About Enchantments

Yes people do seem to need at least one enchantment recharged each day. That doesn't necessarily translate into a steady profit stream however. Akraasiel set up the Hallifax Summit where a charge minimum was set at 50 gold so as to make enchanting more profitable. The next day there were people selling at 25 gold to undercut the people selling at HS minimums.

All right, whatever. So people completely disregarded the minimums. Now, you have people selling charges as low as 10 gold per at times. Assuming a customer needs recharging on kingdom, mercy and perfection you'll be making a total of 300 gold selling at 10gp per charge. 600 if you're selling at 20gp per charge.

Selling in a shop is a little problematic because you can't sell enchants without a jeweler supplying you with things to put the enchantments on. If the customer doesn't like the jewelry for sale, it means you don't sell your enchantment.

Regarding the trans skill though. Magicrown is pretty sweet. Cutting mana usage and loading up the crown with 100 charges is quite handy.

That's the thing. I can make far more gold if I spend that time bashing instead.

One thing that's often forgotten is that an herbalist can spend just as much time re-planting as he does harvesting, due to:
1 - Hibernation (~90%+ of the herbs die out one month a year)
2 - Overharvesting (nearly impossible to stop)
3 - Death to demesnes, which can wipe out entire areas of herbs (sometimes ~40-50% of a given herb)

The pricing between herbalists is also very competitive. And affliction-curing herbs (vs. sparkleberry) just don't sell as much during times of (relative) peace.

Herbs is a nice support skill, but cooking and jewelry seem to be much better if you're in it for the money.

Dumihru is so spot on with herbs. The time spent on herbs is time consuming and frustrating. Keeping up with pricing is another. 100% profit for a lot of work to keep it coming in.

Jewelry on the otherhand isn't that great unless they go into a shop, if people don't like it though its not going to be sold. Selling cut gems is where it used to get it rolling in, now its sort of slowed down..

I would go with cooking, most people have to eat.

I'd say massive sparkleberry picking is the best income of the game, especially as a knight it's easy cause they have much less problems with the mobs up there while harvesting, and it's no effort asking a friend to bring you up there.

That's so agreed, especially if you bash astral.

Hibernation isn't so bad as long as you stock up before and replant after. But of course, this brings up the next point of very very very few herbalists who actually replant. Most of them just harvest down to 3 or 1 or worse, 0, so you can't even replant.

Solution to overharvesting most of the time (barring the extreme idiots) is: replant. Refer to above point...

Galingale, sargassum, juniper and yarrow anyone?

But on the other hand, you need a shop for cooking and jewelry. So unless you got one

Edit: Just to clarify, replanting doesn't take quite _that_ long unless you insist on replanting 5 per room for every single plantable room regardless of demand for herbs. An average of 10 minutes a day or so is enough for the most part. If you're a herbalist and spend half your time planting...

1. True for every poison but Mantakaya and Charybdon

2. So painfully true

3. Whoops.... er I mean it wasn't me

4. Well, people buy Mantakaya too, but that's true for the most part, though if you ask me, I'd make that astral creature much harder to kill, but that's for purely selfish reasons.

However I have to disagree with you that poisons makes -no- money, I'd estimate that about a third of all my past income has been from poisons (well Charybdon really). Though I will admit that I did sell alot of Charybdon at 15k a pop back in the early days so that may have something to do with it.

EDIT: ooh and I voted herbs for profit, I know lots of people who have made fortunes from selling Sparkleberry

I've found my cooking profits to be quite poor. Serenwilde can, in a pinch, eat the ethereal honeycombs and forage with the squirrel totem. 2/3 of Magnagora can get the carrion skill, making food worthless to them. Then factor in that a lot of people just eat massive amounts of spices to keep fed. And the fact that past level 80 you never need to eat again.

So a fair chunk of the game has no need for food. Those that do can just wander up to the shop and buy some, leaving those chefs without a shop with a very small amount of business, hardly enough for a profit.

The only big plus I can see to cooking is the stat boosting items. Those can garner a fine bit of gold.

