Notes of a Field Crafter

My favorite thing about this game are the variety of subcultures on display. There's "the game' of course, running around beating stuff up and collecting expees, but underlying the 'progress quest' are groups of players enthusiastically forging their own communities.

Marketeers, badgers, base builders, RPers, PvPers, etc.

We all have ideas and preconceptions about this or that subculture (which are often dangerously misguided, as regularly displayed in this very forum), but the only way to see what they're really about is walking a mile in their shoes.

My recent decision to acquire the Field Crafter accolade has, unsurprisingly, given me a new perspective on the market. My previous experience with generic IOs was limited to getting a badge that was too thematic to pass up (Lord of War for my fire/axe tank Barbarian Nerd, for example) and mass producing a specific IO back during the heyday of <redacted> Club.

Sure the money's good, but compared to the earnings available from messing around with set IOs it's pocket change so I never bothered with it much.

Which isn't to say it's not fun, it's just less efficient than other options (and I am temperamentally drawn to efficiency).

Anyway, as of today I've finished the level 20-25 memorizations and about half of the 30-35 ones. I'm already enjoying the extra salvage slots- logging in my other lowbie 88'ers (especially Heroic Flipper) is annoying after enjoying the expanded storage of Crafticus.

The relatively fast pace of commons compared to set IOs throws some market truths into sharp relief.

I'm making a lot of junk so I'm pricing low to keep things moving (obvious junk I just craft and delete, some slower moving stuff I stick in base storage temporarily, but for the most part I craft, list and sell). Last night I listed 7 level 30 Resist Damages for ~50k and they all sold for 400k each. Below a certain price, most players just don't care what they pay.

I surmise flippers at work in a few niches from abnormally large (and persistent) #'s of bids. I threw up a couple of underpriced IOs to find their price point was and have made substantial profits listing a few inf over it.

Having a recipe memories gives you flexibility in terms of leaping on sudden demand spikes. With set IOs things are fairly stable and predictable, unless another player tries to horn in on your niche. With generics, suddenly someone is throwing bales of money at the screen and they want 10 or 20 of something instead of one or two. If the salvage is cheap enough you can grab a few stacks fast, hit the base and be back in time to keep riding the wave, or visit storage if it's something you're keeping on ice.

I enjoy it in the way I enjoyed flipping uncommons back when MA was fresh and new and prices were flying all over the place- it isn't big money, but there's a certain kick to getting several hundred K for something you invested a few thousand at most into.

Underlining the market dictum patience is a virtue, I was able to get all of my 20-25 recipes for around 100 inf each by bidding a day ahead. The lone exception was Endmod, which I just bought from the table. Some salvage I paid 'retail' for, but most of it was available at steep discounts overnight. Looking at a range of salvage I don't usually pay attention to revealed many opportunities for profit, although not on the scale to which I've grown accustomed. But there are a LOT of flippable niches in the cheapo salvage market, probably because it's not worth a confirmed marketeer's time to work them.

Moving up to 30-35, the going is a little slower, I'm assuming because the recipes are more worthwhile to vendor. I've been able to get most of my stock for a few K, which is a worthwhile discount over the table price but is taking longer. It's hard to ignore the little voice in my head saying the heck with this, just chuck a few bales of 100's on the fire and finish this!, but the goal isn't just to get Field Crafter, its to get it while maximizing earnings (which I will then set on fire and convert to prestige =P).

I'll update this as I move through the process- i'm sure the higher level badges will have their own lessons to teach.

I saw Crafticus today at the WW. Again nice costume. And I never thought, I should have offered you my invention table. Keep up the good work

Nice meeting you!
I'm still fiddling with his look a bit, but I'm happy with the way it's shaping up.
Strangely I'm even having fun playing him- I made a tank because I usually hate playing them, so I'd be less tempted to go wandering away from the market. But he keeps getting team invites when I have a little spare time. He's pretty fun on a big team, especially the one where we had two FF defenders. =D

Here's an example of people just not caring what they pay.
All of these were listed at a bit over 50k.

So, yeah. A lot of people have a lot of inf. =P

yup. every time I roll a new character, I send some seed money over.

