Diablo® III

So quite a few people have been asking on this forum if Gem crafting is in fact profitable. To answer this question myself I have come up with a quick profitability chart that can be adjusted by the user for personal use (and all you need is Microsoft Excel!).

As of now is Gem Crafting worth it on the North American Gold Auction house?

Short answer: No
Long answer: Noooooooooooooooo

Here is why:

Currently (as of June 22, 2012 on the North American Gold Auction house) the cost of finished gems are less than the sum of its parts (or simply put it cost more to make gems then the finished item is worth)! But 'hold on there Pepsi' you say! 'I find most my mats anyway so they cost me nothing!' and to that I respond that you are somewhat correct. In basic economics everything you do or create has what's called opportunity cost attached to it. Simply put the opportunity cost is the is the cost of any activity measured in terms of the value of the next best alternative forgone (that is not chosen) ((Thank you Wikipedia!)). What this means is though it may seem free for you to craft gems that are worth less than the sum of its parts it also costs you slightly more in terms of the money you could have earned simply selling the individual parts off (to those morons who refuse to check the forums, as you the intelligent reader has done!, or do price calculations themselves)

So how do I make money while the inverse price situation takes place?

1. Simple! as stated above sell the parts of the gems. Don't worry about there being enough morons to buy the parts; there always are! As Einstein once put it "There are two things that are infinite, the universe and human stupidity. I am not sure about the universe though"

In doing so you will also be creating favourable future economic conditions for yourself and here is why:
As more and more people enter the gem materials market (selling parts that are used to make up viable end game gems) the price should fall! (Supply goes up while demand either remains stagnant, or is more likely the case, fall) meaning somewhere down the line you'll finally be able to make money by crafting gems!

2. Sell to order! if you can find a moron willing to provide you materials AND an awesome tip your in luck! Though they are rare to find you will often find them lurking the forums in search of instant gratification. Beware though in the coming days you are going to see more and more people selling their crafting mats and simply buying the finished products they seek on the Auction House.

But Pepsi I'm a gamer! how dare you even imply that I would be willing to waste my time putting together an excel sheet that would only benefit myself?

Not to worry. Here is a free excel sheet that almost anyone (including 9/10 types of cabbage) can use. Simply adjust the market price for the different variables
1. Gem Prices listed B2-O2 (I recommended you update this at least once per week)
2. Page/book costs Located B4-B6 (same recommendation as above)
3. Vendor costs to be adjusted with patch changes between B24-O24 (currently up to date for 1.03)

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ywrb255lfijk47y/eTtnTK8v3y

To use the file simply take the gem prices (located between B2-O2) multiply the number by 0.85 (to account for 15% auction house cut for THE MAN!) and see if the number you get is lower than any of the corresponding numbers in the collumn below it) ((if you're confused as to what a collumn is think of the structural support beam. It stands top to bottom))

Please feel free to post any questions, updates, or angry rants about Justin Bieber below. And remember to bump the thread and tell all of your friends about this page!

Thanks

Pepsi

Wait, but I thought pie was infinite. You know... the things that contains apple and other stuff you can eat?

Pie though made of sheer awesome, the perfect dessert, and used as currency in Southern Estonia, alas, is not infinite =(

Thanks, I was just about to make a post about this. I got a recipe for a perfect star topaz. Checked on the ah, and the cost of the 3 flawless star topaz it would take to craft is almost the same as the perfect star, nevermind the gold cost and tomes.

Who's funding this kind of economy!?!?!

Fear not Taita! the market SHOULD come back to norm eventually (assuming its efficient)((which it sorta-ish should be)) Remember to share this with your friends to speed up the process!

b

b

s

^
good to know

Thanks a load for this. Very useful. :) +1

This is my 1st post
I think this topic is worth for my 1st post lol

So ur though is the market will price-up those gem soon ? right?
(the same as mine)

ิีbut there are some cases that will not happen

I call it " discount pricing"

but I hope It will not XD

Thanks Xork (I think I was in a guild with you once upon a time btw),
Atlaryuu (+1 for your total baller-tastic-awsomeness!),
and ZGTRaEX (Glad I was able to bring you over to the dark side)((Hmm interesting theory you may infact be correct depending on if some players realize that they are selling some gems on the AH for less than their vendor value))[This made me a quick 4 million the other day XD]

Ok so I've taken your chart and gave it a go. So things were still left to me as the user to figure out. Not to be confused with being ungrateful however. I've added some things to clear it up a bit, however I only did it on the Amethyst chart lol. basically I added in a "15% AH takes" type deal per gem quality. Also a difference from list amount subtracting the 15% to show what your actually going to get when it does sale. as well as a Listing price - 15% - production cost = profit (+/-) w/ color change based on profit/loss. Like I said, i only did this on Amethyst. If your interested in a copy of it pepsi, i can email it to you so you can host the file on your dropbox. :-D

Just wanted to take out as much guess work as possible. email me at jesse.m.bevil.mil@gmail.com if you want a copy of it from meh ;-x

K, only one email about it. I know their are a lot of resources on the net now. But here's some additions to the chart, find them at my dropbox https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1387436/Gem%20Pricing.xlsx updated the changes to all the gems, added a find minimum value automatically in the crafting table, which is then factored automatically as the production cost so their are no changes to be made to the formula's. In addition to the above added a suggest sell cost for trade chat based on percentage of AH fee bleh bleh bleh, look at the chart! if you don't like it don't use it. just sharing one persons work that I worked on to let you have a go at. Lol.

If I missed it in the posts above I aplogize for repeating it.

When selling parts you also have a larger market, better chance at unloading the material.

Hey dudes!

First off just wanted to start by saying sorry for the slow response XD I kinda haven't had a chance to check this post in a while (I returned to Starcraft 2 full-time)((Dark Side))

@ZerksRage - Dude that chart is superballerawesome sauce, I took a quick peek at it and you've made the chart into a work of art man! I would highly advise any player looking for a very user friendly chart to take a look at the ZerksRage version. If you want a bit more coverage for your chart I would suggest either starting a new thread on the d2jsp.com forums or just adding to the post I started a while back (http://forums.d2jsp.org/topic.php?t=63393780&f=68&o=0#p423261717). Thanks for taking the time to put some awesome improvements into the chart man!

@FrogBrew that is true! I would advise a tiny bit of caution in selling the parts though. When I was last playing (about 3-4 weeks back) the parts were selling for less than vendor value (Post AH 15%)! check the auction house from time to time and if you're lucky you can even get gems for less than vendor value! It's a great way to make a quick million or two.
P.S: No need to apologize Bro-han (After all I am not Bro-seidon king of the Brocean)

Nice work Zerks, pepsi. Had made my own which is much simpler (for me), but needed to expand for analysis. I'll see if I can mod this one further.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ffcuc4ivyrpwhl6/Gem%20Pricing.xlsx

Use input tab to quickly put in all prices (in bold) and other changes to pricing. Added an 'Action' row on each tab - use at your own risk, but it will highlight a price inversion like the one currently for several gems: Perfect Stars are cheaper to buy than craft right now.

Also, the input tab was my stab. The Crft columns can be compared to the current AH prices for action points.

Naive question here: Is it possible to get excel to auto-update the values in the chart either from the diablo auction house or from this site: http://www.d3rmt.com/auction-house/gems/ ?