test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Options
What's the best crafting EC maker?
System
Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
After all the crafting changes, I'm wondering what the most profitable (if any) crafting skills there are in the game now? I've heard that there aren't as many high level purples to craft now. Is that true? Is it just better to get purple drops from STFs, etc. than bother crafting?
Post edited by Unknown User on
0
Comments
I don't keep up with exchange prices too closely, but I think you'd get a better EC return by just buying unreplicatable materials with your dilithium and selling them on the exchange.
Everybody seems to want the blue balls of death. Which is why it's often an instant sell on the Exchange if one undercut by oh I dunno... 10k EC maybe?(depending on the current asking price)
I concur with the person with the Ferengi inside of him
Simply because its the most used torps in the game at various ranks.
As far as consoles etc... unless its a unique piece of console like the Antiproton Mag Regulator, or some engineering armor and sci shield consoles, they're pretty much worthless - same applies for engines, shields, and deflectors.
Simply because:
A) The best sets are offered near the end of the game, and uncommon and rare Engines, shields, and deflectors drop like flies throughout the game.
Basically Uncommon are more common and Rare are somewhat common - hope I'm not confusing you
C) The drop rate on many items in this game is severely broken, where rares are really not that rare at all - and many of the items of rare quality can be obtained via missions.
(Whatever happened to the rare drops being better than what is offered from the mission rewards?)
Craft up XI Rare Consoles, the popular ones like TACT Anti-proton Mags, SCI 35% Shields etc...
While a lot of players have at the very least 1 character that can craft anything, they also have alts and prob not enough materials to feed all those alt's or the time to swap back and forth to switch characters.
So look at the Exchange for XI Rare Consoles that have obscene prices, craft up the same ones and undercut the prices a little and yours will sell first.
XI Rare consoles are 7,950 Dilith total without the crafting discount event, 5,000'ish with the discount. So they are the cheapest and easiest sellers. Yes, people can buy them for 11k Dilith, but some don't want to spend the Dilith or are waiting on a cooldown to refine more. Plus players will spend EC a lot faster then they will Dilith.
Take advantage of those FED "traditionalist" players too. They only want to use Phaser, Photons or Quantums. While weapons are more expensive to craft, you can still make the XI consoles for them.
Plus, you got those goofy players who buy the common and uncommon materials with dilith to put on the exchange to make EC, then spend that EC on a crafted item LOL...thank god for those guys..
Thus far I have only been able to get them through crafting them myself or as loot drops.
I actually did some calculations just a couple days ago during the Time to Craft event. I have a bank packed to the rafters with anomalies, so I disregarded their cost, and I assumed you only craft when it's Time to Craft.
On that basis I crafted a few of each category. The antiproton weapons and console sold more or less immediately; the Aegis parts have not yet all sold. So on that basis, I'd say watch prices for Antiproton beams, dhc's and consoles, and based on the input from this thread I'm going to start eyeballing quants also.
Use the exchange. It seems Mk X Purple ones (same stats as blue Mk XI) go for like 200-250k. IMHO that's a pittance compared to spending dilithium and anomalies to craft them.
Mk XI blues probably go for similar, or usually even less cause of the "purple premium".
Checked the exchange. XI Weapons need 15230 Dil to craft. Crafted antiproton XI weapons (beam and DHC) sell for ~1.300.000 on the exchange. That is 85 EC/DIL. AEGIS stuff sells ~1.500.000 that is 98 EC/DIL.
And I did not add the value of the samples to the equation.
Keep in mind that you can sell the unreplicable materials on the exchange. The uncommon goes for around 100.000 EC/piece. So if you buy uncommon unreplicables and sell them on the exchange without any crafting you get 100 EC/DIL. Common unreplicables go around 2500 EC/Piece. That is 250 EC/DIL.
Bottom line is: the raw ingredients worth 100k-300k EC more than the complete product... So much for crafting.
You will have to buy them in the C-Store from now on is the way I think its going to go.
Disruptors are Klingon only, Phasers are Fed only.
Because these are Klingon only. EDIT: Dammit, oh, someone already posted this
But why can't we craft split-beam rifles?
It's always been like that in my experience. Crafting was never profitable even before the changes. You were actually better off buying most items on the exchange because they sold for less than the components going in. Even if you were to farm the anomalies, you could simply sell the anomalies for more than the completed items.
It's possible that a few things like the Aegis set actually sold for more than it cost to make, but I'm not even sure about that. With the current dilithium added to the cost of crafting, I think it's a waste of effort to try to sell the stuff on the exchange. You'd be better off taking dilithium and converting to c-points to buy keys to sell.
But if you are willing to play hard at it you can get "rich" in a relatively short time.
Also the items that sell for the most change sometimes. Lots of people sell phaser consoles and the prices of those drop to maybe half that of antiproton consoles, yet since more people use phasers since before the skill revamp they were the best in terms of value per skill point, more people buy them.
Also, if you are willing to spend real life money, you can buy cpoints, sell them on the exchange for dilithium, and use that for your crafting to keep up a high number of items. You can sell up to 40 items per character at a time on the exchange, and mail the excess items to your other characters so they can each put 40 items up. Selling lots of different items makes sure you're not competing with yourself when you're selling lots of stuff.
In my experience, crafting before the great dilithium nerf was highly profitable. If you kept current with exchange trends, you could identify areas where the supply was a little low, and as long as you looked for deals on materials (people often put stacks of 10 or more going for the same price as singles) to supplement your own supply gained via missions and exploration, you could easily make huge amounts of EC. You just mainly had to know what to craft.
Now it's not even worth the bother. The only thing I've crafted since S5 was a couple of nanoenergy capacitors, after which I promptly stopped once I saw that you could buy them direct from the exchange for much less than the cost of crafting materials.
If you own the anomalies already it's still profitable to use them. I had spent most of my credits helping friends out so when the Galor hit the exchange I went back to crafting. I had already spent most of my dilithium too buying cpoints so I bought most of my unrep mats. Within 2.5 days I had enough ec to buy a Galor on the exchange.
I still felt a little dirty buying the ship that way but at least I never paid for a key or participated in the grab bag for one.