THE AUCTION HOUSE

Bind on equip, bind when made

any crafting profession / skill 5 to 225 / what the house will take / alone

I spent an evening at the forge making a Veteran's Chain Belt, because it came out blue and blue things sell. The auctioneer wouldn't take it. The belt had bound itself to me the moment I finished it. I'm not much of a fighter, but I wore it for a week so the copper wouldn't feel wasted.

Why it pays

Every item says under its name how it binds. One that binds when picked up, or when it's made, stays with you and never goes to the auction house. One that binds when equipped can be sold for as long as nobody has worn it.

The new blue gear on Forever is where people lose money. Each crafting profession got sets named for a role, and the travellers say they bind when made. The smiths have Veteran's, Guard's, Protector's, Acolyte's and Crusader's pieces, and the leatherworkers and tailors have their own. The export has watched four markets through the beta and never seen one of them listed. That's 219 pieces up to skill 225, and not a single auction.

Other new crafts sell well enough. Every reagent bag from the Linen Reagent Bag to the Runecloth Reagent Bag shows up with a price, and so do the Sterling Silver Boots and the rest of that armour, most of the Skyforged pieces and camp stations such as the Spinning Wheel. A crafter who wants gold makes the role pieces for himself and the bags and stations for the market.

What you need

Tailoring 5 for the Linen Reagent Bag, 70 for the Woolen Reagent Bag and 125 for the Silk Reagent Bag, and a pattern for each. Our data doesn't know yet who sells the patterns, but the Pattern: Linen Reagent Bag itself trades on the auction house.

How

1. Before you buy a pattern to make money, search the auction house for what it makes. If nobody lists it on your market weeks after launch, it probably binds when made.
2. Read the binding line in the recipe's tooltip before you craft.
3. Make role pieces only when you mean to wear them.
4. For the market, make bags, stations and the armour that binds when equipped.
5. Post them unworn. Don't try a piece on to see how it looks, because then it's yours.

What can go wrong

An empty market proves less than a tooltip. A recipe nobody has made yet has no listings either, so trust the tooltip where you can read one. Forever also moves things about. One video put the Mooncloth bag at Tailoring 225, and our data says 255, which is past the cap.

BASTIAN'S VERDICT Read the binding before you buy the pattern. I still have the belt, and the Linen bags have paid for its copper twice over.