But what I have found is that by just crafting the recipe drops at low levels, and even buying the missing salvage for it, I come up ahead, even if I splurge on the most expensive TO's, DO's or SO's! Ahead by like 5 million by level 22 after spluging on SO's. Without doing any marketeering. So I hold off on using the IO's until level 30 or so. I have noticed that the supply of low level Acc IO's and other high movers have gone up. Someone's eager to supply. And there really are a lot of buyers paying 500k sometimes for level 15 IO's!

It seems I just need enough seed money to afford the level 5 and 10 TO's.

Okay a couple of tidbits to add to the observational pile.

First, having a ton of recipes memorized makes for a fun mini-game if you get a chance to go out and level a little. I'm enjoying hitting the base before I log, pulling up the crafting table and seeing what I can create from the salvage that dropped while I was playing.

I usually get a couple of salable IOs out of it, which go for quite a bit more than the raw salvage would have. Three cheers for free money!


Second, that 'useful salvage' warning that is only mildly irritating on my other characters is PROFOUNDLY ANNOYING on Crafticus, since pretty much any drop he gets is usable for SOMEthing he's memorized. Grrrrrrr.

I've gotten Field Crafter on two toons, but both of them use the benefits for the crafting table more than anything else. Which saves, um, thirty seconds from going to base and crafting. But those are THE BEST DAMN THIRTY SECONDS EVER!

If you could sell crafted IOs in blocks of 10, then I'd probably look to craft more common IOs for a living. But mostly the lack of slots prohibit it.

I figure that if any of my characters need common IOs, I can almost always bid garbage prices on crafted IOs and end up with a block of 10 within a day or two. People always dump them. Then I slot what I need and offer the rest at whatever price I bought them for and I usually sell them for about 10x more.

I think you can make a living out of crafting common IOs, but it feels a little like digging ditches to me.

I'm looking forward to getting back to the 88s tomorrow (my graphics chip on my motherboard on my laptop is fried, so my big boy computers are getting shipped up tomorrow!)

Two things about the 30 seconds going to base and back:

1) Mistakes = another 30 seconds per mistake, or more. I hate it when I didn't buy enough, like... improvised cybernetics.
2) It allows me to keep a clearer view of what I paid vs. what I charge. "Get all the salvage, pull down the bought for 3 million, craft, put up the crafted for 15.1 million" vs having to keep all those prices in your head for six different things.
3) If I have spare time on the crafting table, sometimes I'll stand there and buy/craft/sell until the 5 min are up.

Then again, I'm an egg-stealing mammal, so I have six different deals going.

before GR my badge toon would take a weeks worth of based stored salvage and craft up 100 or so IOs and then all the alts would grab 10 and list through the week. I made a little extra inf and cleared out the 8 white salvage storage bins. Since GR my badge toon has lost access to the base ( red side day job badging) and it seems that generic IOs are moving at a very slow pace tho I think things have sped up a lot in the last week or so.

It's very uneven, generic IO's. Like there were about four days last week where level 40 Defense Buffs [or something] were going for a million each. I only sold about six at that price, but it felt GREAT. Like I was getting away with some big secret.

I saw this thread a few days after it was first posted & figured it was time I finally got the field crafter on one of my toons. I wish that I had paid a little more attention & documented it all but I am pretty lazy when it comes to that. I did eventually end up with about 150 mil profit some how along with about another 100 off of rares that I emailed from all my alts to get through the 1000 invention badge. in the end I had about 75 inventions to go to reach the 1000, I ended up finding the cheapest salvage invention I could find & just crafted & deleted. after getting the table I summoned it, basked in it's glory & now I don't want to craft another invention for at least a few weeks.

Took a while off the quest, but I'll be back chasing those 35-40 badges tonight.

I'd also like to give Chaos a shout-out for clearing three stubborn Jump IOs off my inventory. They were buggin' me!

Recently I've had a lot more interest in crafting since I'm rejiggering and respecing a number of sub-50 characters. The 3-5mm per log-in profit adds up over time, and I cannot complain about that. Recent salvage price spikes make things harder, but leaving buy orders when I log out always seems to work pretty well.

It's not my favorite way to make inf, but hey, the world needs ditch diggers too!