 2 at a time. You can also make a lot of money at Basil 23 once you are able to get there regularly. I've made up to 100,000 crowns in profit off the recipes I bought in one visit, which only cost 40 ce to get there. Be patient. Enjoy it as a game. You'll have all the best gear and more money than you'll ever need in just a few months.

Larkhill the economy makes perfect sense. It's supply and demand. People make a lot of 2* gear, in order to get rare UV's which provide them with the stats they need in end-game content. Without people to make these UV's then they don't exist. So in other words, there are a lot of people mass producing Caliburs in order to get ASI and CTR Very High. So many Calibur are being crafted, that they're easily obtainable, and sell for extremely cheap. But if nobody is crafting Caliburs, then the price is higher, and they're worth making. The problem with this however, is that means there are no rare UV's coming into the game. So in order to make crafting worthwhile, people would have to stop crafting.

The same goes for any game really. Even in WoW, the crafting materials are almost always more expensive than the crafted item. Unless it's a rare recipe, that very few people have. For example, a glyph that just came out this patch, was selling for ridiculous prices (1k+), because nobody had the formula yet. And the only items worth more than the mats, are in very high demand. And even then, it's not much more. A gem can sell for 100g, and the cut gem, only sells for 105g.

Basically, as long as there is a demand for Rare UV's there will be a lot of 2* gear in the market. Just be thankful, that new players can get into 2* without having to pay outrageous prices.

the economy here makes no sense to me at all. i mean i understand it as its not really that complicated, but from a business sense, its horrible. the problem with is lies squarely in the fact that energy is SO EXPENSIVE. selling the energy is better than playing the actual game until you get good enough to do solo t1 runs or tier 2 with a party. u can completely skip the first part of being a noob by selling your energy and using the crowns for items.

think about it. when u start, u get the mist tank, the 100 energy and a few thousand from the initial runs u do. thats 5700 x 2 + 1500 = 12900. thats enough to completely deck yourself out in 2 star gear, solo tier 1 the next day and go right into tier 2. thats INSANE. its literally more profitble to not play the game than it is to play it, unless you do a specific run like jelly king or u need the mats.

THATS what i mean by a crazy economy. until u can do jelly king, the energy market is the best use of your energy in most situations. sure there are some times where u can get a good run in with arena's and such but thats rare and takes quite a bit of luck to get them. i literally run t1 simply for the practice in dodging attacks and getting to know the weapons. right now my gear isnt good enough to do jelly king so i make far less money running dungeons that i would simply selling my energy for the 6k and going back to tf2 or league of legends.

I hate myself. Really, I do.

Man, all this drama over losing 1.2k Crowns?

Somebody needs to start drinking decaf.

>What am I doing wrong?
You forgot to check cost/sale price before doing anything.
You are like a man building a house before having a budget.

2* items are farmed en masse for High or better UV's, and are impossible to make a profit from.

If you want to make a small profit from crafting, you need to make 3* items- a wide range, if possible.

For what it is worth, the current situation has not always been the case. When the AH first opened, I could regularly sell items at a profit even when figuring mist energy being worth what crystal energy cost. It wasn't a huge profit, but I was able to effectively convert the 100ME on my laptop into about 105CE-120CE every day. When steam players came, the profits were huge for the first week or two, but then started to drop.

The explanations others have given about UV farming and discounting ME as being worth almost nothing are correct. The situation as it is now is what should be expected, it is the earlier periods that were abnormal. It was abnormal because the number of people who knew enough to craft was dramatically smaller than the number of new players wanting a quick start. Do not expect the profit from selling to improve.

Note that ME *should* be worth almost nothing, since it is really the crowns/hour that is important. It takes a lot of time to convert 100ME into crowns via running in the clockworks, it takes only a few minutes to log in, craft something (or buy a weapon slot upgrade), list it on the AH and log out. The selling price of haze bombs shouldn't, logically, drop below 300cr since that is what you can sell it to vendors for. With the current price of mats, you can convert your daily 100ME into about 40CE, even if you get zero UVs. I expect that eventually, OOO will close that loophole.

From a strictly thematic point of view, we are knights that craft and upgrade our own gear. (Perhaps making gear for team and guild members...) We are combat specialists, expert enough that we have an arsenal.

That aside, I hope that it is always more consistently profitable to play the game instead of crafting. It would be lame to feel like running levels was less efficient than making items. Better that crafting is done on days that you don't have time to play. Of course, it is awesome feeling to get that lucky UV.

Others have described crafting as a gamble and they are absolutely right.

It's not about what you can get for the items you made. You made junk and have to sell it as such. Now, tomorrow you can craft one and get a desirable UV and make 50k on it. That would put you at a net profit.

Essentially, you're mining for diamonds.

You can go a while and find NOTHING. Then one day you hit a pocket and bam! You're rich! Then you spend all your cash trying to find more and just when you're almost out, BAM! More diamonds! Then again, maybe you just go broke, or, maybe you get lucky and hit the jackpot time and time again.

The problem is, it's all about luck. Thus, it's not a fool proof way to make money. But it does give you something to do with unneeded CE or ME.

You need to find the right items, but you can routinely sell a non-UV 2* item for 5K. Of course this varies and sometimes it goes for 3 - 4K, but even then; subtract the crafting cost of 400, the auction house fee and the opportunity cost of not selling the mats and there's still a lot of profit there. And that doesn't even take into account the good UVs as RoTide mentioned.

The key is to only craft with ME. Use an alt and make 2 items/day and/or only craft on the days you're too busy to play with your ME.

And of course you can't trade ME. Let's not start ridiculous rumors.

I bet you feel much better now that you got this off your chest by posting it for all the world to see. Right?

P.S. im not being ironic

Wait.. you used CE for crafting 2*?
Well, there lies your problem.

Anyone want to write a "multi-accounts FAQ" for people such as the OP? I think such information could be of tremendous benefit to the playing public. But I'm afraid to be the one who writes that post...

Way to fall for the noob trap, OP.

Selling stuff on the AH... heh.