Engineering 4.0.6

[Taelas]

I make money hand over fist buying ore, crushing ore, xmuting metas. I don't crush any of the ore I have been mining, as I'm prepping to level BS on my main. I simply buy it, Crush it, xmute it, Sell it.

I have been turning ~100% profit margins.

The fact that you make money does not mean that the guys who sell you the ore doesn't make more.

Let's say I prospect 1,000 ore. Each of the uncommon gems has roughly 18% drop chance per 5 ore prospected. That gives me ~36 of each gem, roughly. That's 12 meta gems. Each meta gem sells for ~500g, if it's one of the new ones, at least on my server. That's 6k gold.

20 elementium ore is 70 gold on my server. To get 1,000 ore, I need to get 50 stacks. 50 x 70 = 3500g.

If I were to do this (quite aside from the fact that I'd need to harass my brother to transmute for me, as I don't have an alchemy toon), I would make 2500 gold, plus ~10 (5% chance) of each rare gem. Most cut gems are worth around 40 gold at the moment for me, with reds being the top seller at around 100 gold. Let's say 60g per gem, times 10, times six. That's another 3600 gold, assuming I can get them sold.

It's not a bad profit, but the guy who mined 1000 ore to sell me probably also sold a lot of volatiles, which range from 12g-25g at times (assuming he's an engineer). Call it an average 18g. If he got more than 50 of each volatile, which I definitely get every time I mine around 1000 ore, he made more money than me -- where I would make ~6100g, he'd make ~7100g (3500g for the ore, 3600g for the volatiles).

Then again, I've probably spent quite a bit less time than he did. Still, I don't see it as the better option. I can turn my brain off while mining. I cannot turn it off while prospecting and transmuting.