Is crafting a dead end in ffxi now for profit?

[Pribthecreator]

Is crafting dead nowadays? Is there real money in this anymore? In any craft is there any REAL money to be made? It seems everything I read says "small profit gain if you farm" or ok profit if youu get an hq. What is the truth?

[Caspian]

Re: Is crafting a dead end in ffxi now for profit?

There will be certain recipes you skill up on in certain crafts that may make a little money or break even while you're making them, but the majority of money made in crafting comes from HQ'ing items. There are so many people in the game that have lvl 100+3 crafts that NQ'ing upper level items isn't worth it because too many people can make them and they're already used by people skilling up. The money to be made comes from getting to 100, getting the +skill items from the guild and playing the odds on hq'ing at the right time of the moon cycle, etc.
To directly answer your question: Both are true. There are some crafts with certain recipes where the ingredients can be farmed and then crafted to make a little more gil than you would have had you just sold ingredients directly. Ofcourse you could also try and buy those ingredients on the ah, but then you're out cash up front (more if the sellers are trying to price gouge) and you can run the risk of the product not moving for a little bit and you out gil for awhile until you're finally able to move it. There are also other recipes that where the NQ is a significant loss in gil, but the HQ is a major payout. Thats what I was talking about playing the odds on HQ'ing. Given how much over the cap you are, you have certain odds of HQ'ing the recipe. For certain recipes the money made from hq'ing accounts for those odds and then some.
Basically, there's money to be had in crafting, you just have to research your server and in many cases have to be at max skill to really do well with it. Consider it a long term investment.

[Szkol]

Re: Is crafting a dead end in ffxi now for profit?

As with ALL other methods of making money in this game, crafting takes time and effort to make money.

That being said, I don't know if crafting is the quickest or easiest way to make money, but yes, there is money in it, good money too. And, as you mentioned above, your profits improve when you farm your own mats or when you HQ-

Don't expect to start up a craft and be making millions of gil quickly, or ever. Also don't expect to start up a craft and be making hundreds of thousands of gil quickly.


For myself, i make a good buck at woodworking. It's been profitable enough for me to supply my RNG with ammo and gear for 53 levels, as well as pay for itself all the way up to my current skill level of 58. I'll also say that only NOW am I really seeing a very good flow of income. At this level of woodworking, I can HQ status bolts pretty regularly, and the margins are great. It costs me about 2100 gil to make a stack of bloody bolts, for example, but I can sell them for 4000 gil per stack. That's a 1900 gil profit per stack. However, when I HQ bloody bolts, it may only cost me 1400 or 800 gil for a stack of bolts. In that case, my profit is much more significant.

It all depends on what is the better fit for you. With crafting, you can profit with lots of different synths. Good profit, however comes with more crafting skill. This means making lots of consumables out of fewer mats, or it means making HQ equipment pieces. The higher level you are in crafting, the more valuable your skills are to everyone else, and the more you'll profit. With farming, it's largely the same. Anyone can farm, but the big money comes when you have a very high level character that can take down mobs that very few players can.

Either way, there will be effort involved, if you're looking for big money.

[Elwynn]

Re: Is crafting a dead end in ffxi now for profit?

It's possible to make money without a craft at 90+, but it's not the big money. As was said already, the big money is in HQ, and to do that you need to be 11, 31 or 51 levels above the skill cap of a given synth. This is usually just as true with consumables as it is with equipment because more HQ means more product from the same amount of materials.

* You can be more efficient at harvesting/mining/etc. by crafting raw materials in the field. That makes better use of your inventory space and lets you get more stuff per trip. Be aware of what you can make with the stuff you would otherwise throw away. I only recently realized that the Dhalmel Saliva that I threw away as an annoyance while farming dhalmel hides and femurs could be easily synthed into vitriol, which is used to make acid bolts. But the saliva Rare/Ex, so it has to be synthed on the spot.

* There are synths out there which can make you money under the right conditions, and sell things to NPCs for a profit. This is probably harder on a high population server.

* When there is an expansion or update, there is usually a temporary demand for any new crafted items.

