Usefulness of Artisans?

I rarely use the artisan. In fact, I've only started doing it recently, and only to convert wood into parchment. However, tonight, I had this novel idea of turning iron and charcoal into steel. After all, I have over 1000 iron ingots, no one wants to buy those, and steel is always selling, so..

So I collect some charcoal, get my iron, and head out--

And it costs:

10 iron ingots (valued at 160 - vendor price)
1 charcoal (value at 260 - vendor price)
200 gold

In other news, I can buy a steel ingot from Benato in DF for 170 gold.

:sighs:

Does anyone else think artisans should receive an "AI boost" and recognize price fluxuations on material vendors? Anet makes a system of salvage, enhances it with the ability to upgrade low-grade salvage to high-grade--but fails to take into account it costs more to MAKE IT than to simply buy it?

I'd love to be able to take advantage of the artisan feature in Guild Wars more often, especially now that I'm tinkering more with salvaging. What use, however, are they when.. well.. when it's not worth it?

Why bother?

Steel ingots can be found 100 gold cheap, in forge by real people sellers.

I know that.

I feel like, in some way, you've tried to insult my intelligence.

In any case.

If someone felt like saving up their own salvage to make their own components, it's a waste of time because it costs more to make the components into steel than it is to simply buy the steel. That being the case, the presence of the artisan becomes a bit more useless.

The artisan should reflect vendor prices.

Never sell anything you don't salvage, other then maybe parchment. Kryta and beyond salvages decent enough.

It saved me a load of cash buying thousands of vellum, 5 dust, 5 wood and 20 gold is better than 200 gold any day

Do what? :/

i think artisans are very usefull tbh - the low level ones for Parchments and the high level ones for the Rare materials which don't drop anywhere like : Vellum , Deldrimor Steel , Elonian leather and so on .

Of course its not always cheaper to craft than to buy but in the case of Deldrimor Steel and Vellum it sure saves alot of cash.


And i think some of the lower materials are a bit steep priced to be crafted at Artisans - so in my opinion Anet either should make it so it reflects the material trader prices a bit but stays a tad below or rethink the crafting prices of some of the materials

Steel is something I've always gotten from salvage, never needed to buy or craft.

As for crafters, it is cheaper and faster to go outside Sardelac and have parchment crafted than to try and buy it for scar patterns and tatoos. And if you need a leather square, he'll craft you one from 4-5 tanned hide squares (which logistically makes no sense, but ::shrugs:: ).

Besides, especially on the higher level materials, think of all the extra loot you might get making your way to the artisan?

Use expert salvage. It is WAY cheaper per unit of rare crafting material.

Things that usually don't salvage (such as deldrimor steel, vellum, and spiritwood planks) are for crafting. But for things like steel, salvage is better (imo).

Converting (5) wood --> parchment (20 gold per)
or (5) wood + (5) gold dust --> Vellum (20 gold per)

can earn you some money by selling the converted material back to the merchant npc.

If you get the rare convert on the attempt, and at chance at 16 gold per use (expert) or 20 gold per use (sup) to get that chance to get that rare.

yes thats what I do to.

It does seem odd that you need to spend more to craft Steel and linen than it is to just buy the stuff - from merchant or anyone else. But I think they've got quirks like that in there just to keep players on their toes. Maybe they mean it as a way to encourage people to not rely solely on NPCs and encourage trade between players.

It all depends on the item, and the current selling price, as i'm sure you've already figured out. There was a while back when you could craft steel cheaper than you could buy it, but it's been a while ...

I feel some of your comparison is lacking a bit though, you have 2 different situations:

1) You buy your common materials from a Materials Trader

or

2) You get your common materials from a salvage kit.

#1 is easy to cost-compare, for obvious reasons (you can see the price right there!) but how much has it cost you to salvage the items for the materials you already have? I doubt you've been keeping track, or that anyone does, of how much it's costing them per ingot/plank/etc they get. This is the grey area in #2, but I would lean in favor of self-salvage over buying any day of the week.

And as skuld said: I saved THOUSANDS on making velium with an Artisan, parchment is the same, deldrimor steel, etc. You just happened to run across one where it's not advantageous to use an Artisan, is all. Don't dismiss them entirely

No offense, but asking questions as open ended as yours was will garner quite a few different responses, including answers you don't want or can't understand.

He pointed out that you can buy steel for 100gp from live human beings. That, in and of itself, answers the question as to whether it's worthwhile to use the crafter to convert Iron to Steel (which gets much cheaper if you don't have to buy charcoal from the trader btw).

The rule of thumb to use with crafters, heck, the rule to use with anything. Always obtain items/materials/etc. using the cheapest and most cost efficient method available. If that's the trader, so be it. If that's a crafter, good for him.

Let me amend my previous statement. Third Tier crafted materials, Deld. Steel and the like, are good to sell but only if you salvage your own basic materials. I make a nice profit on Deld. Steel. so far as I can tell, if you salvage all the bsics it comes out like this:
()= general market vlaue

1 ingot of Deld./ I sell for 600gp

Cost to make:

10 iron(80-100gp) + 5 glittering dust (30-50gp) + 1 Charcoal (120-150gp) + 200gp

Minimum cost: 430gp
Max Cost: 500gp

If you craft the charcoal the max and min costs go up a bit, but still profitable.

I suppose I was a little open-ended.

If one wanted to, one could read it -that- way.

Whatever, though.

And I'll admit the material crafter does have some nice deals, but there are certain things which simply aren't of value, and that's what I was railing against.