Tips on how to afford BLM

[meeyutu]

Currently I'm BLM41, and looking ahead it seems that I have lots of spells (elementalGA IIs, and elemental IIIs) ahead of me that are only dropped by mobs much higher than the spell level, and Elemental staffs.

I can make ok cash fishing (probably about 80k for a full day - probably less now that fishing has been nerfed), but on Midgardsomror the AH prices for spells, and elemental staffs are insanely high.

Crafting on this server is a bust too since it takes massive gil losses and tons of time to get high enough to make any money.

NM's are pretty hard to get as well with all of the voke bots and gil sellers camping everything 24/7.

Does anyone have any helpful suggestions on how a BLM40-50 can make gil?

Currently I see the following options:
-farm farm farm farm farm
-fish fish fish fish fish
-BCNM40s (These might not be too great either because of the sad economy on the server)

[bonovoxpsu]

lol - they're not insanely high.

last i heard, dark staff prices puked out, down to 250k or so.

don't know if that's true, i bought mine way back when it was at 450k.

voke bots? pfft. i've dia pulled and beaten people to a mob. they aren't bots, they're people sitting there voke spamming. NM's are hard to win, because of the ludacris amount of money they can provide with one killing. very competitive.

economy isn't sad at all, IMHO. there are price fluxuations... you just need to catch them when they are advantageous to you.

gil doesn't come easy in this game. everyone has put in their time to get the equipment they want/need. 40-50, you might want to consider killing bees, crawlers, goobbues in rolanberry fields. not sure how easy it is to farm as a blm.

you could do quests - the teleport quests are a great way to make cash. selbina monument quest is a good one too. there are quests out there that can land you some decent gil.

how about yagudos near windy? or farm gobs in the inner horuntoto ruins? or keep fishing?

80k a day is really good at your lvl. in fact... why are you complaining about that? o_O

[Irinicus]

Damn 250k for a dark staff?? I just got mine for 150k on my server. Anyway, I am getting my WHM up to 38 in lvl and doing the teleport quests, then when I get them all, I will stay in Jueno and offer my porting services, a friend of mine has been known to make 30k for 1-2 hours of warping. So thats how I will be getting my gil, I hope.

[Deadsoulja]

you are complaining about making 80k a day. i wish i could have made 80k a day. im on midgard also, every month or so the ele staff prices crap out and go down to like 200k. it happens because all of the gardeners see that ore prices went up, so they all go to their mules and make 500 ores and sell them until they no longer deem it profitable, in which case the price goes back up. just time it right and you could probably get the staffs for a very low cost. Most of the spells you need also are dropped where you can XP. Bliz3 drops off the Eyes in King Ranperres Tomb which you level off around early to mid 50's. You dont really have to worry about it that much. And Black cloaks are down to like 170k from the 900k they used to be so no more complaining

[Roldarin]

Black Mages are good at two types of farming:

-ga hunting and elemental hunting. Best to pick areas where you can do both. I think Jugner Forest and Taronghi Canyon, depending on your level, are two places. I'm sure there are others. Thing is you might want to go with a RNG sub (wide scan) and figure out which areas the elementals spawn. Then when you have it figured out enough, come back another time with BLM/THF.

[AtraposBLM]

The III line of spells, as are the II line of -ga spells, are as a whole RIDICULOUSLY cheap. I think in total I spent about 30-40k on them. There are a few of the -ga's that are expensive (its either stonega II or aeroga II), but you can skip it because you're never going to burst with it (I never had an occasion to).

You should be more worried about staves, torques, and cloaks. Sadly, that doesn't mean anything anymore. You should've been around in the days where each (yes each) staff cost 1+ million gil. I remember paying 600k for my ice staff, and 800k for my dark staff and calling myself lucky. 320k for my Black Cloak, and again, I thought I was ripping somebody off.

Anyways, your best bet is one of the BCNM's. Maybe not 40 (I agree, the prices here are flat out ridiculous), but look up the drops for 30 and 20. You have to split it less ways on these too, so factor that into how much you calculate an average run to drop. You can try any kind of farming you want, you most likely wont beat 80k/day that you'd get with fishing (not at your level anyways. I can barely beat that duo-farming Light Elementals in Tu'lia, and I don't even think I can do that anymore thanks to the 1/2 drop in price they suffered recently ; .

