I mentioned in an earlier post that if I had it to do all over again, I'd have specialized instead of spreading my time across multiple crafts and sub-crafts. It was great money at first, when the game was new, but over time the gap between that top 5%, who work together and churn out finished products with substantial skill required for off-skill materials, and the common player has continued to increase -- exponentially. This means that by the time the casual player has had a chance to catch up, the market has been saturated and the top tier of non-crafting players are no longer paying premiums for those goods or services.
Case in point: fish glue. This was the first major bottleneck in the craft system. Most, if not all, weapons or tools required fish glue as a primary ingredient or as an ingredient required to make an ingredient. Thus, as far as most were concerned, all paths led through fish glue. The problem was that it requires somewhere in the neighborhood of level 15 Alchemy to make the glue and fishing of 10-15, depending on your fishing pole, just to catch the dark bass reliably. Therefore, the people who began selling both fish and glue at the apex of need were able to charge extreme fees, which were passed down through the finished products and to the consumer. Those looking for the most competitive edge were willing to pay those fees rather than easier until prices naturally fell. After a few weeks others started catching on, leveling both fishing and alchemy, and made a modest profit before even more players followed suit and the bottom fell out of the synths.
There is still money to be made with fish glue, but that money is typically realized by further processing materials across multiple crafts into seldomly made finished goods. By now, most modern weapons are using horn glue. The next tier will very likely use something else.
Truth be told, my income generation as of late has been significantly reduced. I just didn't have the energy to try to spam multiple crafts and I was already too far behind the curve of the power crafters. The thing that compounded the problem the most is the fact that I really don't have any friends on the server that play regularly. So while I do have a significant stockpile of gil at my disposal, I don't really have anyone to play with on a regular basis. So what's the point? Aside from the random person willing to party for their own leves, most of my shouts and says have been ignored.
What I'm trying to say here is that making gil in this game isn't enough. You've really got to foster those in-game relationships or it's all for naught.
Since you've stuck with me so far, I'll let you know what I've been selling.
Early on I discovered that brass nuggets sold relatively well, and I could make them before I could use them reliably for skill. So I ended up selling them at 1.5k each. Yeah, no kidding, and they sold like hot cakes.
Lightning crystals have been a nice boon. When I was under the misguided impression that it would be best to level several (all) crafts to provide myself with the necessary sub-items, I started farming/saving lightning crystals for clothcraft. Even this very morning I unloaded 20 for 3k a piece via someone's bazaar. They set the price, I just delivered. Easy 60k and lightning crystals are a byproduct of farming wind shards, can't beat that.
Small items such as rings and bracelets seemed to sell well in the lower level camps. I'd load up my retainer with weapons and armor and rent a stall and then I'd pick a camp and park my character there for the night. A few quick minutes to restock my bazaar in the morning before work would help make those small profit synths add up by the time I got home and was ready to play again.
Harpoons seemed to sell well for a while, but sales are slower now and the majority of lancers are moving on to higher tier weapons.
Animal glue is a nice filler when you don't know what to put in that last bazaar slot. I sell them for 450 a piece and the random sales do add up over time.
Hempen cowls sold well at first but too many idiots are selling them for well below 10k. You can't buy them all out, so the best you could hope for is convenience shoppers outside of town. This is beyond silly because it shows that a lot of crafters aren't factoring shards + time + materials into their profit equations. Really, though, it probably boils down to powerleveling a craft on finished goods, which is stupid for a few reasons with the way the game is currently set up, and then just trying to unload. I suppose this is the reason that more complex crafts held their viability longer, they were just plain inconvenient.
To be honest, most of my gil over the past few days has come from buying under-priced items in other people's bazaars and reselling them for what I believe they are worth. Profit is realized when someone else browses my bazaar and agrees with me. On the same token, if I find someone seeking an item or repair that is profitable for me, in respect to both time and gil, I'll fulfill the request. Example: I will not sell wind shards for 200 gil a piece because I use far too many to justify that price. It would cost skill increase and/or farming time. Likewise, crystals of any type are worth more to me than the standard price I've seen of 1.5k. I can now break a crystal into 16 shards for the cost of 1 fine sand. That gives me skill and shards that I can sell, it just makes more sense to hold out.
Anyway, this is reaching ridiculous length so let's stop for now. Come back soon for more FFXIV financial discussions.
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