Tweet
So you've followed a leveling template you found somewhere and you have a respectably leveled crafting skill. Now what? How do you use that number to make money? The following is what I've learned from roughly 250 levels of crafting and my efforts to leverage that to make some gil. My main crafts are cooking, alchemy, and woodworking, which I use to produce mostly fast-moving consumable goods, but I imagine most of the same rules apply when making equipment and the like. If someone from a craft that is light on consumables would like to add their insight, I would be most appreciative.
Basically, there are three steps to synthing for gil:
Identify Potential Profit Synths
Obviously it's not efficient to analyze every synth at your disposal every week or so with market values constantly shifting, so the first thing to do is narrow down your search. Here are some things to consider:
What makes you unique as a crafter? This is a big one. Do you have any guild key items? Do you have another craft leveled that your main craft uses as a subskill in any recipes? Are you able to get ahold of certain materials more easily than another player might? Anything that you have that other crafters might not means less competition for you, and a higher value on your products. Synths that are more unique to your abilities have the most potential for easy profit. Identify those first.
What can you HQ consistently? As a broad generalization, NQs tend to sell for a loss or at best a very minor profit, whereas an HQ of the same item will sell for a significant profit. Find a useful item you can regularly HQ and you've probably found a profit synth. Roughly, the HQ tiers are:
51+ levels above the skillcap: ~50% HQ rate
31+ levels above the skillcap: ~25% HQ rate
11+ levels above the skillcap: ~12% HQ rate
In my experience those numbers are fairly accurate when referring to a large sample. Remember that they are averages. If you are doing a synth that you are in the 25% bracket for, it's entirely likely that you may do a dozen synths one day without getting a single HQ, while another day you might strike it rich with six HQs out of twelve. Overall it comes out to 25%.
If you are lower level, what synths near your level have no HQ? Because of the last two questions, you can expect other crafters to try to distinguish themselves by crafting higher level things that others cannot, or lower level things that they can HQ. Lower level things with no HQ will be mostly avoided by higher level crafters with better options. Often these will turn a fair profit to a crafter who is near the synth's level. Good examples are Poison Potion and Jack-o'-Lantern.
What sells quickly? Items that are in high demand sell fastest. Often there is a situation of high demand filled by high supply from other crafters rushing to fill that void. These are easy to identify by scanning the AH list and picking out goods with a high number of items in stock, and checking the price history on those items to make sure they are actually moving at a reasonable pace. These markets tend to shift often and require a lot of attention and shrewd pricing to succeed in, but if you can ride the price line and beat other crafters at harnessing that high demand, you can make a lot of money in short order.
Calculate Your Profit
With that list in hand, start figuring up your costs and profit. When calculating the cost of ingredients, it pays to look up the items on ffxi.somepage.com and see if any of it can be bought cheaper from an NPC.
Your Profit for 12 synths = (StackPrice x YieldPerSynth) - CostOfIngredients
If you're shooting for HQs, it's slightly more complicated. First figure out what your profit would be from synthing all NQs or all HQs.
Profit with HQs = (AllHQProfit x YourHQRate) + (AllNQProfit x (100% - YourHQRate))
So now you know how much money you would make from 12 synths of each of your candidate recipes. Don't rush off yet, though, the synth with the highest number isn't necessarily the best. Consider these things:
Return on Investment (RoI) Simply put, how much money do you get back compared to the money you put in?
RoI = Profit / Cost
If you're short on cash, RoI is king because you want to get the most profit from the least amount of money. Once you build up enough capital that your gil doesn't limit what you can synth, RoI takes a back seat to:
Gil per hour, meaning how much money worth of product would you make if you spent an hour doing nothing but that one synth, including the time it takes for you to collect necessary materials. Time is money, and in order to make money as quickly and efficiently as possible, you want to focus on synths that provide a maximum return for your time. There are some cases, however, that you shouldn't strictly favor gil/hr, since it can be limited by:
Gil per day, which is the term I use to refer to how quickly your goods can be turned into spendable gil; how fast you can sell them. Even if a synth makes a million gil of product an hour, it doesn't do you any good if the item sells so slowly that you won't be able to spend that gil for months. On the other hand, even if a synth has a relatively low RoI or gil/hr, it can still prove to be a worthwhile synth if you can move it through the AH fast enough.
