Is it impossible to make profit from T16 maps?

I had a discussion with someone on the long term viability of extremely efficient non stop T16 mapping with the strategy to sell the fragments to recoup losses.

The issue is that after 15 trials and data collection it seems to break even and in most cases result in a net loss after factoring in total cost of maps and materials minus total gains from drops and fragments.

Is there anyone farming T16 non stop and profiting from it?

All this stems from my belief that you should not pick up small orbs like alt orbs because you make more money just by going faster. Is conventional knowledge wrong? Have I been doing it wrong all these years? Should I just relegate myself to brain dead farming strands with a vaal skill?

The first minotaur map that dropped for me this league I was thinking oh this will be fun to run, never done it before.

Checked poe trade... 30c!!!!

Sold!


Prices have halved since then and I've ran it a couple times but damn that's an expensive map!

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Nephalim wrote:

I had a discussion with someone on the long term viability of extremely efficient non stop T16 mapping with the strategy to sell the fragments to recoup losses.

The issue is that after 15 trials and data collection it seems to break even and in most cases result in a net loss after factoring in total cost of maps and materials minus total gains from drops and fragments.

Is there anyone farming T16 non stop and profiting from it?

All this stems from my belief that you should not pick up small orbs like alt orbs because you make more money just by going faster. Is conventional knowledge wrong? Have I been doing it wrong all these years? Should I just relegate myself to brain dead farming strands with a vaal skill?

HAve the same "problem" this league. First time after all I am able to do the real endgame with my chars and it seems to be like "do it once, feel good about your power, never do it again". Or do it as a Service at start of the league to get rich.


by the way. I feel doing hard boss and maps not rewarding enough. And that`s for me a balance problem. If bosses would a) have a kind of loottable and b) loot would be balance around hard boss and soft bosses(strand boss Oo). Playing with full atlas and doing all kind of maps would be more rewarding and maybe you dont need to nerf the strand meta players.

GGG stated in a prior podcast they intentionally allowed high tier content to be less rewarding because they did not want to make players feel forced to run end game content non stop in order to feel like they were making progress.

What this means is that a janky build that runs strands is making more exp and money per hour than a ridiculously powerful T16 boss crusher.

I just do not like the entire premise. High level content should be at least as profitable if not more so than T11 spamming.

Yesterday I had quite a good run. I bought Breach stone with additional Breach for 6c, Perandus with additional chest for 2-3c or so, and 3rd less important stone. 4 chisels+alch, no vaaling in case I run into phys reflect or no leech mod.
Done a Chimera map, another one dropped, plus Shaped Strand.
Done Chimera again, Hydra dropped, plus Shaped Reef and Shaped Quay.
Done Hydra, another Shaped Quay dropped.
Also, there was around 2-7c raw currency drop per map. Don't remember if there were any noteworthy finds (maybe 210 ES with small res gloves that I sold for 12c, maybe that was day before)

Investment: 19c (if I bought it, but it dropped from Overgrown Ruin) for first map + 4.5c for alching+chiseling of 3 maps. Around 10-15 for stones for a total of 32-37c
Return:
2 Chimera Fragments - 19c each
1 Hydra Fragment - 14c
2 Shaped Quay, Strand, Reef - 10x2, 3.5c, 4c - 27c
Around 10-15c of raw currency (chaos, vaals, alchs etc.)
Total - 89-94c if I decided to sell all the Shaped maps instead of running them.

Main thing when running t16 - don't use Master's Sextants, they are 5-5.5c a piece, and aren't worth it. They are only good when putting 5-6 mods around Shaped Strand of Shore.
Get Breach, as Breach monsters can drop maps. Get Bloodlines for +1 to map drop, better chance for higher tiers. Then get whatever else you prefer, Nemesis, Perandus or Tempest with additional quantity of items or a chance of Radiant/Shinning Tempest.

Personally, I have no problem sustaining t15-16 with 94 Atlas completion. Sometimes I hit dry spells and no t16 will drop in 3-4 runs, but then I run one and 2-3 t14-16 will drop. Plus, Fragments do help recuperate the loses a lot, they cost almost as much as a map itself.

