So I was happy when I capped my smith and Jewler last week but it seems the recipees are insanely expensive. The commodity AH is closed ATM so I can't speak much for gems buying vs making though its probably not as bad as items since its not randomized. Items are however not worth crafting at all in my opinion. For instance I can craft armour for 50k(in inferno) which has a chance of having some of the stats I want... but probability wise, the chance that I will get the vitality, the intelligence, and w/e other relevant stat I want for my mage is probably close to 1 in 30, now add a layer of there being ENOUGH stats and you have another whole dimension. Yet I can find pretty good armour on the AH for about 100-200k. Even ignoring the mat cost that crafting price seems absolutely ridiculous and not well thought out. If I farm Inferno Act 1 for 1 hour I will probably get about 100k... that's only two rolls, I regret sinking money into my smith Unless blizzard reduces crafting price to about a tenth of what it is now.

So do you guys use the smith on higher difficulties?

Wait for a major crafting update really, that's the thing with Blizzard games. They may not be perfect when they release, but everything is there. It just takes a while before everything gets honed and perfected.

From what I've played, crafting is extremely overpriced, especially since there is no guarantee that it will even be useful for you. Also, in slightly unrelated news, it sounds like Blizzard is going to make it so it only takes two gems to get to the next level in a future patch.

I don't know, I like that crafting is an actual in-game way of getting items, but they are all so expensive and gold is so useful, that it is hard to warrant spending it on an unknown.

Crafting is the way to turn a big pile of useless magical and rare items into a chance at a perfect rare. It won't be worth it until you manage to find the recipes for the best-in-slot Exalted Grand items.

I'm still playing through Normal myself, but I've found crafting to be pretty useful. But I do wish that salvaging items could somehow level up your smith's skill (Kind of like disenchanting in World of Warcraft), because you have no other ways of getting crafting ingredients. Also, are there more than just two ingredients for crafting? I wish there was a bigger variety of materials.

@valrog: Two mat types on Normal, three mat types on Nightmare, three mat types on Hell, and four mat types on Inferno.

@StarvingGamer said:

Crafting is the way to turn a big pile of useless magical and rare items into a chance at a perfect rare. It won't be worth it until you manage to find the recipes for the best-in-slot Exalted Grand items.

The only problem with this theory is that all the money lost from not vendoring the same items and multiple crafting attempts could more easily be spent on the AH to get the perfect item (while most likely ending up with a good amount of extra gold). Crafting would be viable if it wasn't for the ridicolous fees. Spending 100+k gold to make a completely random item when there are thousands of possibilities of the outcome is just never ever gonna be worth it unless you have insane luck. Even counting the fact that you can still put stuff that's good for other classes on the AH, it's still not worth it.

It just doesn't make sense to add that extra gold drain on top of the mat cost. In most cases the mats already mean there's a good 20-50k less gold in the economy.

It's a waste of gold.

Once I discovered how to search for low cost items on the auction house, I felt like a fool for spending all that money leveling the blacksmith. Can't believe blizzard didn't see this coming.

Sadly, no. You're going to find better, cheaper gear either from drops or the auction house. It's nice to have your artisans leveled up for making new characters, but that's about it. The rare recipes you can find are sometimes alright also.

@Ares42: It's not hard to make money and mats at the same time. Just melt everything that has a low sell price and sell everything else. Auction off the occasional item that is actually functional. Also for where I'm at right now, about 1/2 of the drops I get are under level 60 which is an automatic sell.

We have no idea what a perfect rare is going to be worth on the AH. Considering that sub-par weapons with middling affixes are selling for millions of gold already, I wouldn't be surprised if a top tier item with near-perfect affixes went for hundreds of millions or even a billion gold.

Compare that to the 100,000-200,000 gold you would need to spend (mats included) to craft an ilvl 63 item with a guaranteed 6 affixes. One hundred million gold would let you craft a total of 500-1000 items. Just like in Diablo II, the real end-game for the hardest of hardcore players is going to be crafting (gambling).

EDIT: ilvl 62, not 63

@Robot_Moses said:

Sadly, no. You're going to find better, cheaper gear either from drops or the auction house. It's nice to have your artisans leveled up for making new characters, but that's about it.

And even then, not by very much. Level them up until you need to get smithing pages, and then stop there. That's more than enough options to craft for rolling new character. The artisans are kind of a waste.

@StarvingGamer: Ofc you can make it work, but is it actually a better option ? Also, remember that all rare crafted gear only have 4 magical attributes (at least from what I've seen). Rares you find often have up to 6. The core of the issue still remains though. The amount of possible outcomes that are completely worthless outweighs the good ones by such an incredible amount it's just not worth it.

I find the auction house to be a better bet. You can find exactly what you are looking for, sometimes cheaper or more expensive but again you know what you are getting.

@valrog said:

I'm still playing through Normal myself, but I've found crafting to be pretty useful. But I do wish that salvaging items could somehow level up your smith's skill (Kind of like disenchanting in World of Warcraft), because you have no other ways of getting crafting ingredients. Also, are there more than just two ingredients for crafting? I wish there was a bigger variety of materials.

on normal it was super useful, I remember that a 20 min run could get me enough blues to roll maybe 10 items. In Inferno a 20 min run will help you roll maybe half an item.

Normal is useful for me to do some crafting depending on what I haven't upgraded in a while & not planning on wasting time on the AH so it helps but sometimes just have to salvage a dozen blues to get the materials for crafting. Having maxed out the bank slots & finally gotten the staff of herding together, I tend to have enough money that crafting isn't a problem.

