Leveling Alchemy to make bolt heads cheaply?

[Takelli]

Well. I just started alchemy not too long ago, and to get from skill 6 to 16, I need tons of crystals. Making the Poison dust, and the mercury, then making them into Poison Potions at lvl 16 to lvl 18. The thing is... I need TONS of lightning crystals. I tried farming them, and in with in 6 or 7 hours of farming, I only got four lightning clusters.

I do not want to buy the clusters or crystals as I will need to buy the fish (Yellow Globe X2+Lightning Crystal. Fish costs 2k/Stack, and Cluster 1.5k/stack so it will be costly to buy all of it.) to make the poison dust. (Fishing lvl 1, and I REALLY despise how boring fishing is in the game.)

So what My question basically is... Does anyone know of a good zone (And Possibly <pos>?) that has a decent amount of thunder elemental spawns, and is almost always a thunder weather like the Glacier is almost always icy (Got 28 Ice clusters in under 15 mins... Unreal I know. But that's what It seemed like)?

Anywhere will be fine as long as a 75 Sam/Dnc with decent gear can kill them. Please help me. I am very poor in the game, and it takes too long to make money. I am doing this craft to supply my thief and ranger with cheap home made bolts. Any help is appreciated. thanks! :D

I tried Lower Delk's Tower. 2 spawns every hour. Pashhow Marshlands over three hours no lightning weather, Jugner forest same, and Carpenters Landing. (Was in there for like 10 mins then decided to go to bed. )

[Sabaron]

Re: Leveling Alchemy to make bolt heads cheaply?

Crafting is a fluid science. There are many guides. The best guide is your own brain.

When you are advancing, there will always be 10 points worth of recipes that you can use to gain skill. The best thing to do is to look at these recipes and decide which ones are profitable and how profitable and which ones are lossy and how lossy then create a bank of recipes which you will attempt that will yield the best result.

You can start with a guide, but AH markets fluctuate wildly so just because something was profitable at the time the guide was written, doesn't mean that it works that way when you do it. Of course, the number one thing you are looking for is the exceedingly rare, "sure thing". This is a recipe which is profitable or has a a controllable loss when you sell it to NPC merchants.

Learn to use Excel to analyze your crafting recipes. Learn to recognize the rates at which your recipes sell. Learn to use FFXIAH.com (Please note: It doesn't always give you the correct answer, but it can tell you how people buy things).

You should focus your analysis on these measures prioritized to suit your need:

1. Liquidity: The time it takes to convert your products into gil.
2. Cost: The amount of invested gil required to manufacture the products.
3. Profit: The amount of gil received in exchange for manufactured products.
4. Availability: The availability of materials to manufacture the products.
5. Skill rate: The rate at which skill is gained from the synthesis.
6. Saturation: The number of days worth of supply of a given product currently present on the market.
7. Inventory: The amount of space that it takes to retain inventory of the product versus the amount you can reliably store.

[Takelli]

Re: Leveling Alchemy to make bolt heads cheaply?

When you are advancing, there will always be 10 points worth of recipes that you can use to gain skill. The best thing to do is to look at these recipes and decide which ones are profitable and how profitable and which ones are lossy and how lossy then create a bank of recipes which you will attempt that will yield the best result

I have been looking at other guides. The main guides I follow are the ones written by Ctownwoody. got Cooking to 50 fairly cheaply, and at profit at times. I do look at the recipes, and see if it will be profitable. Just like the Tsurara, very low profit if you farm the clusters.

Learn to use Excel to analyze your crafting recipes. Learn to recognize the rates at which your recipes sell. Learn to use FFXIAH.com (Please note: It doesn't always give you the correct answer, but it can tell you how people buy things).

I have never used Excel, but its like the spread sheet right?

I do use FFXI AH when I am looking at recipes and not near an in AH, or in game at that moment. Its helped me make some minor money, and low loss crafts.

Thanks for the tips as well.

The skill rate gain though... How do you increase your skill gain. I always thought it was a set number of crafts with a (reasonable) random number added to it, and you would gain like .1, or .2 increase depending on how far, or close you are to the skill cap.

[Sabaron]

Re: Leveling Alchemy to make bolt heads cheaply?

I have been looking at other guides. The main guides I follow are the ones written by Ctownwoody. got Cooking to 50 fairly cheaply, and at profit at times. I do look at the recipes, and see if it will be profitable. Just like the Tsurara, very low profit if you farm the clusters.



