My choices are as follow: Enchanting, tailoring, jewelry, cooking, artisan, bookbinding.

1) Which one(s) are the best / worst moneymakers on the list? Which are commonly found / hard to come by? And which are most / least in demand? Those are three individual questions to determine overall profits, offer and demand to see what fits my playstyle the best.

2) Those that involve designing: I hear there are long queues, is this because it takes a whole Lusternian year or are there just that many people all submitting stuff? How big are the chances if I go design stuff I will see it become a pattern someday?

3) Private cartels: Is there some kind of listing of these somewhere? I'd be interested in browsing them and learning which ones hire, what they require of members and maybe even take a look at what designs they got available.

4) Other than the market channel, how do I best go about selling my wares without being a shop owner? Set up a deal with shop owners, use the forums. go stand somewhere and shout like a fishmonger?

5) How big a % of your income is your trade skill as a non-shop owner? And as a shop owner?

6) Is it a realistic plan to start with some initial credits, sell good, buy credits with the profits, invest in skills to sell more and better goods and so forth?

7) Any other advice for a tradeskill newbie? Maybe share your experiences as a practitioner of any of these trades?

Looking forward to the answers.

Forget the misconception that you can make money off of trades. You can make chump change. You can make a pittance. Trades are for flavor, RP, and fun.

Ok, still want above questions answered, but I'll ask you then for some advice on how to make gold if not through trades?

Enchanting is the one to make gold off of, of the ones you list. Particularly if you make a point of being available.

1) As said it is Enchanting to make the most on. Bookbinding the least.

2) Design approval time is whenever they get to it.

3) CARTELS lists all cartels with their clan head and trademaster. You will need to ask them if they are looking for people.

4) Market channel is really the best way, other than having others tell people of you.

5 and 6) See below



Trades are not for gold, at least not much gold. When was an enchanter, I probably made about 10k every two weeks from my trade (from the people that need cubes recharged.) this number goes up and down depending on who you talk with and how much your trade is really needed at the time

1. Enchanting and jewelry are the best money makers on that list. They are not as great as herbs or alchemy, but they are okay, particularly if you pair with shopkeepers. If you want to make money with a trade skill, remember to ask for money. For some reason a lot of people seem to work for free, which has always seemed strange to me.

2. Mortal design review has made the turn around time pretty quick, most things within a couple of days, if not sooner. The process might take longer if you're forced to deal with a trademaster, particularly the self-important ones who will feel compelled to tweak your designs. The chances that if you design and submit something, it will be approved are quite high - provided you write coherently (conforming to brit. english spellings) and the design itself isn't much of a stretch for fitting in the game world.

3. CARTELS, clanhelp (cartel name) or message the owner/trademaster

4. Listen on the market channel for people looking for supplies and answer them. Advertise yourself on the market channel. Offer your services on ct once in a while (not advertising, but "Anyone need any (tradework) done?").

5. I imagine it's a fairly small one, unless all you do is your trade skill.

6. While this is a good plan for herbs and maybe alchemy, the others in your list might not yield enough profit to reasonably allow for it. Enchantment might. The accepted rule is that cartel trades don't earn you much gold. Jewelry might be the one exception.

7. Charge for your services. Speak up when people ask for a tradesperson of your type. Ignore tradebans as much as possible. If you pick a cartel trade, get your own cartel asap, you will enjoy it more. Don't choose a cartel trade unless you want to design, or want the trans skill.

The fundamental sources of physical gold coins in Lusternia are denizens. These coins come from on-death drops, Charity influence victories, and quest completion (corpse/aetheric dust/commodity turn-in, among others). Even in cases where there's just a big pile of gold waiting in a room for the taking, typically the pile is only accessible by interacting with denizens and/or completing a quest.

I've made over a million gold since I started playing Lusternia, and by and large, what moneymaking boils down to is bashing stuff upside the head and turning in the corpses. Depending on circumstance, Charity influencing and esteem-selling may be almost as efficient as bashing, though the esteem market is flooded at the moment.

It's difficult to turn a profit with trade skills because 1.) the items produced are worth but a pittance compared to artifacts, and 2.) there's not a ravenous enough demand to fatten the wallets of every potential entrepreneur. Also, since trade skills cost about 300 credits' worth of lessons to trans, you have to earn about 2,000,000 gold just to "break even" on them. I'm not sure how profitable shop ownership is, but that's an extremely expensive investment anyway, not something for you to worry over right this moment.

In summary: Bash creatures over the head, take their stuff, and turn in their corpses. Yep, it's still the 1970s in text MUD land, I'm afraid.

You can also buy credits and/or win them in contests, and then sell them to other players for gold.

