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If you sell an item, you get half of the item's price in coin. If you reverse-engeneer the item via the Craft skill, you destroy it and get raw materials worth half the item's price plus it's formula.
Since raw materials can be exchanged at their full price according to page 174, is there any reason to not just reverse-engeneer everything you find and don't use? Other than the time investment, I mean.
You get the same amount of money out of it and the formula on top, which by itself has some value. Even if you fail the check to learn the formula, you're still left with half the item's value in raw materials. Worst case (i.e. crit fail on Craft), you lose 10% of the materials, but that should be a rare occurrance if you're a dedicated Crafter.
So, assuming enough downtime, I guess taking everything apart is the way to go?
Yes, that's what it looks like, provided you succeed at 2 Crafting checks, one to reverse engineer the formula and one to rebuild the item. If you fail at the first check, you're left with the raw materials and they can't be reassembled. If you succeed at the first check but fail at the second, you're again left with the raw materials (minus 10% if it was a critical fail).
So, you have some risk of losing half the value of the item, on top of the time spent in the process. I guess, assuming the downtime is available, I would go for it every time the DC is low enough, like for example a 80% success chance on one check, meaning 64% for two consecutive checks.
Yes, that's what it looks like, provided you succeed at 2 Crafting checks, one to reverse engineer the formula and one to rebuild the item. If you fail at the first check, you're left with the raw materials and they can't be reassembled. If you succeed at the first check but fail at the second, you're again left with the raw materials (minus 10% if it was a critical fail).
So, you have some risk of losing half the value of the item, on top of the time spent in the process. I guess, assuming the downtime is available, I would go for it every time the DC is low enough, like for example a 80% success chance on one check, meaning 64% for two consecutive checks.
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Assuming OP got everything correct, there is no second check if you were going to sell it anyway, as you get full value for the raw materials, so putting it back together is silly.
I am unsure how reverse-engineering a potion works.
Crafting an item at half price takes about 3 month. I wouldn't really consider this unless I knew exactly that I have this much downtime.
My question was for stuff nobody in the party uses. Stuff you'd just sell on town for some money. Since the selling price is the same as the value of the raw materials you get from dismantling the item, I don't really see any disadvantage.
Hm, I had misread the original question. I thought you were aiming to get the formula for free (discounting the time spent) while still keeping the item for use.
As raw materials can be sold at full value while the whole item can only be sold at half value, I see your point. You do get the formula for free from that perspective.