Figure out which factors are most relevant to you, and choose your profit synth(s) based on which perform the best in that area.
General Tips
Don't put all your eggs in one basket. If you only synth one thing, it only takes a slight shift in the market, either from a conquest change, someone deciding to use that recipe for skillup, or any number of other factors, to drop the price below your selling point, strand your goods on the auction house, and shutdown your cash flow. Invest in two or three synths, and keep your AH slots stocked with each of them. That way even if you get screwed on one synth, the others can continue to sell.
Don't overstock on items. That is, don't synth too many at once, for similar reasons as the above. The more inventory you keep on hand, the more useless junk you're stuck with if the market shifts and the synth becomes unprofitable.
Synth at optimal times. This is a complicated issue, but there are known influences by day and moon that affect your chances to HQ, skillup, or fail a synth. In general, Darksday new moon is the best time to get HQs, while Lightsday full moon gives you the least chance of breaks. This timer may prove useful.
Minimize your traveling time. When collecting items from NPCs or getting guild support, traveling time from one town to another can start to seriously cut into your gil per hour. Always look to improve your options in that area. Airships and teleports are a major boon early on. Personally, I've stopped using either in favor of outposting everywhere I need to go.
Build your fame. This is especially helpful if you commonly use a relatively expensive material sold by an NPC. The difference in price of Ground Wasabi for example can be quite substantial depending on your fame. Remember that once you obtain "hero" fame in a nation, that doesn't mean your fame is capped. You can still obtain more fame and continue to reduce vendor prices down to minimum levels.
Take advantage of guild point items. The guild point item of the day will often sell for a huge profit, especially the Veteran level item. The risk is that any stock you have left over at the end of the day is likely to be a loss. Use this handy tool to keep track of the current GP items for your guild.
Hope that's helpful and makes some vague sense to everyone. I intend to follow through with some examples of the synths I regularly use, so that should make things clearer. At the moment, though, I'm sleepy and I don't feel like looking up all the hard numbers, so I'll get to it tomorrow. If anyone has anything they'd like to add or correct, please feel free.
/bow
Basically, there are three steps to synthing for gil:
- Research
- Synthesis
- Profit
Identify Potential Profit Synths
Obviously it's not efficient to analyze every synth at your disposal every week or so with market values constantly shifting, so the first thing to do is narrow down your search. Here are some things to consider:
What makes you unique as a crafter? This is a big one. Do you have any guild key items? Do you have another craft leveled that your main craft uses as a subskill in any recipes? Are you able to get ahold of certain materials more easily than another player might? Anything that you have that other crafters might not means less competition for you, and a higher value on your products. Synths that are more unique to your abilities have the most potential for easy profit. Identify those first.
What can you HQ consistently? As a broad generalization, NQs tend to sell for a loss or at best a very minor profit, whereas an HQ of the same item will sell for a significant profit. Find a useful item you can regularly HQ and you've probably found a profit synth. Roughly, the HQ tiers are:
51+ levels above the skillcap: ~50% HQ rate
31+ levels above the skillcap: ~25% HQ rate
11+ levels above the skillcap: ~12% HQ rate
In my experience those numbers are fairly accurate when referring to a large sample. Remember that they are averages. If you are doing a synth that you are in the 25% bracket for, it's entirely likely that you may do a dozen synths one day without getting a single HQ, while another day you might strike it rich with six HQs out of twelve. Overall it comes out to 25%.
If you are lower level, what synths near your level have no HQ? Because of the last two questions, you can expect other crafters to try to distinguish themselves by crafting higher level things that others cannot, or lower level things that they can HQ. Lower level things with no HQ will be mostly avoided by higher level crafters with better options. Often these will turn a fair profit to a crafter who is near the synth's level. Good examples are Poison Potion and Jack-o'-Lantern.
