Craft one sword: Iron Plates (135 cats) x 6 = 810 cats and I can only sell it for 983 cats which means that I'm doing 173 cats profit per sword.
Time wasted: (1) mining the Iron Ore, (2) forging the Iron Plates and (3) smiting the weapon means that you can make like max 6 swords per day.
However you need at least 5 companions to keep that rhythm (1 crafter, 2 miners and 2 forgers) and they will get hungry which means additional expenses and a meager profit at the end of the day (something like 1000 cats).
The alternative is to buy Iron Plates (175 cats/piece) and in this case the craft price is Iron Plates (175 cats) x 6 = 1050 cats which bring the final profit to a staggering -67 cats per sword (-402 cats per day).
In the second case the only time wasted is smiting the weapon and for that negative profit you save the food expenses for 4 people which can do something else ... which might actually be more profitable in the end!
Just might because it depends on what the other guys are doing besides being hungry.
Anyway, we have two things:
1) Mining is absolutely pointless. Waste of time and resources. It's better to buy materials from traders. I guess the same applies to farming.
2) You cannot really make a profit with weapons crafting unless you reach Tech 5 which is basically end game stuff (at which point it's pointless).
I did not want to rob the traders because that's like cheating imho (often it trivializes the entire experience in RPGs) therefore I decided to try the farming/crafting paths. Farming did not work because the area around Hub is a desert therefore mining/weapon crafting seemed like a good idea. At first I did not pay attention because I had some cats from some fights (baited some bandits to fight into the Bar) but after a couple of hours I've realized that I'm almost broke. Well, I've optimized my sword production process
I've put some torches and lights so that my guys could work night and day but still ... no profit. My only escape from bankruptcy were some raids. Next step was to acquire blueprints and check for the most profitable one. Well, the same shit. Then I walked half of the map but the prices seemed to be the same in every location. And then I had to stop and face the reality: the crafting in this game is pointless because the game economy is rigged. Instead of simulating locals market, the game implements stupid price tables (or something similar) which make sure that mining/crafting is time consuming and the resulting profit is meager.
In other words: the developer is a moron who managed to implement systems which punish completely legit play-styles while at the same time the most exploitative/retarded approaches are fine: (1) rob the traders and (2) bait guards into killing bandits/animals.
Fuck this game. On one hand it got potential but on the other hand there are some really shitty mechanics in it.