Crafting D.O.A for Gil

[Xhaolyne]

Sadly I am very bad at making money in FF. I spend my time farming stacks of beehive chips, wild onions, & gardening ores. For me to make 1 million gil takes about a month of this...

I have been playing for 7 yrs and yet money making is not my strong suit just grinding gil on top of grinding levels.

Should I concentrate on getting my craft up? Or is there better ways to make money faster, I'm sure its not easier. I do have level 85 jobs just maintaining the gear required is really pushing me away from the game seeing more and more better options have come out.

Thank you!

[cidbahamut]

Re: Crafting D.O.A for Gil

Crafting has been very hit or miss for me, and the profit margins are simply awful most of the time.

I recommend fishing.

I used to be in the same boat as you doing laps around Zegham Hill for my gil. Then I took up fishing and suddenly had more gil than ever before. Buy a Halcyon Rod, take a look at finalfishing.com and hop to it. You won't make a million overnight, but you'll see a return on your investment sooner than you will on taking up a craft.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Crafting D.O.A for Gil

Currently on Ifrit, it costs about 1500 gil for a synth of Shihei. NQ result is 33 shihei.

Assuming breaks even out with HQ1 so you average 33 Shihei per synth attempt, it costs 4500 gil for a stack or toolbag. A stack of ToolBag (Shiehei) then costs 54000 to make, plus a few more gil for the flowers needed to convert Shihei into toolbags.

The AH price for a stack of Toolbag (Shihei) is 90k currently on Ifrit's AH. Even accounting for AH fee and flowers and a few bad luck streak, someone with fairly low Woodworking skill and a bit of time on his hand can make a decent profit off of Shihei.

I find that Ancient Beastcoin (from Limbus) and Alexandrites (from Salvage) sell well. 10 pots on gardening wildgrass seeds average about 18k profit per cycle selling the result to NPC, and the cycle is about a 1 week. There are some drops from Abyssea which can be AH'ed (Kemas Earring on Ifrit for ~230k, for example).

There are a lot of ways to make gils, really, including fishing--which, if you so wish, never needs to lose gil even when you are just skilling up.

* * *

The way of making gil will always change. Once enough people realize how easy it is to make gil from Shihei at this time, many will move in, and cause the price/profit to lower until only people who can HQ a lot will be able to see decent profit. That's just the nature of capitalism.

[Romyro]

Re: Crafting D.O.A for Gil

For 1 mil a month…I would find another thing to farm. You’re better off killing elements and NPCing the clusters for 1k ><.

I’m not a crafter…I’ve tried. It’s just not for me. Here are a few suggests I’ve done in the past though.

If you have BS or KS seals, you can always do those. Stuff like phalanx and Uts:Ni I believe are still pretty profitable. I wanted to buy phalanx last night then I saw it was 450k. Kinda silly to buy when I’m sitting on 1000+ BS.

If you don’t have seals, maybe do FoV pages in high areas for the new Geode drops. Can probably get a couple w/in an hour and sell them for 10-20k a piece. Everyone is trial hungry these days. I’m sure the Pup/Smn/Bst community will love you for Wind/Ice/Earth/Fire geodes.

People are stupid sometimes (myself included), so you can buy spells at NPCs and mark them on up on the AH. Or, look for spells that you can quest pretty much for free and sell those.

If you do abyssea, NM pops items in Scar zones for some reason sell for 20-30k a piece (on cerb)…and they are easy as hell to farm. You can only hold 1 of a kind but can probably get 2-5 different ones. Generally sell quickly too.

If you have sea access, there are a few limbus zones you can easily low-man these days. I duo Apo NW (2 85 Bst/Dnc) for ~50 ABCs. I sold my 25 coins for 7k a piece overnight. And that was maybe an hour of work. Lots of people like Brutal and Loc earring.

It’s been a while since I did this so not sure if it’s profitable anymore…but you can kill Cauctars in Kuftal tunnel…but I don’t recommend solo. I used to do this on Bst/thf so I didn’t get hit with 1000 needles. They drop a stackable gardening item that would sell for 60k+ a stack. No one solo’s those and rarely up on the AH. Sold pretty fast too. I find that one out when getting my Bano Del Sol dagger.

