How much should a SCer charge

[-Nxs-]

As the crafting forums can sometimes be empty - and i would like to get an idea across all english servers and all realms.

What is a fair price to charge someone for SC'ing - i've searched the forums and some say 5g per imbue point, others say 80g per item. While this is fine for L50's it doesn quite fit in with people looking to have some armour SC'd for the battleground.

So far I've come up with the following formula
Imbue Points - 10 x 5g

So a L24 character looking to have some AF26 cloth armour imbued (which has 14 imbue points at 99% would pay.
14-10 = 4 x 5g = 20G (per item)

And a L50 with his AF51 cloth which has 28 imbue points would pay.
28-10 = 18 x 5 = 90G (per item)

As for FOCUS gems, I think these would be best charged at the focus level, so a Focus 25 gem would be 25G and a Focus 50 gem would be 50G

Overcharging is risky at best, and would/should only be requested by those with buckets of money, therefore 25G per extra imbue point used.

Any comments or sugestions ? and what about remakes ?

 

[uma_thurman]

For none overcharging between 1.5 and 2 times material cost.

For overcharging the standard on Alb/Prydwen is 300g an item.

For guildies and friends I drop my price.

Ppl are happy to pay these rates and it's easy to quote a cost.

 

[SilverHood]

someone wanted 80g per piece for AF52 studded armor, no OC's.... some people are mad

 

[makgsnake]

i would charge 2-3 x cost, depending on if guildie or not

 

[old.anubis]

3x material cost seems fair enuff
ends up like 2.5-3 plat per 5 points overcharged set
not that much for 2 hours of work

 

[Xeanor]

I only know they make shitloads of profit on the 300g/item things as it's pisseasy to make 99% gems.

 

[katzeyez]

What something is worth is down to what people are prepared to pay.

I bet whoever was charging 80g an item got orders, simply because there are SO many /leveled characters around in comparison to the number of crafters.

Personally I got scing high enough so that I can do my own BG stuff, save all the hastle that way, but god it is boring! There is no way I would do it for anyone other than friends/guildies

 

[old.linnet]

Originally posted by Xeanor
I only know they make shitloads of profit on the 300g/item things as it's pisseasy to make 99% gems.

Depends how much you value your time and whether you actually want customers or not

 

[katt!]

~1p/hour + cost imo.

 

[i-scream]

You can charge whatever seems acceptable to you Nxs. If you're happy with your formula, why don't you do so ?
A trade is between two people, if they both agree, there is trade.

A lot depends how much the crafter spent to attain his level, I invested about 14 P. If you're charging at 2x cost of the gems and you're only crafting lowbie stuff, you'll never get back your investment. Or did you start crafting to serve other people and not making any benefit. Well, I'll leave that up to you

Anyway, as a general rule, I only craft for guildies.
My price is made up of different factors:
- a fixed to price (to get me started crafting)
- a variable price according to the item level to imbue
- a variable price if the item has to be overcrafted or not (this make a big difference !)

For lowbie stuff, item's don't really have to be overcrafted, why let a crafter work for 4 hours on a suit that will be thrown away in a week or two ? If that person absolutely wants to have a overcrafted suit, he'll have to pay for it. If not, a lowbie crafter will take his order.

Don't forget the crafter could hunt for 4 hours instead of crafting. What would he have gained while hunting in that time ?

Take all this in consideration and you'll fix for yourself some prices. Or were you the customer and not the crafter )) ?

 

[cHodAX]

Originally posted by Xeanor
I only know they make shitloads of profit on the 300g/item things as it's pisseasy to make 99% gems.

Agreed and many spellcrafters treat a 1pt o/c the same as 5pt o/c when it comes to price, seems to be a licence to print money on Alb Pryd.

 

[katt!]

Originally posted by Xeanor
I only know they make shitloads of profit on the 300g/item things as it's pisseasy to make 99% gems.

its pisseasy to farm ~1p/hour in df as well.

 

[cHodAX]

Originally posted by katt!
its pisseasy to farm ~1p/hour in df as well.

Try watch a DVD and farm seals, then make the comparison. SC is just pressing buttons with no risk, farming cash means you have to be wide awake or you are dead. Oh and you don't always have Darkness Falls but you will always have people wanting lvl51 gear spellcrafted so it is a much easier and more reliable way to make cash.

 

[Danya]

Cost me 640g to get my entire 9 piece set done 33/28, 300g/piece is a huge profit margin.

 

[-Nxs-]

So here really is no standard price to charge people for SC, some go for a percentage of material costs, 150%->300% and others just charge a fixed rate.

I supose if people want SC'ing done they will pay anything, or skill up an alt and do thier own, after all 300 SC doesnt take that long and will suit most BG characters.

 

[hillem]

Hi. I'm pretty new at my fletching skill but I have about 500 points so far and could do the best arrows there is.

I don't have a good price for fletching things so far I have said that I do it for the cost of the material plus a extra 20g so that I could continue fletching for higher levels. And I think you shouldn't charge a lot extra because everyone has something they need and well its expensive to craft but then again everyone needs crafters to keep on getting better to craft so what's the deal with being cheap to each and other.

My friends donate money so that I could train and that is a more appropriate way of handling the matter. Any suggestions or comments?

 

[Giljotine]

I only charge the material cost with my Cabby Lourdess

Are 540 in skill though so it's mainly BG0 - BG1 armor i tend to do
so it's no cost to talk about realy.

though it have happend some guy have given me 100 gold for a
full sc set and the material cost have been like 20-25 gold

 

[nott]

Originally posted by old.cHodAX
Try watch a DVD and farm seals, then make the comparison. SC is just pressing buttons with no risk, farming cash means you have to be wide awake or you are dead. Oh and you don't always have Darkness Falls but you will always have people wanting lvl51 gear spellcrafted so it is a much easier and more reliable way to make cash.

lol at watching dvd while doin sc-jobs. You won't catch much of that movie. Doin sc is not like hinging/skilling you know. I guess I could watch as much dvd while farming dias. Pull one and hit provokestylekey until its dead Won't recommend watching a dvd in either case though tbh.

