WildStar Tips for Getting Rich

WildStar Tips for Getting Rich by Edymnion

Many people understand the basic idea off how to get rich in an MMO, but don’t put the effort into actually doing so because they are constantly making little “exceptions” that, just like in real life, prevent them from saving up.

Here are my tips on how to get so filthy stinking rich in Wildstar come launch that you’ll be the person buying CREDDs, not selling them.

1) Do Not Take a Crafting Skill at Launch.

Crafting costs you a lot of money, and I don’t mean just in the form of buying Flux or Thread.  To truly understand this, you need to become familiar with the concept of opportunity costs.  An opportunity cost is what you could have gotten had you decided not to do something.  For crafting, this relates to two main things, the value of the raw materials (cloth, ore, omniplasm, etc) that go into crafting, and the value of items you salvage to get cores.  Example, if something costs 4 iron, 1 core, and a flux to build, then the opportunity cost for building it is what you could have made selling or even vendoring that ore and salvageable item.  If you would have made more money selling the materials than you would the finished product, then you are losing gold.  Almost everything you can make, especially at launch, is going to have VERY high amounts of competition and very low amounts of demand as everybody and their grandmother is going to be getting their crafting levels up as they level, which means you’ll probably end up vendoring the finished goods or re-salvaging them anyway.

2) Go double gatherer, and Sell on the CX

As mentioned above, the majority of people are going to be working on their crafting skills, which means materials are going to be at a premium at launch since everybody will want it.  So pick a double gathering skill  set such as Mining and Survivalist, then simply put all of your gathered materials on the CX.  Always make sure to price them not only higher than the vendor price, but higher than the vendor price + the CX’s commission.  Also, don’t be afraid to charge more than what everybody else is right now.  Cheap mats will sell faster, but the profit margin will be very, very low.  Once the cheap stuff is gone, your more expensive mats will be all that’s left, and the demand will still be high, they will sell.

3) Don’t Salvage

Or at least don’t salvage anything even remotely close to your level.  I know that means more trips to town to sell off (unless you’re a settler and can drop your own vendor bot), but the vendor price of things like those linen costume pieces is typically going to be greater than the value of the materials you can salvage from them.  The absolute best thing you’ll get from salvaging one is a power core, and that isn’t 100% of the time.  Look at the cost of weak power cores from the vendors, its typically cheaper to buy them for grinding purposes from the vendor than it is to salvage everything.  After all, if a hypothetical item salvages into a power core 25% of the time, you need to salvage 4 of them on average to get one core.  Weak Quartz Cores go for 11s from a vendor.  If that hypothetical item vendors for more than 2s75c, you will make more money selling the items (as even if you put the cores on the AH/CX, you’ll never sell a green one for more than someone can buy a weak version for from the vendor right next to the crafting table, plus the AH/CX will take a cut).  Good habit is to just vendor everything.

4) Get Bigger Bags

This is harder now with the level restrictions on bags, but the more bag space you have, the less often you have to go to town to sell off, the more time you can spend on making money.  Time spent travelling back to the AH is money lost.

5) Farm the AH/CX

The AH/CX currently does not enforce a minimum bid/price of the vendor value.  Whenever you’re at the AH to sell your materials, go through and sort things for lowest value first.  Anything at all you can find that is listed below vendor price, buy it, then turn around and vendor it.  Its free money.  If its a crafting material at less than face value, grab it and list it at above face like you do the rest of your stuff.  If it doesn’t sell, you can still just vendor it for a profit anyway.  A little riskier is looking for items that are currently underpriced by a good bit but still above vendor.  You should be able to flip them for a higher price (and a profit), but its a little riskier.  CX stuff should be relatively safe, but stuff on the AH like gear could be iffy on if you actually can flip it in a reasonable amount of time.

6) But Don’t Use the AH

When you’re trying to build up your wealth, do not use the AH for yourself.  Don’t be on there constantly buying the best gear you can find, ignore it.  Gear you get from questing and drops is more than good enough to get to max level on, its just a waste of money to use the AH before then unless you are the one selling.

7) Don’t Repair Your Gear

While this sounds a little odd at first, realize that while you are leveling, you are never going to keep a usable piece of gear long enough for it to break.  You will replace it first, and vendor price/salvage potential does not go down with damage (not sure if it’ll let you vendor damaged items without repairing them first, but if it does, just salvage it for materials to sell).  Repairs are for max level gear or emergencies only.

8) Recognize When the Bottom Will Fall Out

Learn to recognize the signs that the market is changing, and be ready to exploit it.  For example, selling mats.  Demand is going to be very high while everybody is grinding up their crafting skills.  But once most people have done that, the demand will drop and those same consumers will become suppliers as they dump their un-needed mats on the AH.  This will drive the value of mats down.  This is when you will want to work on your own crafting skill.  Drop one of your gathering professions and replace it a crafting.  While you should still farm what mats you can, the tanked market value of them means you can use the CX more freely now.  As soon as you see the market start to rise again, stop go back to selling your own mats again.  This usually happens when people start switching over to alts, and if you are one of them simply repeat the double gatherer on your new alt as well.  At best you can use them to ride the new high mat prices again without having to pay to switch your main back to double gathering again.  At worse, it’ll be a second set of mats for your main to use until you switch the alt over to their final crafting build.

9) Quest Out the Zones

Even if you’re a level or two over the quest level, do them all anyway.  Not only do you get money for completing the quest, but they’ll have you out constantly killing things, which means vendor trash and gathering nodes.  This includes doing your path quests as well.  They often have rewards like larger bags which we covered in #4.  It also includes doing challenges.  Pick things from your challenge rewards that will make you money, ignore the gear.  Any gear from a challenge will be quickly replaced while leveling, so pick things like decor (which will sell well on the AH) or larger bags whenever possible.

10) If You Must Sell CREDD, do so at the End of the Month

The goal here is hopefully to get to the point you have so much gold that you can afford to buy credd for your own use instead of paying real money for it, but the more gold you have, the easier it is to make more.  If you do feel the need to sell a CREDD or two, make sure you always do it towards the end of the month when people’s subscriptions are more likely to be running out (especially since all of the pre-sales and early adopters will be in on the 3rd).  As we go forward more people will get in on at different times of the month, but the first main group of players will have their billing schedule on the 3rd, so you’re not exactly going to have a lot of luck selling CREDD on the 4th to those people.