Farm Castle O for Nin Ni spells. Those are worth 20-90k depending on which. Can also get some Brd & Blm spells.

[Malacite]

Re: Crafting D.O.A for Gil

PSA: Blizzard 4 and Fire 4 are over 400k each on Bismark right now, Raise 3 is over 500k. Not sure how long they'll stay this high so farm while the getting's good.

[Aeni]

Re: Crafting D.O.A for Gil

When an online game ages beyond maturity the prospects of making money dwindles with each new expansion released. Unless certain activities are trivial to the point that purchasing mats over the AH or other methods of transaction becomes more preferable than the normal HELM routine, the opportunities grow scarce. This problem is compounded as the population slowly declines which means that less opportunities exist for economy at the lower end of the spectrum.

A perfect example of where new players can still be able to make some financial games through HELM or farming is WoW. New expansions typically means adjustments or changes made to crafting and some crafts become better (on paper) to high end raiders than others. Due to crafting limitations in place this means that players are constantly dropping one craft for another with expansion release. This also means opportunities abound for players to HELM/farm to those players who are more financially situated that they would rather save time buying the mats for their crafts on the AH and this means wealth distribution.

In short, WoW is tailored towards a more socialistic/holistic approach to income distribution while still maintaining the facade and practical applications of a market driven economy. Plus it helps that the population continues to grow rather than regress.

In the current state of FFXI, I find the exact opposite and that the economy stagnates rather than grows. People who have been long time players and have had the wits to build up crafting skills become largely independent of the state of the economy and therefore are self-sufficient. The main economy lies with the end-game content and trade primarily exists at the top and not at the bottom. I would visit the AH in the major cities and Jeuno and notice that as you scan offerings down from the highest level to 50 and then all the way down to 1, you find that the transactions are almost non-existent. It's at the high end where the economy still exists. There still exists a market with consumables and so as others have suggested here, fishing and cooking may be your best bet (or at least supply the materials for recipes that create the products that high end users will consume) Beyond that, it's pretty much a bleak prospect to make headway unless you can build and maintain connections with a viable crafting community and/or raiding LS.

[Aksannyi]

Re: Crafting D.O.A for Gil

To add, part of the reason the economy is pretty much thriving in WoW right now is that the expansion also gave us a higher level cap for our crafts. What was once capped at 450 is now 525. People who are not interested in farming for mats are going to visit the AH to spam their crafts up to cap. And people like me who don't want to spend the gold are happy to wait for the market to calm down.

Also, because of the changes, and I'm guessing also because of the gear reset, there's an abundance of new alts. That means even low-mid level crafters can make a profit off of new players needing any measure of things. Jewelcrafters and Scribes are making the most if I had to guess, as gems and glyphs have never been cheap, but I've made a small fortune myself from making low level bags from materials that I had just sitting around.

There just isn't any of that in FFXI's economy. No recent expansion - and even if there was, it wouldn't uncap crafts. Nor would it cause people to level alts, because you don't need to change characters to change jobs. Once you learn Utsusemi: Ni on your character Butthead, he will never need it again, whereas in WoW, if you needed such a scroll (can't think of any good comparison right at the moment), you'd need it on every single toon you level, which keeps the demand high.

Since there is no real influx of new players to XI, there really is no market for low-mid level stuff. Leveling that part of a craft is painful, and you take a shitload of losses, because your best bet to get rid of the shit is to maybe AH two or three of something (so as not to flood the market) and vendor the rest. Which is, unfortunately, usually a huge loss.

Crafting just isn't viable anymore unless you're already at max. The real profit from crafting is HQing high end items. At this point in the game, even if you try to level a craft as cheaply as possible, it's not likely you'll recoup your losses.

I could never go wrong with farming, a lot of times, except for the fact that it was super boring (to me) and that if I didn't send half of my gear to my mule/npc storage, I never had the space to make it worth my while. Fishing is a good solution, and it's something that I honestly liked to do while LFP.

[Elwynn]

Re: Crafting D.O.A for Gil

So somebody moved your cheese? Look for it somewhere else. It's not that you can't make money in this game, it's that you can't make money doing the same thing forever in this game.

