Crafting Myths

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~