Diablo 3 crafting makes for an interesting debate. Is it a waste of time and effort, or can it reap breathtaking gains? The way crafting works inherently appears as a gamble and a goldsink. The “house wins” in gambling theory becomes the truth if you constantly throw your mats into an item that needs the best stats, aka a “perfect roll” to sell.
Since most crafted items have 3x or more affixes and a large gap between the minimum and maximum value per stat, you’re dealing with a huge risk per crafted item. This risk will level out over time if you are backed up by solid math and intuition. I’d argue that if you put in due work and research on the auction house combined with timely calculations then you have a high chance to successfully profit from selling crafted items. If you prefer easier, less risky strategies to profit from then check out my farming tips here – (Diablo 3 farming) and general RMAH speculation here – (Diablo 3 real money auction house).
The First Step
The best way to go about Diablo 3 crafting is to eyeball and compare multiple potentially profitable items. Before aimlessly feeding all your gold and mats into an item, you need to determine the amount of gold along with the value of the mats you’re using. The mats can be priced via the auction house. Obviously this number will change depending on the item you’re trying to craft. At first I recommend converting everything to gold when pricing each craft. It doesn’t make a difference whether you are purchasing the mats with gold, but does make a difference if you spend real money on the mats and gold. Converting real money into the amount of mats and gold is another step in the process if you take it that far. Write down these numbers beforehand to see how much you’re investing into this “gambling process” via Diablo 3 crafting. (This will be nice to look upon for future use too.)
Find a Niche
Next, you need to find several items that are viable in specific niches. Whether it’s class specific, specifically for leveling or if it’s the best in slot – it doesn’t matter (there’s many possible niches). Do some research, ask around and use your brain here. What matters here is supply and demand; how much competition is crafting these items now and in the near future, and how many people will buy these items now, or in the near and extended future.
Which Affix Combinations are Valuable Possibilities from the Crafting Generator?
Here comes the tricky part. Now you need to look at all the ranges of a given craftable item and discover which suffix rolls will sell. What makes this difficult is the possibilities. For example, a valuable niche item with a perfect 25 in strength, 5 vitality and 10% magic find may not sell compared to 10 strength,10 vitality and 8 raw damage. This may seem like an easy concept, but it becomes more complicated when a number of additional affixes come into play. Random magic properties can be one of many various statistics. Expect this part of the process to take a lot of time with extended research. After you find what’s valuable, you need to take into consideration; how much you can list specific affixed items after the affix value’s reach a certain threshold.
Break Out the Calculator, Spreadsheet and While you’re at it – GRAB YOUR MATH PROFESSOR!
The next part is essentially crunching numbers involving massive amounts of probability – the level to which you crunchinate depends on how far you want to go with it. Believe me when I say – even if you have math skills this part can be extremely hard to fully and accurately compute. After you determine the costs to initially craft items and the valued specific affix ranges, you need to calculate the chances to actually get these items and the difference between the amount of gold they are worth and the amount spent.
If you eyeball this part you may be successful depending on how lucky or good at estimating you are, but you won’t get the same kind of results as you would when actually taking the time to figure this out. An additional variable to add to this part is the amount of gold returned from salvaged items for the craftables that didn’t make the cut. Should you make it this far, you will have one number that determines the average gold per craft. This number will become more consistent over time if you continually craft the same item, as long as the prices on the auction house relatively stay the same. If you did this for multiple items, then you can clearly see which craftable item is more profitable by comparing the numbers.
At the very least you should get some basic principals out of this post. I expect a lot of people to lose gold and mats on Diablo 3 crafting because they won’t think ahead or take the time to consider the profitability of each item. Most people won’t even notice they lost any because they used mats and gold they found, when they could have sold them off and gotten more in return. If you play it like one of these people then it is gambling! If you do the math you are counting the cards in blackjack.
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