Right now a big money maker for me is doing Besieged whenever I can. You usually get 1600-1900 IS per battle (even if you're KO at the moment it ends). On Sylph, Imperial silvers in front of Kaduru-Haiduru used to bazaar at 1000-1500 back in the day, 2000 a month or two ago, and now 2500. An Imperial Silver costs 100 IS. (but buy them as golds and change them in Nashmau with macros or you'll go crazy)

2500 times 16 = 40000. That means you earn a minimum of 40k gil now just for being in a Besieged battle! Every now and then you just skim IS off the top (I leave 100K behind) and sell the coins in your bazaar. I've made money off this for a while, and it's only gotten better thanks to Abyssea. That's how I paid for my most expensive automaton attachments.

Why? Because people are exping in Abyssea these days, instead of on lolibri. So a lot less people have IS to turn into coins.

Another decent money maker is hunting down Air Elementals for their clusters. Until Abyssea, wind crystals were dirt common, and you were lucky to get 400 per stack. They were the crystal of choice when trying to get rank points for nation missions.

Now that people aren't exping on lolibri anymore (see a pattern there?) they aren't coming home with sacks full of wind crystals. They're important for crafting (people are still crafting out there!), and due to lower supply are up to 3k-5k per stack!

I should get my BST up to 90 so that I can have both my Wide Scan and /THF for TH2. THF/RNG or THF/BST is probably the best, but my THF is only 50.

Another thing to try is selling things in the starter cities. Sell stuff apropriate for the local guilds, and maybe even stuff from other crafts (like thread) that is used in the local crafts. The best part is the no stack tax, earning you an extra 200 gil per stack. One mule each in the two other cities from your main is enough.

My first million? I made it back in mid '08 when I would harvest West Sarutabaruta for hours at a time. Since I barely had to pay attention, I could even do it while watching TV. Red grass cloth was a big money maker. Then the Level Sync update hit, and people no longer wanted the level 20 gear that was made from red grass cloth. At least I got my clothcraft to 50 super-easy from everything I harvested. The point is, you can find something that works for a while, then the world changes, and the economy with it.

I haven't harvested beehive chips and honey in a while, but when I do, I turn the chips into beeswax and save the beeswax and honey on a mule. Every now and then I can go make a bunch of echo drops or silent oils or somesuch. If I have too much, I can sell them in a starter city.

And watch for crazy stuff happening. One day in Bastok, I noticed that Water crystals were going for 4k/stack. It turned out that the RMT had discovered you could buy wildgrass seed in WG, garden it on a trial account, and sell to an NPC for major profit. That's why new accounts (or is it new characters?) can now only harvest one item per pot until they're at least 90 (?) days old.

But my BLM75 could one-shot elementals in Pashhow and La Theine, and I knew where all the pops were. (Water Elementals pop in very specific places, unlike Air Elementals.) I would laugh at all the RDM75s who thought they were such hot shit meleeing those things, when I could nuke one, run to the next pop area, nuke a second, then back to the first, just in time for a repop. I easily made a million from that, probably two.

And ores died partly because the bottom fell out of HQ staves, and partly because they were drops in Abyssea treasure chests. Ores are dead.

[Xhaolyne]

Re: Crafting D.O.A for Gil

So somebody moved your cheese? Look for it somewhere else. It's not that you can't make money in this game, it's that you can't make money doing the same thing forever in this game.

Right now a big money maker for me is doing Besieged whenever I can. You usually get 1600-1900 IS per battle (even if you're KO at the moment it ends). On Sylph, Imperial silvers in front of Kaduru-Haiduru used to bazaar at 1000-1500 back in the day, 2000 a month or two ago, and now 2500. An Imperial Silver costs 100 IS. (but buy them as golds and change them in Nashmau with macros or you'll go crazy)

2500 times 16 = 40000. That means you earn a minimum of 40k gil now just for being in a Besieged battle! Every now and then you just skim IS off the top (I leave 100K behind) and sell the coins in your bazaar. I've made money off this for a while, and it's only gotten better thanks to Abyssea. That's how I paid for my most expensive automaton attachments.

