Chocobo Racing Silks - Further Discussion

I  have had a bit more of a chance to experiment with the Blue Racing Silks and the Sky Blue Racing Silks with my digging lately. The reason for this is primarily that 200 successful digs can take a while longer than I really have to spend on work nights. So, I often get about 60-70 free digs before switching to the Sky Blue Racing Silks to finish off the remaining 45 fatigue digs for the night.

Last night turned out pretty decent for my moderate level of digging skill. I netted two gold beastcoins, a handful of silver, two petrified logs, a few ebony logs, an oak log, some mythril ore and a mythril beastcoin and other miscellaneous items. Oh, the 6 danceshrooms were a nice sell-to-vendor treat. I definitely paid for my greens! The moon was 69% and a few of the zones I tried were near barren, it took a while to finally get in that haul. I'm glad I had the patience to see it through.

The Blue Racing Silks are definitely good for zones where the incidentals are beneficial. Digging in Tahrongi gets me a lot of pebbles and flint stones for my free digs with the occasional surprise. Digging in the jungle, however, brings in a nice flow of bone chips, which I send to my mule in Windy to level bonecraft. Just hit level 9 tonight and am ready to start making gelatin and glue here soon. A few years ago those stacks of chips would have sold for 10k easy, but nowadays they only go for 1k. There's really no point in trying to list them, I'd just as soon get some skill off them and keep the AH stocked with my more profitable digs.

I'm enjoying synthing the logs I get and receiving the occasional HQ. I haven't lost any of my lumber yet, which is always a risk with crafting in FFXI, but I'm sure it's bound to happen sooner or later. I suppose that's the gamble. You win some, you lose some.

I'm still not sure what the Sky Blue silks are doing for me. Is it increasing the skill of my bird temporarily to artificially boost my digging skill? That would make it easier to pull up those harder items if I get them in the treasure pool, but there's really no way for me to know client-side. I really wish these things weren't quite so ambiguous.