* See if you can find a need, especially at one of the three main cities. Sometimes you don't even need to craft anything to make money if you can find a cheap source, but you might not notice the need until you try leveling crafting. One craft's synths may need materials from another craft.

* And of course, crafting can save you money (and sometimes time too) by letting you make your own stuff.

* Consumables without an HQ level the field. Yagudo Drink is in high demand, but someone with 100 in cooking will make no more profit from it than someone with 60 in cooking.

* Remember that if you pick a craft that everyone else has, more competition = less profit. Cooking is a good example of this. I got to level 50 in a couple of days, so now I can make Yagudo Drink any time I want. Even if I don't sell it, that's still one less customer.

* There are synths which turn a small profit with the NQ because they are multi-craft synths. If they have caps no higher than the mid 60s (which can be reached with advanced synthesis support), you can synth the items even with 100 in a different craft. Many people level one craft to 100 while barely leveling the others, especially on mules, which means less competition for these synths. If a synth requires 66 in one craft and 45 in another, having 100 in the first craft doesn't help if you have 5 in the other.

* Get key items. Some of them let you be more efficient (using less crystals in less synths, and letting you work faster), and then there are the key items which let you make certain types of items. These take a bit of effort, meaning a little less competition. All crafts have Purification/Ensorcellment, letting you make magical items with anima, and there are other key items in some crafts. Cooking has key items for sushi, desserts, etc., and Alchemy and Goldsmithing have key items for making puppet parts.

* Don't flood the AH. Please. I've seen too many times when someone puts up four or more of a slow seller item on the AH at an undercut price just because that's what he was skillling up on. That not only loses money for the seller, it loses money for everyone else as well. And if it's a fast seller (Yagudo Drink again), there's no need to undercut in the first place.


The economy seems to have finally bottomed out from the RMT purge deflation (thank you ffxiah.com charts), and deflation is bad for selling things because people will tend to wait for prices to go down. The economy has picked up a bit in the past month, so this may not be a bad time to start crafting.

[Szkol]

Re: Is crafting a dead end in ffxi now for profit?

I thought of a few more tips for you-

If you're going to go the route of consumables, weigh the possible benefits of selling a portion of your synths singly. It's more convenient for buyers and sellers alike for people to buy items a stack at a time, but sometimes buyers don't need a whole stack of something, and they're willing to pay a slightly higher per/item price.

Also, find a niche- the post above suggested using the home cities- I;ve had good luck with that. If you discover that people buy out the entire quantity of an item as soon as it goes up for sale fill that void by making those items regularly available.


I have an example that demonstrates both of the above tips- going back again, to my bloody bolt synthing. Previously I had been synthing Acid bolts and selling them unquivered in the 3 home cities at a decent rate for a good profit. The problem was, I was running into an RMT doing the same thing- and he eventually pushed me out of the market. I decided to try out bloody bolts, and I quivered a few to use on my RNG. I ended up not using them, and had 4 individual quiver sitting in my MH, and decided to AH them singly. I noticed that noone else was selling individual bloody quivers, and much to my surprise, the 4 I put up each sold within 1/2 a day. My original intent was to stack the quivers, and sell the stack for 36k, which is 3k per quiver. Selling them individually nets me 4k per quiver, and they were still selling fast. 3 days later, I had burned throgh an entire stack of bloody bolt heads and only had 3 quivers left unsold at the auction house. I could have sold 3 stack of quivers for around 108k, but by selling all of those quivers singly, I instead made about 144k. Granted, those quiver stack would have probably sold in 1 or 2 days, but in my book, an extra 36k just for waiting a day is absolutely worth it.

[Clever Ninja]

Re: Is crafting a dead end in ffxi now for profit?

There are profits in every craft, you just have to A) level it to a decent level for some good HQ/desynth rates and B) watch the market. Now, i haven't been crafting long, Alchemy, but just thru watching the market and being patient I've generally made a slight profit on some synths, and barely broken even on others(only time I lost gil was trying the 2nd Silent Oils synth in the 20's. God that hurt...).