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Main thing when running t16 - don't use Master's Sextants, they are 5-5.5c a piece, and aren't worth it. They are only good when putting 5-6 mods around Shaped Strand of Shore.

Absolutely agree. Red sextants are such a sham and their drop rates are half of what they should be.

I have no issues chaining T16's I've likely ran over 500 non stop at this point, it was just I had always believed I was making huge profit from doing it. But as I found out recently, most of it may have just been through trading and crafting rather than actually running the maps.

Which is kind of sad. You make more money sitting in town trading than you do clearing end game content with a build you carefully put together after months of work.

I kept telling my friend the best way to make money was to get an end game build and power clear high end maps as fast as possible but It seems I may have been wrong.

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Nephalim wrote:

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Main thing when running t16 - don't use Master's Sextants, they are 5-5.5c a piece, and aren't worth it. They are only good when putting 5-6 mods around Shaped Strand of Shore.

Which is kind of sad. You make more money sitting in town trading than you do clearing end game content with a build you carefully put together after months of work.

So true. I got 7 days in /played and have yet to see an Exalt or Relic to drop. Most expensive drop so far was some 6s 5l unique axe that I sold for 50c. Drops been quite bad honestly, the only thing I make money on is lucky corruptions/selling maps/very rare decent unique or rare drop.

As if luck smiled upon me, shortly after posting this, Exalted drop from Shaped Reef :)

If the idea is to run a tier where you can sustain runs from the profits without excessive trade needs then you really need to do shaped maps to leverage lower tier sextants and minimize drops of high tier maps you don't want to run.

The easiest is (obviously) shaped strand. The hardest (while still feasible) is shaped courtyard or maybe quay. Last league I tried to run with t13/14/15 shaped only and it went ok but not great but I didn't do sextant mod blocking and the like.

For t16 probably would need to sell guardian kills or do shaper service (=too much player interaction for me)

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Nephalim wrote:

I just do not like the entire premise. High level content should be at least as profitable if not more so than T11 spamming.

Once you've set your sights on min/maxing for profitability, you cede your right to complain about fun and parity. Damn near every map is profitable with magic find, just run the ones you like.

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Nephalim wrote:

I had a discussion with someone on the long term viability of extremely efficient non stop T16 mapping with the strategy to sell the fragments to recoup losses.

The issue is that after 15 trials and data collection it seems to break even and in most cases result in a net loss after factoring in total cost of maps and materials minus total gains from drops and fragments.

Is there anyone farming T16 non stop and profiting from it?

All this stems from my belief that you should not pick up small orbs like alt orbs because you make more money just by going faster. Is conventional knowledge wrong? Have I been doing it wrong all these years? Should I just relegate myself to brain dead farming strands with a vaal skill?

?? I think it's too late man. You doing a lot of work for very little profit. This far after new content has been released the market has already settled to efficient pricing as much of T16 value is tied to the fragments due to the value of Shaper drops.

Don't be fooled man - there are people doing this since zero dark Day 1 of Shaper release, and have spreadsheets with HUNDREDS of runs on Shaper and they know the probabilities of all his drops and the selling value of the drops and thus the price of the fragments at which they need to buy in order to break-even.

People buying T16s to farm and sell fragments/profit need to understand this. Especially long-term because I doubt Dying Sun and Starforge will continue to be valuable.

It is the same with Uber Atziri. Lab runs too to some extent.

If you want to make good bling, efficiently, in this game the easiest way is to do it right when new content is released - figure out which of the new items people will want that will be in short supply.

You can make a killing this way, but only because the market is still inefficient, and I'm talking like the first few weeks. 12 months out man is way too late to be trying to make profit on this stuff.

People did this in early days of release of Masters, Lab (running for the enchants on the right bases), Atlas (constraining the Hydra drop). Easy exalts.

Just wait for Pantheon. Forget about farming T16s for profit IMO it is waaayyyy too late - you are doing too much work for too little profit.