The AH is flooded by ridiculous cheap items apparently from CE rich players hunting for UVs.
That makes the crafting business a thing of the past, even 3 and 4 star items are selling bellow the costs.
I'm guessing there's no interest in fixing this, since the UV hunters/CE buyers are supporting the game costs.
But in case there's an interest in a solution, maybe limit the number of duplicate equips one can hold?
Odds are you aren't computing your costs in terms of ME. Mist Energy, unlike Crystal Energy, doesn't have a price in crowns. The price is in "time". All crafting done below 3* can be done without crystal energy, so you can expect a lot of sales to occur below the cost in pure crowns.
A 2* item has a cost of 400cr+mats+(2500cr/~12hours). This cost is at most 3.5k and at least 500cr+12hr. That means 2* items may eventually be sold for as little as 1kcr each. When that happens, complain that we need material sinks to increase material costs.
@Ouros "ME crafting" is good if you're making your own 2* item, once in a while... but for crafting to be a business you need to craft often and every day... and that 100 ME you used at the first crafting will be missed when you go make your run... so you'll save 100 CE for crafting but will spend the same CE right next when you actually play the game... it's a myth that falls apart when you look closer...
Even if you created an account only for crafting, your output would me 2 two star items a day, or 1/2 three star item a day... and then logout cause if you think ME is impacting your finances then you must not use CE to make runs...
Personally I have no interest in crafting 2*, all my good profit came from 3* when the market was fresh... these days I've seen Chroma pieces go as low as 15k:
- 10 Green Shards (~1000cr)
- 3 Beast Scales (~900cr)
- 2 Critter Carapaces (~160cr)
- 1 Drake Scale (~550cr)
- Alchemy (~11000cr)
total 13.610 cr
15.000cr - 10%(AH) = 13.500cr (loss)
17.000cr - 10%(AH) = 15.300cr (~1.7k)
Of course you can use your own mats but I'm talking crafting as a business, were we need more mats than we can get in runs.
Also note I used Chroma because it has a good demand and you don't need a previous item, which usually shoots the costs through the roof. I have a Google Docs spreadsheet with most of the craftable items and all kinds of costs and 3 possible profit scenarios, and the only marginally profitable are 3* items with no special item required. The others aren't even in the map anymore. Way bellow profitable if you want to make crafting a business and still play the game the same account.
Anyways I already moved on from crafting as robust way of making profit. So this post ended up more like a rant, which I apologize. I'm playing more other parts of the game now, having fun too. :)
Community driven economy, Deal with It.