Is crafting ever worthwhile?

I've played the game for a while now, and crafting never seemed worthwhile when the trading post exists.

For example, let's say I'm a newly-trained chef and I want to make the basic unidentified orange dye. That takes 25 onions and 25 carrots.

Right now on the trading post, 25 onions costs 74s 90c, and 25 carrots costs 18s 93c. This comes to a total of 93s 83c for the materials to craft it.

If I wanted to buy common-rarity unidentified orange dye, it would cost 9s 99c right now. And if I wanted to buy a common-rarity dye directly, the most expensive common rarity dye is Mushroom at 4s 9c.

It appears that if I want an item, the cheapest option is to simply buy it directly from the trading post instead of crafting it. I could go through the trouble of harvesting 25 onions and 25 carrots directly, and then craft the dye while paying nothing, but I could also just sell the raw materials directly and pocket the 93s 83c, and use that money to buy loads of dyes.

It's for that reason that crafting never seemed economically worthwhile to me. Processing materials almost always reduces their value on the trading post, and I can usually buy finished items on the trading post for less than what the crafting materials would cost.

Does this change when I reach higher crafting levels? I've never been committed enough to crafting to see whether or not it does eventually become economically worthwhile to craft items instead of buying them from the trading post. I figured I'd ask here instead of wasting a lot of time & gold figuring out the answer for myself.

I leveled up multiple crafting professions to max just so I can have special armor stat combinations like Vipers and Commanders. It would have been a huge pain to get that gear otherwise. It's also a good way to level up alts.

Crafting is great for those playing awhile and already have the needed materials. Crafting is great for making sets of Ascended gear. Crafting is needed for some collections and special achievements. Crafting has a lot of uses and I've used all of the crafting professions and don't regret maxing them all.

When you’ll craft a legendary, you’ll understand :DIt’s great for all account bound items you need to craft, some of them are handy, like good food you can’t find at the TP. Like they said, Ascended gear or some items for legendaries !

Ascended. Legendary too, which is its own special grind. You will still be buying stuff off TP. But, certain stats can only be made via crafting. And ascended is account bound. But can make exotic versions of such desired stats too. Food stuff is a different thing, if that's all you tried to craft.

http://gw2profits.com/

There are all sorts of profitable recipes in each discipline.

• It's always profitable to refine all your daily-capped ascended. Those can be further refined into high-yield, high-demand goods.
• There are always some recipes that are profitable even with purchasing from sell order; these change throughout the week and often from hour to hour.
• There are more recipes profitable by purchasing materials in advance (or purchasing components rather than materials); these too change frequently.

I don't feel crafting in this game was designed to help your virtual wallet... just more of mechanic to get the good lewts.... with that said I've never played a MMO where buying mats. from the market yielded me a great Return on Investment. outside the games where RNG can proc a "epic" so-to-speak.

Crafting is one of the ways to get Ascended equipment. The alternative is to go on raids. Depending on your role, you may not be able to buy the proper gear for raids on the market, so you have to craft them. Crafting is needed for some collections, especially specializations. Crafting is mandatory for Legendary unless you just buy it (expensive as hell to do so.)

It is surprisingly a massive part of the GW2 experience.

Unfortunately crafting is needed if you want to buy Marauder, Celestial, Viper etc gear/weapons which is account bound. If i could get all these gear/weapons on TP i will drop crafting immediately, since it is way cheaper to get the gear/weapons on TP. I really don't understand why it is so easy and cheap to get full berserker gear, while it costs you tons of gold to get full Marauder gear + weeks/months and tons of gold to get Celestial.I don't care about ascended/legendary, the difference between ascended and exotic is not worth to mention.

All but Jeweler is worth it in my opinion.

As someone who very early on came to the conclusion that it was more profitable to gather all the things because of the XP you get from them, crafting for me was done without guides, without worrying about materials at all really. I managed to get almost all of my crafters up to 400 - and then to 500 - without needing to purchase supplies other than maybe a few of the harder to find items like lodestones and things. There are so very many carrots and onions in lower levels that if you just gather as you go in doing map completion you'll be able to get to that 25 in no time at all, and essentially for the cost of ...gaining experience.

Subsequent times grew more difficult, and clearly by the time I got around to wanting legendary weapons I was buying stacks of wood and mithril like everyone else, but I had a huge reserve to start with from doing map completion on two characters, from starting it on at least two others, and from the general mentality of 'gather as you go' that I had already. If you do that? Crafting is way more worth it, and way cheaper, than you think. Most things are literally just laying on the ground for the taking, after all. :)

Crafting is useful, depending on what you wish to do with it. If you are looking to make a profit from making items, you are better off not crafting. If however you need food for WvW, it can be very useful. also, if you are looking to make ascended Armor and Weapons, it is extremely important to do crafting. however, one pitfall most people run into is, they try and craft Every crafting profession at once. Concentrate and do only one crafting at a time.

You can also use Crafting as a means to level up a character, if you are just starting, however doing more then one crafting at a time will quickly consume your materials. that's why it is best to do only one crafting profession at a time. So, decide what you want to do with Crafting before you start it and make sure you have the ability to complete it.

Crafting can be a good way to make gold, but it takes some research to know what's currently profitable (and it will change over time).

More importantly though there are a lot of craftable items which are account bound on acquire, meaning the only way to obtain them is to craft them yourself. Ascended equipment is a common example (although that can be obtained from other places too) but there's also parts of the legendary collections - meaning if you ever want a legendary you have to get at least 2 crafts to at least level 400 - and occasionally other items or parts of items.

I've levelled all the crafts (except Scribe, which is a very slow work in progress) and although I don't craft things on a regular basis I'm glad I have the option because it often makes things easier.

This is a good time to level up crafting... mats are the lowest they have been for a long time. Once most people get their griffon and a new round of legendaries is released, the cost of mats will likely go back up.