The Cost of Crafting

= Recipes for Success =

Crafting in Vindictus is a somewhat costly operation, both in time and gold. However it can also be quite lucrative. Between the gear that is produced and the prospective profit from selling said gear is it well worth considering crafting as a sideline activity between quests.

This guide is more of an operation manual for a crafting calculator built in Google Docs. It does not cover the topic of obtaining the ingredients and assumes that the reader knows the basic methodologies of crafting and marketplace trading. It is also assumed that the reader is able to reference the in-game marketplace functions while using the calculator. This can be accomplished by switching to windowed mode, using a dual head configuration, having access to a secondary machine equiped with a modern browser as in the author's case, or any other way imaginable including transmitting the required information via can-phone from the neighbor's house. Finally, a link to the document in question.

Vindictus Crafting Spreadsheet at Google Docs

And in case it isn't immediately obvious, please post any flaws you find in the talk page here so I can correct them. I know I've found several since the last update. Now, bookmark that and go acquire a recipe. Ideally a nice fancy new set of recipes. ... Got it? Excellent.

Caveats
Some caveats before we start. The spreadsheet now accounts for the 7% marketplace fee. The marketplace fee has been mostly eliminated and is no longer calculated in the spreadsheet. The spreadsheet makes no accounting for variability in marketplace prices (because that would be impossible). So when the marketplace prices are filled in the user is on his own cognizance that the quality of his estimations directly impacts the quality of his results. In other words, if there's 1 cloth at market for 50 gold and the other 38 that you need are priced at 500 then you'd better estimate a cost of 500 to account for the majority of the purchase price. If you put down 50 and it ends up costing more than the calculator reads then GIGO.

It should also be noted that this does not contain an exhaustive list of crafted items. It only contains what the author is aware of. More items Will be added in time.

Also note that while there is now an option to input how many ingredients you currently have in inventory it must be understood that this has an adverse impact on the set summary. In short, the calculator will (possibly dramatically) under estimate the cost of a full set in the Totals section if current inventory items are input into the sheet. I haven't found a pleasant way to work around this yet and the feature is nice for figuring costs on individual items (which is expected to be the bread and butter usage anyway) so the feature will operate as is for the foreseeable future.

= First Steps =

The first thing to do is find the tab for the set desired at the bottom of the page. If you don't see it right away hit the arrows on the right to scroll around. I try to keep the sets organized alphabetically but sometimes mistakes happen.



Go ahead, click on it. It doesn't bite. The sheet will look something like this.



Now in this example we have the Veteran Cloth Set. The layout of the set tabs is diagrammed in the above image.


 * 1) The full set name and total number of pieces
 * 2) The bonus for wearing the full set
 * 3) Name of one of the craftable items, highlighted for convenience
 * 4) Ingredients required to craft the item highlighted above it
 * 5) How many of the ingredient to the left is required to craft the item. On craft item lines this indicates how many are crafted (IE 10 spears per crafting)
 * 6) Cost to buy the item at a vendor, X indicates that it can't be bought at a vendor
 * 7) Price to craft the item at left, X indicates the item cannot be crafted. This is pulled from the tab with the recipe for that ingredient (usually the Basic Crafts tab)
 * 8) Price at market, green indicates a value has been entered on the Market Prices tab
 * 9) Price at market, red indicates a value must be entered on the Market Prices tab in order to get a reasonable calculation. Red cells are bad for accuracy.
 * 10) How many items already in inventory, as entered on the Market Prices tab
 * 11) Subtotal cost the the ingredient based on cheapest availability and requirement - inventory.
 * 12) Where to get or craft the item. Items marked 'Marketplace' could also be received as loot, thus reducing the cost of crafting the item.
 * 13) Just a sanity check for the author's benefit, this should always read '0'
 * 14) A grocery list of all items required to craft the the full set and summary of costs. This does not include the ingredients for sub-crafts like Fine Cloth and the like, though that may be a future enhancement. The Total and Grand Total is approximately how much gold it would cost to buy everything at the marketplace.

The tabs for basic crafts, miscellaneous crafts, and crafted weapons are very similar but lack the set description at the top and the set cost summary information. Adventurous types will note several extra tabs. The Master Price List is the man behind the curtain, pay him no heed. The Market Price List will be described in a moment.

Now that some sense can be made of the spreadsheet it's time to take care of all those red cells.

= Get the Red Out =

In order to make all those horrible red cells into pretty green cells another tab has to be filled in. This is were it gets a hair labor intensive. Take a look at the grocery list and head on over to the Market Prices tab and the in-game marketplace.



Starting from the top in this example, search for Cloth in the marketplace. Make certain to look in details and formulate an estimate for the cost of cloth. Try to account for how much is required for the recipe to get a more accurate estimate. Right now there's 50 running at 1750 on my server, so I'm comfortable with an estimate of 1800. That's a bit high, but it's a nice round number. Find cloth in the list of 'Basic Items' and fill in the value. The cell will turn green, and any Cloth cells on other pages with update with the new value and turn green. Now if you want to use the feature (bearing in mind the caveat from above!) then open your inventory and input how many cloth you currently have on hand in the Inv column.

Depending on the circumstances and whether the inventory feature is used existing stock may need to be estimated into the market price entered.

Do the same with the other items on the grocery list. Now, most importantly, find the set in the Market Prices tab and fill in the price to buy each piece off the marketplace. It may also be of benefit in advanced crafts to check the market prices for all the intermediate items, such as Blood Silk.

Now that all the prices are filled in, go look at the set tab again.



Everything should be green, and it should be apparent whether it's cheaper to buy or build, both for the finished pieces and for the individual ingredients. In the example it is clear that the cheapest route (other than farming everything personally) would be to purchase the Tunic and Hood from the market and craft the ring from parts. While this seems a trivial piece of information in later stages it can mean the difference between spending untold tokens on fruitless farming and having the equipment at a decent price with tokens to spare.

= Spreadsheet Version History =

See the |Talk page for version notes.