I have never used Excel, but its like the spread sheet right?

I do use FFXI AH when I am looking at recipes and not near an in AH, or in game at that moment. Its helped me make some minor money, and low loss crafts.

Thanks for the tips as well.

If you don't have Excel, you can use what I use:

www.OpenOffice.org Calculator

and, yes, it's a Spreadsheet.

Learning to craft involves learning the mechanics of the FFXI economy.

The first lesson of the FFXI Economy you should learn is that the Durable Goods economy in FFXI is necessarily Deflationary which means that if you have a durable product, the longer you keep it the less it is worth (in general). When a new product or recipe comes on the market, it will be immensely profitable (provided the item is useful), but it will sharply fall and then taper off. As time goes on, it will continue to decline slowly.

[Takelli]

Re: Leveling Alchemy to make bolt heads cheaply?

If you don't have Excel, you can use what I use:

<Link here> Calculator

and, yes, it's a Spreadsheet.

Cool thanks for the link.

It shouldn't take too long to figure out since it is a spread sheet then. I usually just used word pad to keep track of the mats, and gil I was using, and how much profit/loss it had to the craft.

The first lesson of the FFXI Economy you should learn is that the Durable Goods economy in FFXI is necessarily Deflationary which means that if you have a durable product, the longer you keep it the less it is worth (in general). When a new product or recipe comes on the market, it will be immensely profitable (provided the item is useful), but it will sharply fall and then taper off. As time goes on, it will continue to decline slowly.

So to make a profit, I need to craft a needed item that isn't being crafted as often, then switch when there's too many in the market place?

So like the Shihahi(Utsemi tool i think), where they are almost always a profit. The same with the bolt heads which sell for a good amount, but take time to create a full stack.

[Sabaron]

Re: Leveling Alchemy to make bolt heads cheaply?

Exactly, if you focus on one thing, you'll find that you have fewer opportunities to make money. The rarer the item, the less effected it will be by saturation, but rarer items usually require very large investments to be profitable and cannot be attempted all the time because of either the timing of the synthesis or the availability of the materials. This offers some protection for these recipes from saturation.

Ammunition products, however, are always subject to saturation. The best way to do ammunition is to make sure all of your sub-crafts are well levelled (because HQs are based on both) and be prepared to hold onto them. If you make the actual ammunition (and not just the heads), then make sure you stack them in bags and keep some bags in your inventory. When you see a tie in the Conquest Tally, once the existing bagged munitions run out, the price will spike and you can make a lot of money.

In general, you will make modest profits. Fortunes are made on spikes. Diligence will keep your coffers filling, but taking shrewd advantage of sales opportunities will make you rich.

[Takelli]

Re: Leveling Alchemy to make bolt heads cheaply?

Exactly, if you focus on one thing, you'll find that you have fewer opportunities to make money. The rarer the item, the less effected it will be by saturation, but rarer items usually require very large investments to be profitable and cannot be attempted all the time because of either the timing of the synthesis or the availability of the materials. This offers some protection for these recipes from saturation.

Ammunition products, however, are always subject to saturation. The best way to do ammunition is to make sure all of your sub-crafts are well levelled (because HQs are based on both) and be prepared to hold onto them. If you make the actual ammunition (and not just the heads), then make sure you stack them in bags and keep some bags in your inventory. When you see a tie in the Conquest Tally, once the existing bagged munitions run out, the price will spike and you can make a lot of money.

In general, you will make modest profits. Fortunes are made on spikes. Diligence will keep your coffers filling, but taking shrewd advantage of sales opportunities will make you rich.

That is almost exactly what I plan on doing. Keep like 2-3 Quivers of each Bolt type. (Acid, Bloody, Sleep) in my MH, and when the conquest ties, half way in the week like wendsday, or thursday sell them in the AH for a good price. I will also do the same with the bolt heads when I can HQ3 them. My plan is to max out Alchemy at 100, and Smithing at 60 on my character who makes the bolt heads. Then max out my wood working, and possibly another sub craft that might be useful on my character I am using as my Thief.

But I don't think that bolts have a sub craft to worry about when you want to HQ them they are just 16 for the HQ wood working. The bolt heads though... 41 Alchemy, 18 Smithing for the Acid.

