Last week I felt the time had finally come to shoot for Clothcraft 100… 

Now that was a good start, especially when I managed to sell
the crappy blessed briault +1 a few hours later for 2.750.000 Gil

Wahaay ! *^_^*

YAAAY after 4 years of crafting, my skills chart has evolved to following blueish look:

Now what to do about fishing… LOL not a chance !

You have undoubtedly heard/had a discussion before in your linkshell or with other BLMs about the fact whether Morrigan's Robe or Genie would be better to nuke with as BLM. The most standard answer that you'll get is that it's situational. You'll use the more stable Genie Weskit when you need lots of elemental skill (f.e. HNM), while you'd want to equip Morrigan's Robe when you're shooting for the 125+ INT set and the elemental skill isn't needed.

Basically you'll trade in 2 M.Att. of the genie for +8 INT on the Morrigan, while you give up the conserve mp on weskit and get refresh in return. People however keep trying to convince me of how SUPERIOR Morrigan's Robe is compared to Genie Weskit on non resistant mobs.

I personally took the test how much difference in damage they both would give on
Mount Zhayolm Ebony Puddings 

**Using the BLM Calculator of AceofSpades with the right INT and MAB correlation formula,
following variables were used**:

• MAB from Traits

• 1.32 (BLM70)

• 0.10 (5 merits)

• 1.250 (Pudding)

• None

• 112 (My INT is 112 with Nuking gear/food)

• 91 (Normal INT of pudding)

• .37 without genie or morrigan (so +7 or +5)
• sorc. ring 10 ugg. pendant 8 novio 7 moldavite 5 zenith hands 5 yigit feet 2

 Data Table

***Calculated Values are unresisted damage without any bonus such as weather and day.

Conclusion:

Perhaps Morrigan's Robe is indeed a great piece of armor for any RDM out there who wants the refresh and doesn't have a Dalmatica or any RDM to prove himself to be a somewhat of a nuker without having to level up BLM.

For BLM however, the 20-25 added damage is not going to do it for me…
Here are my main arguments why I am sticking with my Genie Weskit:

• The three Salvage pieces are really hard to get (especially the macha part). Even if you're Salvaging 3-4 times a week, it can still take months before you gathered together the necessary pieces.
• With the current Khroma Ore prices on Shiva, aMorrigan's Robe is almost three times more expensive than a Genie Weskit.
• I personally

• prefer the more stable +6 elemental skill over the +5 M.acc
• think that the refresh on Morrigan is not much better than the Genie's Conserve MP trait. that one mp tick/second isn't going to rock your boat if you're constantly nuking 200mp+ spells. For resting you'll still be obliged to use Yigit.

Last but definitely not least, I just think Morrigan is plain ugly. I told people before that when nuking in Weskit I really feel like an evil macabre tattooed Black Mage, while the Morrigan's Robe is merely a sweater I would wear at home when I am sitting near the fire place. Nothing BLMish about Morrigan's and we since we all agree on looks > Stats, the extra peanuts damage of Morrigan isn't going to touch that principle one bit

R 

I have never had any regrets about my Tamas ring which I chose after the ending of the COP Story (2/3 of my jobs are mage jobs anyway), but since it is possible now to switch COP rings every 27 days just by dropping your ring and reentering the Marble's Tavern in Upper Jeuno, I didn't see any reason why not to give the another COP ring a trial period of a month. That's why I exchanged my Tamas Ring for a Rajas Ring last week and have been using/testing it quite intensely on my ninja ever since.

If you still don't know the stats on the COP rings by now, here are the pictures to refresh your memories:

At this point I feel that the rajas ring is luch more useful than my previous Tamas ring.
Please give me a chance to explain…

First of all there is not one magic spell in the game that requires both INT and MND at the same time, while on the other hand melee attacks and some weapon skills (such as Blade:Jin) rely heavily on both STR and DEX at the same time.