The funny thing about the blacksmith was that it was actually extremely overpowered during the early parts of the beta. Right before open beta, they increased the gold and reagent cost to craft everything and made it the useless piece of trash it is today. IMO, Blizzard may just revert everything back to it's earlier pre-release condition.

@StarvingGamer: Ofc you can make it work, but is it actually a better option ? Also, remember that all rare crafted gear only have 4 magical attributes (at least from what I've seen). Rares you find often have up to 6. The core of the issue still remains though. The amount of possible outcomes that are completely worthless outweighs the good ones by such an incredible amount it's just not worth it.

Basically, the crafting system is a replacement of Gheed from Diablo 2, in that you would spend gold on say a dagger, but you didn't know what the stats were until you identified it, with it probably being garbage, but maybe being awesome. The problem right now, is that the math is not in favor of the player even attempting to gamble crafting bits and gold for a chance at say, a decent shield the player wants, when you could just spend a couple hundred gold on one from the AH with the exact stats (block %, vitality, primary stat) desired. In a nuttshell, the math just isn't right given the current landscape of the D3 economy and needs adjustment, yet is fine in theory.

@StarvingGamer: Ok then. I guess those exalted dread shields I crafted that came out with stats that wouldn't even sell for 5k on the AH was worth it then ? I get that if you're lucky you can get some good (or even great) stuff, but with the current fees it's quite a bet.

Like others have said, it's a good replacement for the gambling in D2, but with the extremely accessible trading system it becomes obsolete.

@Ares42: No, of course not. Why would you waste your mats on an item with only 4 affixes?

The best in slot crafted items are always 6 affixes and are the only ones worth spending materials/gold on. Just looking at the AH, weapons with only 3/6 useful affixes in middling amounts are going for 10 million easy. That's 50 chances to combine an item with equivalent stats and I don't know about you, but I've easily found at least one useful item out of every 50 rare drops even without them being guaranteed to be ilvl 62 and with a full six affixes.

If you're casual / lazy / can't be arsed then I can see how you might think that the AH makes crafting obsolete and that's fine. That sort of self-imposed scarcity only makes the market better for crazy, obsessive D3 players like me.

@StarvingGamer: Sure, as with everything else in an economy like this, the first few people that start making weapons like that will be able to make a profit. Hell, even Pages of Blacksmithing sold for ridicolous prices at one point. However, as everything else, once more people start flooding the market with weapons like that the prices will drop to a point where the profit is negligable. Especially considering the fact that you'll also have people with the same kinda loot that didn't pay a dime to get it and don't have the "I spent 5 million to get this, so I need to sell it for at least that much" mindset.

Just look at how the gem market was going. Any gem that was also dropped in the world sold for way way less than the crafting cost. The only way crafted gear could avoid ending up the same way is if it's exclusively the best gear, which I'm pretty sure wouldn't go over very well with most hardcore Diablo fans.

To get gems past 'Flawless Square', maybe. Otherwise no. Just imagine how many attempts it'd take me to get a decent Dex, Vit, All Resi & DPS boost item for any given slot for my Demon Hunter - when crafting costs like 50k gold a try? It's cheaper to just drop gold on a suitable upgrade in the AH.

Crafting needs an overhaul badly.

I would say its not worth it past normal - wait for the 1.3 patch where the price will be lowered and the gems are 2 instead of 3 to combine (up until flawless square?) the update notes are on the blizz site if I am completely wrong...

but I did manage to buy a bow on the AH for 5k that added over 4k damage to my dps ... 7k on some rare pants with magic find and dex ... helm for 10k and shoulders for 7.5k... I am level 53 and its sooooo easy to find really really cheap gear on the AH before level 60 gear prices ramp up (as the game seems to start at 60 lol)

I wanted to make a square gem today and it costs 7500k to do it and use up 3 gems... I can go on the AH and buy a low level weapon for 2k with one in a socket lol.

I am personally saving up my gems and money for the 1.3 patch because I honestly dont want to use the AH but when you can get rares for under 5k its like getting the feeling from a loot drop lol

I've been leveling up my jewelcrafting when I have extra pages as well as making gems for myself as I'm leveling, but crafting overall seems like a waste of money. I mean I just got a legendary mace on the AH that doubled my DPS for only 30k gold. It should last me at least ten levels or so, maybe more.

@StarvingGamer said:

@valrog: Two mat types on Normal, three mat types on Nightmare, three mat types on Hell, and four mat types on Inferno.

Are you sure? I think it's 2-2-2-3.

unless you're referring to pages and tomes...

its worked out great for me so far

I wish you could craft amulets and rings. Maybe in the expansion.

@Twinsun said:

Once I discovered how to search for low cost items on the auction house, I felt like a fool for spending all that money leveling the blacksmith. Can't believe blizzard didn't see this coming.

Same here. I did the whole blacksmith training and crafting thing until I realized I was just wasting materials and money on randomly generated items that I would turn around and salvage most of the time. Go to the auction house and buy useful items for much less.

I have found the jeweler useful though. Since the commodities portion of the auction house is disabled the most reliable way to get your hands on gems is to craft them yourself.

It isn't worth it whilst leveling but there is money to be made if you get a half decent 6 affix / legendary pattern - (helm of command, sages boots etc.)

I have the 6 affix WD offhand if anyone wants one crafted on eu for no fee. (exalted grand unspeakable thing iirc)