Why? Because people are exping in Abyssea these days, instead of on lolibri. So a lot less people have IS to turn into coins.

Another decent money maker is hunting down Air Elementals for their clusters. Until Abyssea, wind crystals were dirt common, and you were lucky to get 400 per stack. They were the crystal of choice when trying to get rank points for nation missions.

Now that people aren't exping on lolibri anymore (see a pattern there?) they aren't coming home with sacks full of wind crystals. They're important for crafting (people are still crafting out there!), and due to lower supply are up to 3k-5k per stack!

I should get my BST up to 90 so that I can have both my Wide Scan and /THF for TH2. THF/RNG or THF/BST is probably the best, but my THF is only 50.

Another thing to try is selling things in the starter cities. Sell stuff apropriate for the local guilds, and maybe even stuff from other crafts (like thread) that is used in the local crafts. The best part is the no stack tax, earning you an extra 200 gil per stack. One mule each in the two other cities from your main is enough.

My first million? I made it back in mid '08 when I would harvest West Sarutabaruta for hours at a time. Since I barely had to pay attention, I could even do it while watching TV. Red grass cloth was a big money maker. Then the Level Sync update hit, and people no longer wanted the level 20 gear that was made from red grass cloth. At least I got my clothcraft to 50 super-easy from everything I harvested. The point is, you can find something that works for a while, then the world changes, and the economy with it.

I haven't harvested beehive chips and honey in a while, but when I do, I turn the chips into beeswax and save the beeswax and honey on a mule. Every now and then I can go make a bunch of echo drops or silent oils or somesuch. If I have too much, I can sell them in a starter city.

And watch for crazy stuff happening. One day in Bastok, I noticed that Water crystals were going for 4k/stack. It turned out that the RMT had discovered you could buy wildgrass seed in WG, garden it on a trial account, and sell to an NPC for major profit. That's why new accounts (or is it new characters?) can now only harvest one item per pot until they're at least 90 (?) days old.

But my BLM75 could one-shot elementals in Pashhow and La Theine, and I knew where all the pops were. (Water Elementals pop in very specific places, unlike Air Elementals.) I would laugh at all the RDM75s who thought they were such hot shit meleeing those things, when I could nuke one, run to the next pop area, nuke a second, then back to the first, just in time for a repop. I easily made a million from that, probably two.

And ores died partly because the bottom fell out of HQ staves, and partly because they were drops in Abyssea treasure chests. Ores are dead.

I actually think that's an interesting way of making gil. I love besieged and and I have tons of points. That's something that I can definitely do without getting bored. Also grab a couple of my level 50 jobs and level them with sanction... I'll give this one a try and see how well I do. Thanks

[Aeni]

Re: Crafting D.O.A for Gil

So somebody moved your cheese? Look for it somewhere else. It's not that you can't make money in this game, it's that you can't make money doing the same thing forever in this game.

It's easy if you're not a new player. I'm not sure what the circumstances of the OP is or what he is or isn't doing but anyone new breaking into the game would be SOL and even long time players who had quit once before and are coming back into the game will not have any better opportunities than if they had continued to play throughout.

Is there no way to make money? That's not exactly what I said. But, and you have to be quite honest with yourself here, the varying factors and conditions will change depending on what server you are and what exactly your specific needs are. Some people are quite content with the way they are now and while others are trying to make headway as quick as they can. It's the latter and new players that will find the game (in the current state it is in) much difficult than those that have played the game for a long time now.

This is why it's so dramatically different in FFXIV and why (imo) the improvement is a huge success even if the critics didn't strongly believe in the game itself.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Crafting D.O.A for Gil

It's easy if you're not a new player.

Leveling is somewhat difficult at low/mid levels. The kind of gil beginners need? Not really.

Wind Crystals are 1-4k a stack on Ifrit. The standard DD gear? Let's have a sample:

Perle Hauberk: 20k
Haubergeon: 25k
Woodsman Ring: 10k

You can make gil crafting (and I even listed a low-ish craft level example earlier), but really, you can play melee on Wind Crystal money until you have enough Cruor to sell Abyssea gear to NPCs.

Boo-hoo it's hard for newbie players to buy reasonable gear. Cry me a river.