Secondly does the Subtle blow +5 and Store TP +5 traits combined seem to be much effective to me than the +30mp (which I recover by having full mp merits) and the enmity reduction (which to me isn't really visble at all).
While playing solo I can swear I very much notice the effect of subtle blow as the mob uses less TP moves. As far as the Store TP trait is concerned however, my TP keeps ending up to 98-99 TP, which still requires an extra hit/delay to get to 100. This is probably because I dual wield Unji and Perdu Blade most of the time.

At this point I seem pretty happy with my Rajas as it feels of more value to me than just an "equipment swap saver"  like the Tamas ring was for me. It's still a pitty that you can't have both of them though :'(

S 

As I am actually a little bit tired of crafting for a marginal sum of money, I found myself farming in Sea Serpent Grotto last week (I must have a thing for dark caves >_<). SSG actually holds quite an amount of treasures. Novv's Area or the place behind the "Ornamented door" make perfect farming spots. As Ninja/thief I farm easily up to 100k/hour thanks to gilfinder, the stealing of golden beastcoins and all the WHM-BRD scrolls that drop and which all sell for an excellent (5-12k) NPC price. As an extra bonus the amount of beastman and kindred seals just keep stacking up and Beatrice's level is slowly finding its way to the level cap.

Being down there also gave me the opportunity to help several people to get their Joy-Toy.

C

Even while crafting is not really a big money maker right now, this doesn't mean that with all these low prices it wouldn't be a good time to skill up these last levels of my subcrafts. And finally today after a few months of inactivity on the crafting area, I at last got the followng message:

This brings my overall Craft Skills to the following levels:

That leaves only 3 more levels of Goldsmithing and 0.7 level of Clothcraft to be done.
I am nearly there !!

After a 6 month interval I finally managed to cap my Bonecrafting sub. I can tell you this was a very cheap craft to level. This brings me to the following Crafting state:

Cooking is cheap but terrible to skil up, because the products (muffin) need so many ingredients.

Goldsmithing is still very expensive, but I found a recipe that will take me to 59 and doesn't burn my Gil pockets too hard (Hydra Claws). I need regular claws for this craft which has a 11.000 NPC price. Fortunately with my current smithing level I can craft these standard claws for 3.000 a piece.

As for Clothcraft, I decided to gradually take it up to 100, so I already started stockpiling squares of Galateia.

Oh and for those who noticed… As from now my fishing level has 2 digits and I intend to slowly skill it up as well. My main reasonfor giving fishing a serious chance is because I saw some videos on youtube of people solo completing the mercurial Kris quest. I want to try this as well, but to start the quest I apparently need level 28 in Fishing.

The (Shi)Van_economy has come to a point that I can barely sell my Aristocrat Coats anymore…

*
Hmmm…

Perhaps there are too much level 100 crafters out there now
Perhaps there are a lot of players who don't have 4 million gil anymore
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps it is far more complicated

I am starting to grow very weary of the crafting game. Everybody knows how it works:

• You look up the recipe,
• Calculate the costs of the materials and deduct them from the AH price,
• Calculate your HQ odds,
• Check the current stock of the item and the frequency of its selling at AH,
• Be patient and make sure that YOU are not the one who's flooding the market.

I hardly ever started a craftingsession with as goal to get a HQ item.

To this day people still don't agree on how the HQ thingie works.
the only thing of which there seems to be consensus about is that HQ' go in Tiers,
which means your HQ rate will go up the more your craftingskill exceeds the item level cap.

About the Vanaday you craft on:

Some say you have a bigger chance on HQ if you craft on Darksday or the day your crystal is weak to and less chance on HQ when you craft on Lightsday or the day your crystal is strong to. Others state the opposite or the same day as your crystal. And yes, of course there also people that claim that it doesn't matter at all on which day you craft.

Everybody is just telling what he or she claims to know, but frankly it's nothing more than "in my experience" of which they don't even can comprehend. Hell, there are even people who say that:

• Equipping an Apollo staff on lightsday to make light crystal items results in a guaranteed HQ1.
• Using the barspell of your crystal ups the HQ rate
• Wearing only Rare/EX items or nothing at all improves your HQ rate.
• Having a four-leaf in your inventory helps 10% of the time.
• Talking to your best in game friend during the actual crafting does miracles.