[meeyutu]

Thanks for the advice I guess I never realized that my fishing gil per day was so good *shrug*. It is pretty hard to do a 16 hour day of fishing though

The post about the BCNM sparked my memory I have BST30 and have been waiting for 2 friends to catch up with me. They are getting pretty close so when they do I know there are some BCNM20s and 30's that can be done with 3 BSTs no problem. ^^

[Deadsoulja]

stonega II is the expensive one, costs around 80k on midgard, i never bought it and i have never been asked to use it to burst so its not that bad. only expensive spell i think is WaterIV, ran me about 85k when i got it

[riceburner4540]

i got stonega II leveling in monastic caverns. for all you people who absolutely hate toramas, this is the place to be. 2nd cave, past that wall for the limit 3 quest...camp in the tunnel right before the ???, pull orcs. i've attempted bcnm 30 a few times...lemme just say...the potential drops are great, but overall its probably a waste of seals. maybe i was just unlucky, but nothing worthwhile dropped. i'd rather save up seals and do bcnm60s (antican or tonberry).

and yes, i've spent less money on all my II and III spells combined than i did on sleepga II alone. as for those staves, its become standard. any mage without at least 1 staff is a total gimp in my book. i paid 720k for my dark staff and 400 some k for my ice staff and i was so happy because it was damned worth it. now though, the combined price for both staves on my server is like 250k and people STILL don't have them...

[Blood Red Poet]

IMO, I rather buy a Thunder Staff or Fire Staff than a Dark Staff :D. Then again... I only have Ice Staff atm >.>.

[Ungerpurr]

80k/day fishing is pretty darn good. It's a shame you're not high enough level to fish in SSG effectively yet; if your fishing is high enough to make 80k/day (assuming we're not talking 20 stacks of carp....bleeeeeeech), you'd probably make a lot more there, fishing and selling nebimonites/grimmonites/bream.

Blm aren't really built for any sort of heavy-duty farming, with the exception of light clusters pre-9/13/04 patch (something you weren't high enough level for anyway). Any sort of regular mob farming will probably be done quicker with a melee job, which leaves you either with NM farming (YUCK), or fishing.

So...fish!

[riceburner4540]

IMO, I rather buy a Thunder Staff or Fire Staff than a Dark Staff :D. Then again... I only have Ice Staff atm >.>.

...or, you could get all of 'em

[AtraposBLM]

Originally posted by Blood Red Poet
IMO, I rather buy a Thunder Staff or Fire Staff than a Dark Staff :D. Then again... I only have Ice Staff atm >.>.

I wouldn't. I *almost* value dark staff higher than Ice Staff, but Ice Staff improves the quality of *all* elemental spells cast. All the other staves only improve ONE spell. Dark staff improves EVERY TICK of mp you get while resting...the first 5 or so ticks it works out to be just about 50% extra MP (that's huge, in case you can't do math). It's even bigger at lower levels, but this is how dark staff works for me:

Resting normally, no bonuses:
First tick: 24 mp, subsequent ticks, +1

Resting with Dark Staff and Apple Pie +1:
First Tick: 36 mp, subsequent ticks +1

Keep in mind there is a random 1-2 mp variance on subsequent ticks, but the first one is always right.

SO as you can see, for the first *several* ticks, Dark Staff is adding 50% more MP to what you'd get normally. So two ticks with a dark staff is the same as 3 normally. 4 ticks is the same as what you'd get with 6 normally...etc. After 10 ticks, the difference dark staff is making is less noticeable, but by that time, you already have a lot more MP than you would've normally.

50% less time spent resting? Yes please.

10% bonus damage on a single line of spells? After the above, yes please.


Get me?

[Nodoka]

Water 4 is 180k.


....




WHY??? Water spells suck so I didnt even bother buying it.

[Mayhem3eb]

I think water 4 is a rare drop off of some qulun dome quadavs only or something stupid like that

People shouldn't complain about staff prices either for the most part a normal quality staff yields barely any gil for the woodworker.