For example, other day in Whitegate I caught 7 Tonberry lanterns up at 1k a piece, bought em all. Still in my FFXIAH log if you want to verify.

From these I netted over 30 Glass fibers(3 HQ'd at 9 Loops a piece) with 2 full breaks on Lightning Day(didnt get the Advanced Imaging, big mistake), which turns out to a 13k profit after taking into account the stack of crystals I had to buy, or in my case a 13k savings since I've been going the Glass Fiber route for skillups. It takes a lot longer since I'm dependent on the supply of Goblin Masks/Moblin Masks/Tonberry Lanterns, but rarely have I ever breaked on these desynths to not at the least come out even with the current market price, so it worked for me.

This was only possible because of how the market for those desynths items are on my server, and since those 30ish(lets say 32) fibers will work out to around 4 full stacks of prism powders, which can go for 6k a stack if you sell em when the market is running low, I made 24k, which is either breaking even/slight loss depending on how much I get light crystals for if I buy em. All of this from 8.2k worth of Tonberry lanterns and a stack of Lightning Crystals.

So yea, not much talk about profit there, but eventually once I get my skill a bit higher, I can eventually do enough on desynths to make profits from just those when I horde enough if the market for Glass Fibers doesn't take a nosedive for awhile. Sorry for ranting, but just wanted to reinforce again that profits ARE possible, it just requires a good deal of researching to figure out what works best for you and your server.

[Wise Donkey]

Re: Is crafting a dead end in ffxi now for profit?

In my experience, consumable items are the way to go. That doesn't necessarily mean food, ammo, and ninja tools. Try making lower level recipes that create ingredients for higher level recipes. I have had good results making Beeswax from chips. An important factor in that is that I am 51+ over the cap for the recipe so I HQ a lot. The profit isn't that great if you buy the chips, but if you farm them, and they are hella easy to farm, it is not too bad.

The problem with the non-consumable items is that FFXI has been around for so long and so many people craft now that these items, that can be resold after you are done with them, are in great supply, and people reselling after they buy new gear aren't too worried about making a profit, they just want some gil back for their new gear.

[Durahansolo]

Re: Is crafting a dead end in ffxi now for profit?

The best-known goals of the alchemists were the transmutation of common metals into gold (called chrysopoeia) or silver (less well known is plant alchemy, or "spagyric"); the creation of a "panacea", or the elixir of life, a remedy that supposedly would cure all diseases and prolong life indefinitely; and the discovery of a universal solvent.[4]

In theory you turn things you make with alchemy into gold. In FFXI Alchemy it is not physically gold ingots, but you turn items you create into the Auction House for gold (gil). Anyways, I leveled my crafts differently because I didn't believe I'd achieve enough gil to reach 100 in a craft. My stats are as follows:

Alchemy: 81
Woodworking: 69
Cooking: 63

Before you ask "MAN WHY THE HELL DID YOU DO THAT?!", this will be my setup until I get enough gil to make my own crafting mules for woodworking and cooking. At this time, this method is very convenient for me. After mules are leveled, I'll cap down woodworking and cooking down to 60 and use my mules to circulate crafts.

At this time, I craft status bolts with woodworking and can HQ them at a good rate since I'm 51+ higher than the status bolt cap. I can also craft Demon arrows, not hq, but just being able to make those nets you a pretty good profit sometimes. When I was leveling woodworking, Demon Arrows actually made me a profit since the materials weren't extremely expensive and they sold pretty fast. Alchemy is 81 which allows me to make all of the status bolt heads which I cannot HQ, but I can HQ the actual bolts with woodworking. When I feel like farming, I go out and farm about 6-7stacks of beehive chips and 2-3 stacks of honey and buy 2-3 stacks on top of that and then use Cooking to turn all of the beehive chips to honey (HQ 51+). Lastly I take the honey and turn those into echo drops with alchemy (HQ 51+). That's my main use for it and I'm sure there are others. I also bought Lumberjack with guild points so I can bundle lumber/use less crystals, and craft faster. I also bought Alchemy's Trituration which I use all the time when making Echo Drops.