Whatever…

Yesterday the Clothcraft guild item was a Scarlet Ribbon, which has a level 52 cap.
Since I am a level 99 + 6 clothcrafter, this is a tiers3 craft for me, which schould basically mean that I have 50% chance of crafting a HQ. Since the HQ version has +CHR on it, I took this opportunity to craft a signed one for Les_Bard.

These were my results:
Out of SEVEN which I crafted on Windsday, Waxing moon, facing East -> I crafted 0 HQs, 7 NQs and No breaks
Out of SEVEN that I crafted on Iceday, Waxing moon, facing East -> I crafted  6 HQs, 1 NQ and No breaks

What does this tell me?
Actually completely nothing at all, this doesn't prove or say anything.
In the end I got 6 HQs out of 17 crafts, which is basically 50%, exactly what Tiers 3 is supposed to stand for…

This is why I always have been mainly focused on getting money off NQ items and before even realizing it, *poof* , you crafted a HQ version.

But now with only a few people farming or sometimes monopolizing some ingredients, sellers are having an easy time in boosting the AH price of these ingredients, because there is always someone of the five billion high level crafters, who will pay the newer high price and will on his turn have to sell his crafted item at a much lower price, because the demand for the item is too low or people just don't have the money to buy it, which make it hard to find a NQ item that actually still gives you some small amount profit. The market becomes flooded, because with the high number of crafters out there, there is always someone who's looking at the same recipe as you to make money on and now with FFXIAH.COM out there, it's childplay to check what craft should give you some profit.

That being said, here are some things I always keep follwing things in mind when crafting:

1. Try to keep wasting money to a minimum

• Be patient

If some ingredient is too expensive, just wait a few hours to buy it. Most of the time there is an up and down cycle on the price of the items, especially on the lower valued items. But buying 10 gold ores at 5K or 10 gold ores at 9K each, will save you 40k of gil on this ingredient alone. Otherwise it's overpaying 40k here 25k there, you'll be out of money before you know it… Same goes for skilling up on your crafts, you really don't need to gain 30 levels, I used to be like this and lost a lot of money this way. As for today I only try to skill up my subcrafts when I can gain a profit. 

• Shop around for cheap prices

And always check if a NPC isn't selling the ingredient for a much lower price than the AH is !
Actually, the latter doesn't only count for ingredients but for ALL items. As a test I put up a scroll of Light threnody for sale on the Sandy auction house last week. In nearly one week I have been able to sell it three times at a price of 5000 gil. Pretty insane if you know that if you take two steps to the right from the S.Sandy AH, there is a npc named Lusiane of whom I always bought the scroll for a mere 110 gil. This means that 3 different people succeeded in needlessly paying 45 times too much for an item. Do this 45 times at this level and you will have wasted over 225k for nothing… How hard is it to check npc prices online? or AH? 

2. Mules

I have 3 different mules in each of the three cities and a mule (whose identity until today I kept well hidden) through which I most of the time sell my items. Furthermore, if have crafted too many items, I never put them all on sale at once, but do so gradually through my mules.

3. Don't ever throw any of the (rest) ingredients away

Even better, don't ever throw anything away at all, even if it's just one lousy beetle jaw, I will always at least sell it through a NPC. For the more expensive crafting ingredients, I never sell the leftovers, but send them all to one centralized mule.    

4. Don't get greedy

I most of the time sell my items at the same price as its last auction sale price, sometimes a little higher, but never exaggerated. I never fully understood why so many people bazaared their goods at almost double of the current auction house price. Do these people ever manage to sell these goods? Give a few weeks and bearing "the light threnody" story in mind, they probably can, but I always settled for the ongoing current price.

5. Never be disappointed

• Breaks inevitably happen from time to time
• The market doesn't always react the way you had hoped it to
• You win some you lose some
• More than half of everything is luck
• Drink some alcoholic beverage while crafting, it helps you make cry harder

Woaw, this turned out to be a much longer blogpost than I intended it to be,
full of stuff that I never really meant to write in the first place.

Oh well, that's how it usually goes…
Anyway, I hope I didn't bore you too much with all this blablabla (in case you would have read it all)

V~