I voted jewellery, forging second.

Cooking - Magnagorans and Seren don't really need (bar geomancers).
Herbs - I don't know, because much to Summer's annoyance I give herbs away free to anyone who's earnt my respect/friendship in game, which isn't exactly hard.
Alchemy - meh, I just don't think so.
Forging - you could extort lots of people with this, since maybe it's just me, but I have NO idea how much these things should cost.
Jewellery - Seems to make quite a high profit for the people I see with it. Especially everyone wanting garnet all of a sudden, saw it being sold for really high prices. Plus there's the whole "Athana taps a thing and gets 17 diamonds for a 160 gold gem" thing.
Poisons - Wait, people are supposed to make money from this?
Enchantment - No steady market. A mage enchanter could make a killing though now.

I had always said cooking is only profitable if you own a shop. And cooking does very well in Serenwilde. It is the first and only thing that ever gets sold out at my shop.

More people eat than you think. Not everyone knows where to forage, so they end up buying food instead. And you aren't going to forage / kill and eat corpses (unless you have one conveniently on hand) / spam yourself to death eating spices in the middle of the fight with someone who's trying to starve you. One other reason for a few people I know, including me is: we just like to eat delicious food at least once in a while.

I've found food ONCE by foraging..tres ridiculous.

You can forage in both forest and garden environments. Ethereal and villages aren't too bad. Celest has a nice garden in the graveyard too.

*hides from the cooks*

I haven't had to eat in forever. Do people not know you can forage in the Ether, or what? Works better in the trees too.

EDIT: Darn, Summer's too fast. *read next post* Quiet, Summer.

Hehe, beat ya, Shiri! Never knew you could forage in trees though. Thanks!

Edit: Oh, and of course, now that we've said where to forage, we likely won't be able to find food in the future too

I voted herbs, mostly because I earn a lot of gold with them. But you need to be very good in both herbs and planar to earn serious gold. Of course sparkleberries are nice but they make less than half of my income though sometimes people just want to buy a lot.
It is of course true that herbs mean 100% profit but as already mentioned it is immensely time consuming, even with gloves of harvesting. I easily spend half of my online time with harvesting and replanting here and there. Hibernation makes it sometimes annoying but I also like it a lot as it makes the herb business very dynamic, there is no real routine, it is every day new.
I think that alchemy can make you rich easily. I am pretty sure that Titania for example is making really good gold and if she can do it then others can too.
In any case only because you are trans in your tradeskill doesn't mean that the gold comes running to you, you need to do a lot more.

Just with cooking, the Nihilist guild shop has made 20k in the past Lusternian year.

And that's with me stocking it with like 20 steak, lobster, quiche, chicken alfredo and some of the cheaper things like fishcakes, pork stew, ham sandwiches and chicken legs.

Same, almost my entire income from my Seren shop has been from food. Despite being stocked with alchemical wares.

I should probably add: That 20k cost me 2k in total to get, and that's not including the comms guildmembers give me.

Jewelry was the best at the start, but that was due to some money grubbing guy who got the other 4 trans jewelers together and have high set prices and...oh wait that was me, never mind. Anyway, Cooking or Herbs I would say. But the problem with ALL trade skills is, well, the people that have the skill. There is no realy way to inforce prices, even with a cartel you can't. So until some miricle happens and people stop being stupid and giving things away for free, well noone will really beable to make anything for an extended period.

I've actually found that tailoring can be quite profitable. There's no set list of how much each item costs, and you can really set it at anything and make a bit of profit. Of course, it all comes with being able to get word around that you're a tailor and having a good reputation. Great Robes are the best profit as well. The thing about it is, and I also think this applies to forging and Jewelry, people don't (or, most people don't in any case) know what exactly is needed for something. I'm not saying people should be taken advantage of, but it just works out. I set the prices a bit higher so that I can make a profit, but no one would know the difference. The only problem is that you need to have a good supply of cloth, leather and silk. So as a tailor, I'm always on the look out for buying these items from villages or comm sales.