Edit: Note I'm not saying it's impossible to make a profit with trade skills. What I am saying, though, is that bashing stuff over the head will make you money far more efficiently than even the most potentially profitable trade skills.

Edit2: One final way to earn gold is by buying credits low (for 6,500 gold each, for example) and selling them high (say, for 6,900 gold each). Iron Elite Memberships have caused the credits market to tank recently, however. This could be an amazing opportunity to make a profit, if the price rises in a few weeks or months, or it might be a really bad time to buy... I couldn't tell you, I suck at economics.

If you choose artisanry and steal all my business I'll be sad but anyway here it goes,

1) For someone who can only login briefly, I actually find artisan work a reliable way of earning gold, so long as you are patient and can afford the initial investment to get up to beds (which I would say is the biggest market). No, it is not going to provide you with a continuous stream of money but people are usually generous with their tips. In the past week, I would have raised maybe 70,000 through artisan work, being only briefly or inconsistently awake in the game. For someone who can't really bash anymore, this is enough to keep me ticking over nicely.

2) Design approval lengths can be extremely variable, I have had designs gone through in less than half a Lusternian month, while others (one in particular) have been submitted but not approved for years now.

3) As said above, CARTELS, though you can also CARTELS ARTISAN to get the artisan specific ones. There is no way of seeing their catalogues without becoming a member to my knowledge though.

4) Artisans don't need shops, so no nasty taxes.

5) n/a

6) As said above, artisanry requires quite high investment if you want to get regular business. Though I believe some people manage to earn a bit just by selling kegs. (second or third skill in I think)

7) I highly recommend Trademastering. It has become one of my favourite things about the game (now that I have woken up to what the Charites consider acceptable designs), and it satisfies my grammar Nazi streak. I am terrible at designing myself, but I really like trademastering a 'design' trade. I nag people into submitting things and then help correct them. Trademastering can also be a bit intimidating when you begin, (I almost lost the current 'works in progress' when I tried editing something for the first time), but if you ever need help just ask other trademasters.

Oh, and keep your enemy statuses down to maximize business.

Edit: Oh, and keep dropping hints when you finally get business. 'Hmm, I have a few nice sconces that would suit your room.' (I would say carpets but there really aren't that many nice designs for them, get designing people!)

All that said now,

(MARKET): ACCEPTING PUBLIC OR HALLIFAXIAN ARTISAN DESIGN SUBMISSIONS!!!

Disclaimer: it's slow but steady

1. As a jeweler, if found that I make a lot of money by selling gems. You can advertise on market, but don't expect to sell bulk gems at 50 gold a pop. You may also need to build a base of customers, and that would hold you steady.

2. Cartel, create your own if you want, join many different ones. Think about it this way, if you are in 5, 6 different jewelery cartels, and place your design in for each of them, you could start seeing more of your designs popping up, maybe.

4. Set up sales with shop owners. For example, one thing that you can do with gems is sell them to shop owners, guilds for the novices. They can create vials out of them, which makes gives you the satisfaction of helping novices out, and making a bit of gold on the side.

5. To be honest, I make a lot of money doing this, but I have to borrow a jewelers hammer. Normally, with the hammer you cut 3 gems per stone. With mastercut, i've reached 21 cuts on a couple consecutive gems, and almost always average around 7 gems per gemstone. Also powerstones, in a stack of 600 gems, i get around 40, 45 powerstones, which I sell for 1.5k per. With that, i always make a profit, even if i sell my gems for 25 g per.

6. After mastercut, it's your choice, in terms of investing. Sure, if you want to make heirloom items, but you still can make money from selling rings for enchantments, gems and what not.

7. If you want to start off, I recommend buying and selling commodities. Was able to make on one day, starting from 3k, around 150k just by buying and selling. And you can get gems for 108 gold per if you do the rockeaters quest long enough, meaning you could also sell them for 135 g per to some commune or city, or cut them.

Despite the fact that this is not the market channel, nor is it the game itself, I'll go ahead and let you know here that I intend for Xaakin to submit some artisan designs. He knows up to beds and needs to make some stuff that will look good in the manse (read: palace, because omg Saibreas is extravagant ) he's working on building.

And as far as Calixa's question goes, I personally prefer designing professions to others simply because it helps get my creative juices flowing. I make very little money with my tailoring on Ongaku, but I love coming up with new creations for it. Especially guild-themed.

Thanks a lot for all answers so far. I see from what people define here as "not much gold" that gold gain will improve when I reach higher levels, currently nearing 60 so I probably still have a way to go.

