Inscription is a great profession because it has an extra layer of complexity. More complexity often leads to more gold obtained. A lot of people cannot answer the question: "Should you buy pigments or should you mill herbs to craft inks?". Currently, craftsim doesn’t do the math for you. That’s very good for us since I made a spreadsheet that will do what craftsim usually does. Click on the image below to see the spreadsheet. Make sure to make a copy of the sheet to be able to edit it.

When calculating the average profit for ink crafting, craftsim uses the auction house price for pigments. That’s not always ideal. Very often, you’ll save thousands of gold from milling your own herbs. You can also sell the pigments to make a good profit. In addition, inks can be turned into boundless ciphers and codified greenwood for extra goldmaking opportunities. You can enter the "real cost per pigment" price inside craftsim "price override" module to see your "real average profit" when crafting inks.

In the image below, you'll see the difference in profit with and without the "real cost per pigment". Without price override, where craftsim uses the auction house pigment price, the average profit is at 42g per craft. With price override, where craftsim uses your prices, the average profit is at 63 gold which is a massive difference. With maximum crafting speed (75%) and 63 average gold profit per craft, you would earn an average profit of 4342 gold per minute!

A “dedicated” build

Unlike concentration builds with an alt army, having multiple scribes won’t increase your profit (unless you want to craft faster with multiple accounts). I call it a “dedicated” build since you really need to commit to it to earn profit.

In the world of reagent crafting, you need to obtain as much help as possible. Every stat including crafting speed can have an impact on your goldmaking. Having tools like craftsim, auctionator and my spreadsheet (or your own) is also vital to make gold from this process.

Even if you have everything mentioned above, you still might not make any profit on some days. The market is extremely volatile. Often, you’ll make over 100 000 gold an hour from crafting. On other days, crafting would bring a deficit. This is why it’s so important to get everything that can improve your profit. I suggest that you check this article to learn more about reagent crafting and its complexity.

Real crafting cost for inks

It's also possible to determine your "real crafting cost" for inks. You want to get this information when crafting ciphers and greenwood. Again, you'll want to use the craftsim price override and change the price of the ink until the profit comes down to 0. It's also a great way to know at what point you start losing gold if inks lose their value after you crafted them. In the example below, I've changed the price of the ink until I see 0% profit in craftsim. At that point, I know that the price entered is my crafting cost.

In the example below, I can see that my "real crafting cost" for shadow ink is 77 gold.

Guaranteed rank 3

It’s possible to guarantee rank 3 reagents. If you want to craft rank 3 guaranteed reagents, keep in mind that this is only possible with rank 3 materials. If you want to guarantee rank 3 pigments, this is only possible when milling rank 3 herbs. On top of that, you’ll need a full set of blue quality equipment (or 2 blue quality equipment and the nightborne racial buff which gives 5 skill).

Stats, consumables and buffs

Skill doesn’t have too much of an impact on the build (except if you are going for rank 3). You’ll see that the first 60-90 points of knowledge spent gives 0 extra skill. The price between rank 1 and rank 2 reagents isn’t much different (except for codified greenwood). However, it’s amazing to be able to craft rank 2 inks with rank 1 pigments. Always use rank 1 pigments to craft inks (unless the rank 2 pigments are cheaper).

It's important not to mill rank 1 herbs to get rank 2 pigments. If you do that, you'll obtain less pigments when milling. This is why the knowledge path is altered so that you keep getting rank 1 pigments from rank 1 herbs. However, if you want to go for the rank 3 build, you won't be able to obtain rank 1 pigments anymore.

You can improve your crafting speed with 2 different phials. The aerated phial of quick hands from Dragonflight and the phial of enhanced ambidexterity. Speaking of crafting speed, the "weaver's prodigy" buff can increase your crafting speed by 15 to 30 percent depending on your reputation with the weaver. You'll also need to have the weaver pact active. Keep in mind that the speed cap is at 75%. In addition, the phial of bountiful seasons grants resourcefulness during winter only.

Artisan acuity usage

Here is how I would order priority

1- 200 knowledge book (150 in reality since you get 50 back)

2- 300 knowledge book (250 in reality since you get 50 back)

3- 400 knowledge book (350 in reality since you get 50 back)

4- Multicraft tool (Make sure to use a missive of multicraft. Enchant with resourcefulness)

5- Novelist’s specs (accessory)

6- Forger’s font inspector (accessory)

7- Resourcefulness tool (Make sure to use a missive of resourcefulness. Enchant with resourcefulness)

8- If you are prioritizing milling, the order of steps is 1-2-3-7-6-5-4.

Concentration usage

This is not a great build for concentration usage. However, you can use your concentration in 2 ways. The first way is to use it towards patron orders to get more knowledge points. The other is to use it on ciphers or inks (whichever gives you the best gold per point of concentration). If you go past the 210 knowledge, you can work towards other builds like missives or contracts to get a better gold per concentration ratio.

Knowledge point acquisition

The catchup system is a bit unclear but here is how you acquire knowledge (one time treasure location later in the post)

Knowledge breakpoints

Depending on your priorities, you might want to go on 2 different path. If you want to go for milling first, use the first build. If you want to go for the inks and ciphers build, use the second. At the end, you'll get both builds completed regardless of where you started. Keep in mind that if you want to craft rank 1 and rank 2 reagents (which I find ideal), you'll need to skip putting points into improved milling.

One time treasures

When you mill herbs, get as much resourcefulness as possible. When you craft inks, ciphers and greenwood, you’ll want to get as much multicraft as possible. Multicraft has no impact at all on milling. Resourcefulness helps when crafting inks but multicraft is much more powerful.

To be efficient, use two different profession tools. One with resourcefulness and one with multicraft. You can use the multicraft tool when inking and the resourcefulness tool for milling. In addition, enchant both tools with a resourcefulness enchant (there is no multicraft enchant).

Ink and ciphers knowledge path

Milling first knowledge path

Selling pigments wasn't really my plan. However, I did sell a lot of ink! Crafting ink was very time consuming and this is mostly why I didn't craft many ciphers or greenwood. The sales below are for rank 2 inks. My sale rate is currently between 30 to 35 percent. This means that when I post my inks, they sell 30 to 35 percent of the time. I post 200 at a time for 12 hours to minimize posting costs. When I go to bed, I usually post a few thousands and they sell at a similar sale rate. My total crafting cost was slightly above 33 million gold! With that in mind, here are my ink sales for the first 6 weeks!

If you are struggling to use the spreadsheet, here is a segment from my last stream where I show how I use the spreadsheet.

Support on patreon

More goldmaking articles

Watch me live on twitch

Watch my videos on youtube

Back to the home page