I will use that for profit, and armor for when I need new armor. And possibly tools for when I decided to lvl ninja, which I know I will be forced to for thf and rng. (Hated nin for some reason. idk why.)

[MrMageo]

Re: Leveling Alchemy to make bolt heads cheaply?

I don't know if it was answered or not but I think Behemoths Domain (off of Qufim) is Thunder always. It is usually vacant except around B/KB pop times. Also if my memory serves me correctly you should be able to get lots of clusters from sky elementals as well, as no one usually farms them. (They can be a handful without a casting job.)

To level quickly I would spam WW to keep in line with your bolt heads. Being able to quickly turn them around into bolts will have you making quick money. Enough to keep you steady through the ugh levels of crafting.

Also watch who is selling off fish if you do not feel like fishing. Sometimes people are willing to make a deal. Such as trading you stacks of fish for completed status bolts. It saves you both money and some people enjoy fishing.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Leveling Alchemy to make bolt heads cheaply?

Best place to farm Lightning in my experience is still Middle Delkfutt's Tower, which is under lightning weather about 50% of the time. Not how I'd make my gil these days, but it would arguably lower some cost to crafting. Plus they're good for desynthing gobbie armor in the 20s onward.

[Takelli]

Re: Leveling Alchemy to make bolt heads cheaply?

So Behomeths Domain is almost constantly in thunder weather? I will have to check that out. Thanks. I hope what I have now will get me to 16, then I can just make poison potions with the before crafts and make some (tidy bit of) good gil. I will try middle Delkfutts tower if I am able to as well. I just don't like that place. Too many bad experiences, plus the mission. Hehe.

As for sky... I can't really do that as I am unable to acess that area. I still need to do the missions that lead up to it and such. I really need to get those done...

As for the Wood Working. I will be doing that as soon as I am able to make blind bolts, and level them with my mule. I will take WW up to 100 on my mule. But on my main I will take alchemy to 100 and smithing to 60 to (hopefully) HQ the bolt heads.

Yea, I do HATE fishing as I have said before lol. I will try to make a deal or something. If not then I will just buy the fish. It isn't too hard to get some decent money if you just farm all day long. Yea, its not as great as it used to be with the decrease in beast blood, but it does its job.

What I am doing is farming ALL crystals, and most of the materials. If its too hard to get or it takes forever to drop then just buy it, and farm the gil back later.

Do you know of any othe rplaces that has elementals up most of the time as well?

Thanks for the information. This helped so much!

[Elwynn]

Re: Leveling Alchemy to make bolt heads cheaply?

Here's my basics on farming elementals:

I had to get WHM up to a decent level (maybe 40 or so?) before I could go farming elementals, but with the teleports, you can easily get to three zones: Holla for water/wind, Dem for earth/lighting, and Mea for earth/wind. These are the lowest level elementals, and some of the most useful for crafting. You'll still be missing Fire, Dark, and Light, but you can get Fire from mob drops while xp-ing, and Dark from xp-ing off of funguars. Ice is pretty useless (leathercraft mantles and some cooking mostly), so it should be cheap enough to just buy it off the AH.

The next levels up are in Jugner (lightning and I think water), Pashhow (lightning and water), and Meriphitaud (earth and... fire? I've actually never farmed that zone for elementals.) As a 75 WHM, these are also pretty easy. One day while I was logging in Jugner, I came home with like a dozen lightning clusters. And Qufim is good for lightning, and sometimes light, but only right after midnight; I'm not sure what time of the year.

Fire in Valkurm and Light in Qufim go away so quickly that they're had to farm. I still haven't yet gotten to a light elemental in Qufim in time, between the short weather duration and the competition.

Go to ffxiclopedia and learn the elemental pop area maps. You may find that when the weather is right, you can give an elemental a drive-by mugging while on your way to somewhere else. I also love mugging rams when I'm going from Dem to Selbina.

Another thing to do for certain crafts is HELM (Harvesting Excavation Logging and Mining). Harvesting W. Sarutabaruta and Giddeus will really help with leveling clothcraft to 60, and logging Ghelsba will really help with woodworking, though to only 30(?) or so.

Learning where there are certain mobs that drop a lot of what you're crafting with is good too. The Hecteyes in the entrance area of Attohwa Chasm are not a bad place to get mercury, though a good deal on Cobalt Jellyfish at the fishing guild in Windy might be much better.

[Takelli]

Re: Leveling Alchemy to make bolt heads cheaply?