The not charging money for trades and trades not earning much gold does still boggle my mind though. What happened to good old capitalism? This all sounds so communism. Maybe the small playerbase has something to do with that, or it is just because of the way the game was designed. Hmm, think I found myself a study subject there. As for the elite memberships, on one hand free credits might make the prices drop, on the other hand it might not since some people will just sell their credits and bash less. I do have noticed people sometimes put credits on cheaply and advertise on the market channel, maybe snatching and reselling those might work. I'll have to get some gold reserves to try that.

It's a shame books can't be sold in stores. The idea of a stationary shop seemed quite fun, or even a real bookstore. I am also pondering roleplaying the role of a shopkeeper, greeting people when they come in and help them make their choices. Would mean getting the gold to buy a manse first though, or someone to hire me for this and give me a cut of the profits.

@Falcon: As for buying and selling commodities, did you mean this as jewelcrafter specific or just generally? Margin trading is how I earn my income in most online games, is this the Lusternia way of doing it? Shame I got myself enemied to Glom who seem to be holding most villages. Maybe should start looking into claiming some for Mag to increase potential profits. Would help our lovely province as well

This. Especially the bolded. 75% of my income as an Artisan is from people who aren't supposed to trade with me, and pay me extra because of it.

Gloms are actually allowed to buy from you, just not sell to you.

Not only do design-based trades not make too much money, but the private cartel system, in my opinion, doesn't really contribute to helping people make money. Essentially what you're doing with a private cartel is giving yourself the ability to create designs that only people in that cartel can make, but at a fee of 5,000 gold. If you don't own the cartel, you have essentially no power over whether or not others in that cartel make a design you created in that cartel.

You might be wondering, shouldn't it be possible to make cartels somewhat profitable, especially since you can charge clan dues? The problem is that there are now so many public designs as well that you don't need to be part of a private cartel in order to have access to lots of designs (since everybody's a part of a 'public cartel' of your trade and organization). Anybody who would want a private design falls into three categories: a) they had something super-special and unique designed for them and placed into that cartel, in the past they've gotten a private design made, that previous item decayed, and now they just want to replace it, and c) the person they ask to make something just happens to be in a private cartel and offers them the choice of a private design. So, in cases a and b, the demander likely knows a person in the cartel and can just approach him/her directly, and case c is a bit more of a fluke, and not really a reliable source of demand for a cartel's private design.

To get back to your question: if you're looking at private cartels, ask around, sure, but a) don't pay to join a cartel, and the best position to be in in a cartel is the trademaster (control of designs) but one who doesn't have to provide the 5,000 gold to make designs private (don't know if such a cartel exists).

It's a lot easier to misapprehend the costs of providing a trade in Lusternia where your time spent, and even your lessons, can seem "free" to those who aren't really thinking about it. The trouble is, a handful of people doing that can undervalue a trade for everyone else. Lusternia is at best a very imcomplete simulation of a market; the rules of supply and demand are wonky, for instance.

It's not "might" at this point, it's actuality. (Also, those credits aren't free... they're discounted as part of the membership, but you definitely have to pay for them.)

If you check CREDITS FOR SALE, you'll see that the cheapest credits on the market are priced at 6,600 gold each. For months before Iron Elite Memberships debuted, the lowest market price was typically 7,100 gold per credit. The price may decline further (and stay there for the foreseeable future), or it may rise back to the norm of ~7,000 gold per credit eventually. It's difficult to say... I wish I knew!

I believe what's occurred is that the demand for market credits has fallen; people with Iron Elite Memberships aren't buying as many credits from the market as they used to. At the same time, the supply (i.e., people who get their gold by buying and selling credits) remains unchanged.

Edit: On the subject of payment for services rendered, I personally tip craftspeople generously. I generally tip based on how much time they spend going over designs and discussing possibilities with me, not on the actual cost of the item(s) under discussion (though that can be a factor). I'll never understand people who believe everything should be done for free. No one likes paying hefty doctor's bills in RL, but if you were to become a doctor yourself, you'd expect a nice salary, wouldn't you?

I missed the fact where they are free monthly bound credits, my bad. If the prices used to be 7k I won't be complaining. Only long-term disadvantage I can think of is more higher level people thus more crowded bashing and questing spots.

Been looking at the trans things as well. Tailoring seems really good, enchantment is also interesting, not sure on bookbinding since I've never even used a scroll (guild preparation on talks about vials and enchants). Jewely has potential too, and artisan appeals the least due to having access to teleporting.

Artisan is actually pretty useful if you get stranded somewhere, like Astral. It's also nice to seal your throne that you paid 50-100k for so it won't decay.

Get back online and finish using your tradeskill.

I wouldn't worry a ton about bashing and questing spots. Most people who are going to level have hit them already. By about 70-80 you can bash most places. Higher level people just do it faster. Not to mention that with aetherships now, bashing areas aren't very crowded that I've noticed.