Recipes or Crafted?

Hey guys,

I'm starting to IO my DM/SR brute a little (only lvl 29) and I'm wondering.
Should I buy the recipes or the crafted IO's? I don't have much money right now and I'm going to wait on buying the big stuff till later but I'm wondering what everyone else does.

Thanks,

Well,

for the most part recipes tend to be the cheaper alternative, since there are more of them on the market. (Most players seem to sell just the recipes they find, without ever bothering to create enhancements out of them.)

So I recommend trying to get the recipe first, especially if you're not going for full sets and thus have some leeway in your choices of IOs.

Think of it this way: If someone buys a recipe and all the necessary salvage, then spends some more inf in order to create the enhancement, and then sells that enhancement again (losing 10% sales fee), he or she will certainly not do this for free (or for long). You will be paying this extra cost for the seller if you are bidding on completed IOs.

However, if you are looking for one of the more expensive enhancements and are willing to wait a couple of weeks or months for it, you might be lucky bidding on a finished IO. When somebody does a respec, they often take out the most valuable IOs they no longer need and put them up for sale. It is possible to get one of those for much less than the average cost of the recipe - if you are willing to wait, that is.

One final note: If you want to use not only common and uncommon but also rare recipes, you will find that the prices for some rare salvage can fluctuate wildly. If I were you, I wouldn't sell my rare salvage drops immediately. You might have to buy them back at a higher price later...

Good luck!

10

99.99% of the time it is always better to craft than to buy it ready made.

This holds true for recipes that you are rewarded from mission completion as well.

Just be sure when crafting for selling to make sure that you can make a profit. For example if Clayborn's Awesome Attack ACC/DAM sells for roughly 5 million inf then it may be worthing crafting and listing.

But if it takes rare salavage that costs 3.5 million that makes dicier especially when you figure in Crafting cost and listing fees.

Also if it last sold 3 months ago there may not be much demand so it might take a while to make your money back.

If all the above were true I would either list the recipe on Wents or Vendor it.

Billions are made by marketers from people who just buy crafted IOs. I've made a few. I always buy crafted unless it's something like LotG or KC which seem to stay really close.

The biggest problem you'll have at level 29 and through the 30s is there are no recipies out there. Even though you could pick it up for 500k, people just delete them or sell them to the NPCs because they see they don't sell. But they can't sell, because there are none on the market.

I'll "blanket bid" across a range for a recipe. It might take a week to get a set that I want, maybe more. Rarely you'll end up buying more than one, and you can sell it within a day, usually. Or, if it's really worth nothing, like many of the Confuse, etc, sets, just chuck it to the NPCs [further compounding the midlevel crisis problem.]

But, yeah, craft your own.

Generally, recipes will be cheaper for you. Compare the recipe price, going rates for salvage, and crafting cost against the going rates for the crafted enhancement. Go whichever direction is cheaper.

When the recipe route is cheaper, get two. Make one for yourself, and post the other one for sale as a crafted enhancement. Post it at a price that would cover your recipe purchase, the price you paid for the salvage and the crafting fee from the crafting table, plus maybe 10-20%. You'll likely make a decent profit when it sells. When your second one sells, you'll have the funds to move on to the next IO you want. Rinse, repeat. Be patient. Keep your eyes open for bargains. Don't get greedy.

When you're done, patience in this process will have IO'd you at a fair price, -and- left you with a tidy sum.

Ok. Thanks everyone.

Yeah, the pre-crafted IOs are cheaper than the recipes juuuuust often enough that I usually bother to check both when buying anything significant.

also since you are lvl29 place some lowball orders for lvl35 IOs or recipies and odds are you will have several waiting for you when you can use them.

Also note that many people sell the common IO recipes on the market for MORE than the recipes cost at the crafting table. There's no sense paying 50,000 inf for a recipe at the Auction House when you can just buy it at the crafting table for 35,000.

For the more commonly needed IOs, like Acc, Dam, Defense, EndRdx, EndMod, Heal and Rech, it is almost always cheaper to craft. Sometimes the less common IOs, like Confuse, Fear, Knockback, ToHitDebuff, etc., will sell for cheaper than the recipes because someone is trying to get crafting badges, so they may put them on the market for cheap. Or someone may have done a respec and dumped a bunch on the market.

I generally look at the crafted to see if there are a bunch for sale and no bids. Then I'll put in a low-ball bid just to see if I get lucky. If not, no harm in trying. Remember that "patience pays" most of the time. If you can't get your price now, just let it sit and your bid may come through later.

Patience totally pays. i just started a new character on a new server, so I didn't have the supergroup storage from which to pillage loot. I also decided against twinking her out with gifts from my other characters.

In the course of getting to level 10, she collected a few Luck Charms, Spiritual Essences, and other valuable salvage. Rather than save them until 12 and use them to craft, she sold them, which netted about 200,000 inf. She then put bids on level 15 IOs (Accuracy, Damage, Recharge, EndRdx, Heal, Defense... the biggies), all of them at 2,222 or 5,555 inf. Most of them were purchased within hours. All of them filled overnight. At level 12 she was able to fully slot IOs and have all planned IOs to take her to 17. In a couple of levels she'll bid on her level 20 IOs.

After that it will be mostly recipes and crafting herself. Although I do expect her to be rather flush with cash after she turns in her merits and tickets at level 20.

EDIT: Oh, bear in mind that all of my experience with this is blueside. I play redside very rarely.