How crafting profit works
A craft pays when what you keep from selling it is more than its materials, after some of them come back, plus the station’s fee. Here is each part, in the order the crafting calculator counts them.
The short version
Profit = what you keep from the sale − (materials × the share that doesn’t come back) − the station’s fee.
Each part below changes one of those three numbers.
What comes back: the return rate
Every craft and refine gives back part of the resources it used. How much depends on the production bonus where you craft. The game turns the bonus into a return rate like this:
return rate = 1 − 1 ÷ (1 + bonus ÷ 100)
The bonus is added up from:
- The city: every royal city gives 18% on everything made there.
- The city’s specialty: +15% on the kinds of gear it is known for, or +40% on the one resource it refines (see Refining).
- Focus: +59% when you craft with focus.
- The day’s production bonus: the game’s daily bonus for some kinds of crafting, shown on the front page.
| Where and how | Bonus | Comes back |
|---|---|---|
| Any royal city | 18% | 15.3% |
| A city’s gear specialty | 33% | 24.8% |
| A city’s refining specialty | 58% | 36.7% |
| Any royal city, with focus | 77% | 43.5% |
| Gear specialty, with focus | 92% | 47.9% |
| Refining specialty, with focus | 117% | 53.9% |
Only resources come back: artifacts and other special materials a recipe asks for are used up every time.
Caerleon and Brecilien have their own figures. The calculator reads every city’s bonuses from the game’s own files, so it follows any change.
The station’s fee
Crafting stations are run by players, who set a price in silver per 100 nutrition. Each craft uses nutrition equal to 11.25% of the item’s value (a hidden figure the game gives every item), so:
fee = item value × 0.1125 × silver per 100 ÷ 100
Fees differ a lot from city to city and change when owners change them. The calculator uses the fees players’ companions have seen; where no fee has been seen for a station, it says fee not seen and leaves it out, so check it in the game. Station fees lists them all.
Selling: tax and the setup fee
- A sell order (you set the price and wait): a 2.5% setup fee when you place it, and the sales tax when it sells.
- Selling right away to someone’s buy order: only the sales tax.
- The sales tax is 4% with Premium and 8% without.
| Selling something for 100,000 silver | With Premium | Without |
|---|---|---|
| By sell order | 93,500 | 89,500 |
| Right away, to a buy order | 96,000 | 92,000 |
A sell order usually gets a better price; selling right away is certain and quick. The calculator lets you pick either.
Buying the materials
Buying right away from what’s on sale costs the asking price. Placing buy orders can be cheaper but adds the 2.5% setup fee, takes time, and may never fill. Prices also differ between cities: the calculator finds the cheapest city for each material and puts the stops on a route, keeping out of red zones unless you say otherwise.
Focus
Crafting with focus adds 59% to the production bonus, so more comes back. Each craft costs focus; that cost halves for every 10,000 points of focus efficiency your specialisations give that item. A character holds at most 30,000 focus. Because focus is limited, the useful question is how much silver each point earns: the calculator shows that as per focus point, so you spend it where it pays most.
Log in and run the companion, and the calculator uses your own characters’ levels and focus.
Quality
Weapons, armour and tools come out in a random quality, most of them Normal. The calculator counts every piece at the Normal price; a better one is a bonus.
A worked example
Made-up prices, to show the sums. Real prices are in the calculator.
| Materials for one craft | 100,000 |
| 15.3% of them come back (any royal city, no focus) | −15,300 |
| Station fee | 2,000 |
| Cost to make | 86,700 |
| Sold by sell order for 120,000, with Premium (keep 93.5%) | 112,200 |
| Profit | 25,500 |
Crafted in a city with that item as its specialty (24.8% back) the same craft would cost about 77,200, a profit of about 35,000. Where you craft matters as much as what you craft.