Yea fire and light are going to be the hardest I think. But if I can make enough money as I am leveling the craft I will just buy the crystals. I do prefer farming them though. Esp if its a total loss synth.

The monsters. I do use the wiki to find the monsters with the best drop rates, and most of them in an area. I am also levelng ranger for the widescan to find them easier.

I guess I gotta go see if I can find a spawn map and time for them. :/

[Solymir]

Re: Leveling Alchemy to make bolt heads cheaply?

You may want too look into farming something else, selling it and then buying lightning crystals. I recently took alchemy from 5-56 and can totally sympathize with the cost of some of the level gaps. One place I would recommend is the area of E-5, F-5 in Pashhow Marshlands. Kill everything here, and I do mean everything. All of the mobs at this location have something worth selling on AH or to an npc. Make sure you have inventory space before you head out and just fill up on anything that drops. During Lightning weather you can move East of that area to hunt Lightning elementals.

Water Elementals pop at this location during water weather. I don't know what the water crystal market is like on your server, but on Fenrir it has skyrocketed as of late. I have seen stacks go for as high as 5k at the Bastok AH, due to the Alchemy Guild being there I'm sure. Of course it won't be long until you need water crystals so saving those for later may be in your best interest.

Either way my original statement stands. Farm something you know has a good return > get gil > buy crystals.

[Takelli]

Re: Leveling Alchemy to make bolt heads cheaply?

I know what you mean by farming the stuff then selling it for a profit at AH or NPC. I used to farm bird blood till they nerfed the sell price. Used to make like 20/hour there. I can farm the bats in Zi'Tah for a while. Just so that I can get the gil to level it again. So far I have gotten it to level 20. All at profit as well, which I was surprised. But I am looking at the crafts now and its just like... Why do they gotta cost so much?

I leveld Smithing to lvl 14 which costed a ton to do, and Woodworking which at this moment is level 8, but I just ran out of gil now.

The crystal prices in the Alexander server has gone up. But nothing like 5k from what I have seen (The most being 1.5k). But I do go to different AH, and check them before actually buying anything. Also if I am not near one that sells the crystals cheap, I ask a friend or LS member that is near for them, and pay them back.

But, the bats in Zi'Tah are not farmed anymore. Which is a surprise so you can get a decent amount from them there. But it takes time that many people don't want to spend. But I will just to beable to craft the items that I need and get the cheaply.

<Edit>

I also noticed something as I have been crafted. The more time I spend on FFXI just crafting. The longer it takes for the craft to level up. I actually have crafts, and the .# its gone up. When I first started when I got on it was .2 every other craft. But as I crafted over the course of three hours. It dropped down to .1 every 3-4 crafts skill up.

Or is that just me that its happening to?

[Durahansolo]

Re: Leveling Alchemy to make bolt heads cheaply?

I also noticed something as I have been crafted. The more time I spend on FFXI just crafting. The longer it takes for the craft to level up. I actually have crafts, and the .# its gone up. When I first started when I got on it was .2 every other craft. But as I crafted over the course of three hours. It dropped down to .1 every 3-4 crafts skill up.

Or is that just me that its happening to?

Higher you go in crafting, the lower the skillups get and the less frequent. You also have to take into account the direction you are facing, the crystal you are using, and the day of the week. For example i took Goldsmithing from 10-20 leveling off of silver ingots, only crafting on Firesday, Iceday, and sometimes Darksday with Fire Crystals and advanced guild support. Firesday and Iceday were both days where the Fire Crystal would be strong. It is possible that if I had tried the same recipe on any other day and especially watersday I would've probably had double or triple the amount of crystal breaks. Also, I've noticed the closer you get to the cap of the synth, the lower the skillup is, unless you get lucky or you are crafting on a day that is strong against the crystal and you are facing a direction that your crystal is weak against. For Example: the cap for an item is 28 and you are 27.3 usually that's where it starts to slow down for me at least.

EDIT>>

I also leveled alchemy to make my own bolt heads for woodworking. I figure if I ever run across enough gil, I might take it near 90, its 81 atm. I just think its cool that for the price that I'd pay for 1 stack of bloody bolt heads, I can make almost 2 1/3 stacks of heads. I can also HQ the bolts at a pretty good rate so it works out in the end. If the bolt market is down, sometimes I do Echo Drops, but that requres farming of beehive chips and honey.