What sells quickly? Items that are in high demand sell fastest. Often there is a situation of high demand filled by high supply from other crafters rushing to fill that void. These are easy to identify by scanning the AH list and picking out goods with a high number of items in stock, and checking the price history on those items to make sure they are actually moving at a reasonable pace. These markets tend to shift often and require a lot of attention and shrewd pricing to succeed in, but if you can ride the price line and beat other crafters at harnessing that high demand, you can make a lot of money in short order.
Calculate Your Profit
With that list in hand, start figuring up your costs and profit. When calculating the cost of ingredients, it pays to look up the items on ffxi.somepage.com and see if any of it can be bought cheaper from an NPC.
Your Profit for 12 synths = (StackPrice x YieldPerSynth) - CostOfIngredients
If you're shooting for HQs, it's slightly more complicated. First figure out what your profit would be from synthing all NQs or all HQs.
Profit with HQs = (AllHQProfit x YourHQRate) + (AllNQProfit x (100% - YourHQRate))
So now you know how much money you would make from 12 synths of each of your candidate recipes. Don't rush off yet, though, the synth with the highest number isn't necessarily the best. Consider these things:
Return on Investment (RoI) Simply put, how much money do you get back compared to the money you put in?
RoI = Profit / Cost
If you're short on cash, RoI is king because you want to get the most profit from the least amount of money. Once you build up enough capital that your gil doesn't limit what you can synth, RoI takes a back seat to:
Gil per hour, meaning how much money worth of product would you make if you spent an hour doing nothing but that one synth, including the time it takes for you to collect necessary materials. Time is money, and in order to make money as quickly and efficiently as possible, you want to focus on synths that provide a maximum return for your time. There are some cases, however, that you shouldn't strictly favor gil/hr, since it can be limited by:
Gil per day, which is the term I use to refer to how quickly your goods can be turned into spendable gil; how fast you can sell them. Even if a synth makes a million gil of product an hour, it doesn't do you any good if the item sells so slowly that you won't be able to spend that gil for months. On the other hand, even if a synth has a relatively low RoI or gil/hr, it can still prove to be a worthwhile synth if you can move it through the AH fast enough.
Figure out which factors are most relevant to you, and choose your profit synth(s) based on which perform the best in that area.
General Tips
Don't put all your eggs in one basket. If you only synth one thing, it only takes a slight shift in the market, either from a conquest change, someone deciding to use that recipe for skillup, or any number of other factors, to drop the price below your selling point, strand your goods on the auction house, and shutdown your cash flow. Invest in two or three synths, and keep your AH slots stocked with each of them. That way even if you get screwed on one synth, the others can continue to sell.
Don't overstock on items. That is, don't synth too many at once, for similar reasons as the above. The more inventory you keep on hand, the more useless junk you're stuck with if the market shifts and the synth becomes unprofitable.
Synth at optimal times. This is a complicated issue, but there are known influences by day and moon that affect your chances to HQ, skillup, or fail a synth. In general, Darksday new moon is the best time to get HQs, while Lightsday full moon gives you the least chance of breaks. This timer may prove useful.
Minimize your traveling time. When collecting items from NPCs or getting guild support, traveling time from one town to another can start to seriously cut into your gil per hour. Always look to improve your options in that area. Airships and teleports are a major boon early on. Personally, I've stopped using either in favor of outposting everywhere I need to go.
Build your fame. This is especially helpful if you commonly use a relatively expensive material sold by an NPC. The difference in price of Ground Wasabi for example can be quite substantial depending on your fame. Remember that once you obtain "hero" fame in a nation, that doesn't mean your fame is capped. You can still obtain more fame and continue to reduce vendor prices down to minimum levels.
Take advantage of guild point items. The guild point item of the day will often sell for a huge profit, especially the Veteran level item. The risk is that any stock you have left over at the end of the day is likely to be a loss. Use this handy tool to keep track of the current GP items for your guild.
Hope that's helpful and makes some vague sense to everyone. I intend to follow through with some examples of the synths I regularly use, so that should make things clearer. At the moment, though, I'm sleepy and I don't feel like looking up all the hard numbers, so I'll get to it tomorrow. If anyone has anything they'd like to add or correct, please feel free.
/bow
. Stocking up on in-demand items while they're cheaply available can save a lot of money.
Comment