[cidbahamut]

Re: Crafting D.O.A for Gil

Go fishing dammit!

Not that hard.

[Aeni]

Re: Crafting D.O.A for Gil

Leveling is somewhat difficult at low/mid levels. The kind of gil beginners need? Not really.

Wind Crystals are 1-4k a stack on Ifrit. The standard DD gear? Let's have a sample:

Perle Hauberk: 20k
Haubergeon: 25k
Woodsman Ring: 10k

You can make gil crafting (and I even listed a low-ish craft level example earlier), but really, you can play melee on Wind Crystal money until you have enough Cruor to sell Abyssea gear to NPCs.

Boo-hoo it's hard for newbie players to buy reasonable gear. Cry me a river.

I was not aware of the massive price drops on many of those items. Last I was on Hades was when it was still Hades and while I have logged on to my characters a few times since, it was not to *camp* the AH and see if items get put up. Looking at FFXI AH it seems that something like a Haubergeon has decreased in price a whole lot (12K) when it was 50K just a couple of months ago and it was 150K earlier in the year.

However you've touched upon a few items that are OVER SOLD and none of the other items for various slots that would still be valued quite high based on availability rather than any kind of market determination regarding actual cost. I'm not sure what's driving the recent spate of deflation ... are people *dumping* on the AH for any reason at all or is it really a lack of need for any of those items? (i.e., they aren't as good anymore and something came along that's way better)

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Crafting D.O.A for Gil

However you've touched upon a few items that are OVER SOLD and none of the other items for various slots that would still be valued quite high based on availability rather than any kind of market determination regarding actual cost. I'm not sure what's driving the recent spate of deflation ... are people *dumping* on the AH for any reason at all or is it really a lack of need for any of those items? (i.e., they aren't as good anymore and something came along that's way better)

Can't figure out what you're trying to say; either way, new players aren't stuck as you've supposed.

Think of it this way: HQ Ice Staff now can be had for 90-100k--or, equivalent to 25 stacks of Wind Crystals (~4.1k on Ifrit at the moment), or fewer. And, a new mage player can get by perfectly well on an NQ Ice staff, worth about 10k.

* * *

Instead of making up grandiose pronouncements you couldn't back up like "economy stagnates rather than grows", "anyone new breaking into the game would be SOL", and "trade primarily exists at the top and not at the bottom", why not just make a gear set suitable for new players, and price it?

You'll find that for the most part, things aren't that expensive.

Take ground-level view of what's happening in FF11 will do you much more good than keep coming up with more headache-inducing and complicated excuses on why your idea of FF11's currently economic state didn't match reality. Or worse, trying to bend reality to fit your idea that FF11's economy is broken.

Really, that bit about "anyone new breaking into the game would be SOL" had me completely floored.

[Clever Ninja]

Re: Crafting D.O.A for Gil

I was not aware of the massive price drops on many of those items. Last I was on Hades was when it was still Hades and while I have logged on to my characters a few times since, it was not to *camp* the AH and see if items get put up. Looking at FFXI AH it seems that something like a Haubergeon has decreased in price a whole lot (12K) when it was 50K just a couple of months ago and it was 150K earlier in the year.

However you've touched upon a few items that are OVER SOLD and none of the other items for various slots that would still be valued quite high based on availability rather than any kind of market determination regarding actual cost. I'm not sure what's driving the recent spate of deflation ... are people *dumping* on the AH for any reason at all or is it really a lack of need for any of those items? (i.e., they aren't as good anymore and something came along that's way better)

Because all this gear that was acceptable at 75 or even the standard is now not, so when some new 76+ upgrade rolls around people sell it, and since the demand no longer meets the supply the price has dropped even more on so many of these items. Main reason why 'new' items such as Zeal cap before the cap increase are cheap now. Even really expensive stuff like Fuma and O. Kotes have dropped in price for simple reasons that more people are camping and getting the Rare/Ex versions, so they are no longer desired.

Minus a few choice pieces here and there I don't see how anything is really expensive for a new person anymore. With crystal prices jumping back up cause of the smaller amount of people doing stuff in Conquest zones, gil isn't gonna be a new players issue. Partying will be.