Has anyone crunched the numbers? What is the best use of materials if you just want gold from an NPC?

For example, iron ore sells for less than iron ingots. But, does a pair of boots or sword return more than selling the ingots used to make them?

Do you get more gold return(from NPCs) the more you work the material? Or is workable material the best thing to sell?

I would say selling the raw ore or bars to people would yield the greatest return.

I think that the best way to get the most gold for your items that you want to sell is by selling them to other players.

ZOS is trying hard to get rid of bot farmers who would only sell to NPCs. They even lowered the value of several items to 0 for that reason. Then again, they upped the value of some weapons and armors to sell more to NPCs.

Perhaps people from the PTS can give you more accurate information on this since they are the only ones who played the game to the fullest.

This is further complicated by the fact that crafters gain more inspiration (crafting xp) by deconstructing items other players have made, making those items more valuable. It doesn't take any skill points to gather iron ore, refine it and make iron daggers, which every aspiring Blacksmith will want to deconstruct.

But only until us crafters pass Iron daggers in skill, only took me a few sessions before I had pushed onto the next level of crafting and no more need of Iron ore.

Hopefully not, otherwise the crafting system would be woefully broken.