To get the most cash farming dia's >> sc-jobs for me anyway. (Maybe I'm not charging enough.)
The availability of DF vs. gettin sc jobs might be a point for you but I wouldn't know cause I don't do sc-jobs atm.
If I would my price is 5g per. imbuepoint. 20g per.oc-point.

It's not like all customers come with their template ready either, and if they do they often look horrible. I bet you probably have to use 1/3 of the time just to prepare for the sc-job.

 

[Tesla Monkor]

I use the following formula. (And let Leladia's SC Calculator do the actual price calculation)

Per Imbue point: 5g
Per Overcharge point: 20g
+ cost of gems
+ remake costs.

That comes down to

About 2P for a 6 part 32point (99%Q, 5OC) set.
(As low as 1.9P and as high as 2.5P)

Around 3P for a 9 part 37 point (100%Q, 5OC) set.

There are some fluctuations in pricing, dependant on how lucky I am in getting 99's. (23 times a Kath gem to get that 99? Ow.)

Non OC'd suits I charge 2x material cost, or 3 times, depending on the customer. If they don't know what they want and get me to do all their gem look-uping, it's 3. If they provide a neat template and things go smoothly, it's 2 times.

Like the message above mentions, SCing is not a mindless clicking craft. You need to pay close attention for the entire process and run between crafting table and merchant a lot. Typically once for each gem, and once for every 5 remakes. (I buy materials for 5 makes). I'm willing to bet that SCers are the healthiest of all crafters.. No DVD watching while we do orders - which is part of the reason why there are so few people willing to SC for others. It's dreadfully boring and you have no option to do something else.

All in all, I think the pricing is fair.

 

[Ardrias_Mid]

3p+, no less. Simply isnt worth the time. And doing SC, does your head in real good.

 

[acei]

Originally posted by Xeanor
I only know they make shitloads of profit on the 300g/item things as it's pisseasy to make 99% gems.

Full set of armour + weapon + shield = 32 gems... extremely time consuming!

 

[Danya]

About 3 hours. I'm still not sure I agree with a 300% markup though, seems a little excessive.

 

[uma_thurman]

Originally posted by Xeanor
I only know they make shitloads of profit on the 300g/item things as it's pisseasy to make 99% gems.

You can get away with 2 99s and 2 98s on a 99% qual or MP.

 

[uma_thurman]

Originally posted by old.cHodAX
Agreed and many spellcrafters treat a 1pt o/c the same as 5pt o/c when it comes to price, seems to be a licence to print money on Alb Pryd.

I wouldn't complain if the alternative is spending 20p or so to get LGM, not forgetting the time invested in getting there. That's an expensive licence to print money

 

[old.windforce]

to all ppl who hink its expensive:

get to LMSC: 18 plat and a SHITload of time

SC an suit: 2-3 hours with 400-700 gp material cost

i farmed 150 diamonds in the time i can do a full suit, which is way more fun then stupid mindnumbing clicks

i always asked 300 gp a piece and had to many customers and retired

if ppl can spent up to 20 plat for an armor 2 plat for scing it i cheap imho

 

[old.linnet]

Wish I could make that much profit on tailoring

(Imagining taking 6+ hours to make a MP suit, which is about normal, and trying to charge 3p profit on it...)

 

[acei]

Originally posted by Danya
About 3 hours. I'm still not sure I agree with a 300% markup though, seems a little excessive.

As almost all SCers will agree, don't like the price, don't buy it

SC and alchemy are the ONLY tradeskills that you can make decent money on the only things you make money on with the other crafts are /salvage and MP.

 

[Tesla Monkor]

More to the story -

The people who want to have their suits SCed (Or ALCed) look at the materials needed to make the suit and assume they'd pay a little more than that... and get a cardiac arrest when they get the bill.

It comes down to how much you value your time. You're paying for mine when you ask me to SC your suit. The time it took me to get to LGM and the time it takes to make all those little gems to stick on your items.

The person posting above this message compares SC to Tailoring. You must realise however, that ALL the other crafts, save SC and ALC, are ruined. There are too many people and there's an overabundance of available gear througgh power-levelling crafters, resulting in pathetically low prices. Two times material cost for a 99%Q item? That's insane. It should be 6 times cost, but everyone's been so spoiled by insane low prices that you can't sell it at that anymore.

A short look into the future, mainly towards Foundations shows that with the arrival of housing, and with them the commission merchants, Fletching, Armorcrafting, Tailoring and Weaponcrafting will die. The one thing keeping them alive right now is the fact that most people can't find the crafters with vaults full of pre-crafted materials. That problem will be solved when Foundations arrives.

In the end it is the tailor/armorcrafters/wcers and fletchers themselves who ruin the markets by dumping massive amounts of 99s while skilling to recoup costs. That gives customes a wrong idea of crafting costs. Alchemy and SC are normal .. the other crafters are the silly priced ones.

 

[Xeanor]

Tesla, all 99% parts are made while trying to make MPs ? Any profit on selling those is just good enough tbh. Why 6x material cost? They would otherwise be sold to merchants anyway..

 

[Tesla Monkor]

Because it takes on average 6 tries to get a 99. If you sell it for less then you're selling yourself short.

Small note: 6x = 1 try and 5 retries.