My god I was always a wordy know-it-all.
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If you have never crafted successfully before, these instructions, information and suggestions might look like a LOT of bother. Don't worry. Once you have some notes beside you and have crafted successfully a few times it all falls into place and becomes easy. Crafting costs enormous amounts of gil when you start out, but in the long run it is the most reliable way to make easy, steady amounts of gil. The Culinary Guild seems the cheapest one to level up and the one that lets you earn gil the fastest. At the moment and on my server there is a very profitable culinary recipe at level 27. Cooking and Alchemy will probably get you useful items for yourself the fastest. Crafting armour is profitable in the long run, but you won't be making the armour you want to wear for yourself for your first job. It is quicker to level up a job than it is to level up in crafting. Armour and Weapon making is most useful for later jobs and gil making.
You craft by using an elemental crystal and 1 to 8 ingredients to magically create a new item. For example Grilled Hare is made using a Fire crystal, Dried Marjoram and Hare Meat. Go to your Items list. Select a Fire Crystal. A synthesis menu will appear. click in one of the boxes and then click on Dried Marjoram in your inventory. Click on a second box then click on Hare Meat in your inventory. Click on the Synthesise button. hey presto, you will suceed or fail! If the recipee is up to 15 levels higher than your crafting level, you have the possiblity of skilling up in your craft.
You can obtain crafting recipes at the various guilds. They only hand out one recipe at a time, and those recipes are very close to your own level. I strongly advise finding complete guild crafting recipe lists on any fan site.
There is a widely held belief that crafting is based on the FFxi elemental magic system, even though this has never been endorsed by Square-Enix and appears nowhere in their instructions.
If you are a mage, you will already be using this formula:
FIRE>ICE>WIND>EARTH>LIGHTNING>WATER>FIRE
and separately:
LIGHT>DARK>LIGHT
So Fire is STRONG to Ice, and WEAK to water. For successful crafting you can take into account the element of the crystal you are using, the moon phase, the element of the Vana'diel day of the week and the element of the direction you are facing. There is a starmap available to view in Bastok, Windy and Sandy and this gives you the element compass directions:
North=DARK, NorthEast=LIGHT, East=ICE, SouthEast=WIND, South=EARTH, SouthWest=LIGHTNING, West=WATER, NorthWest=FIRE
Note that the Star Map has East on the left and west on the right, but you do not have to write your compass down that way if it against your conventions. East and West are probably put "backwards" because Japanese is written in columns that go right to left.
The days of the week go: FIRESDAY, EARTHSDAY, WATERSDAY, WINDSDAY, ICEDAY, LIGHTNINGSDAY, LIGHTSDAY, DARKSDAY...
HYPOTHESES COMMON TO SUCCESSFUL CRAFTERS
The theories that follow are no-where instructed by Square Enix. However you will find them in posts all over the web by dedicated crafters who have noticed definite trends and wanted to be helpful and share the "information". Some posters have gone to all the trouble of collecting statistics under controlled circumstances, and getting their friends to replicate the results. Basically we are all opperating on the theory that SE uses an algorithm that has a random number generator and some variables in order to generate your crafting results. We think we have worked out that some of the variables are the weekdays, the compass directions and the moon phases, all of which are given to you in-game.
* The FULL moon helps you to successfully craft. SUCCESSFUL crafting is also helped by crafting on the same element day as the crystal you are using (use fire crystal on Firesday) or by crafting on the day the crystal is STRONG to. (Fire crystal on Iceday). LIGHTSDAY also helps. In my experience it is even more important to get the direction you face while crafting right. You can face in the direction the cystal is STRONG to. (Facing East for a fire crystal). You can also face NE for Light energy help. Also you can face in the same direction as the crystal. (NW for a fire crystal). All these things make crafting a recipe EASIER.
* The NEW moon helps you to skill up and to get High Quality outcomes. SKILLUPS and HIGH QUALITY (HQ) outcomes are helped by crafting on the element day the crystal is WEAK to. (Fire Crystal on Watersday). They are also helped by DARKSDAY. More importantly, Face the direction the crystal is WEAK to. (Face West for a fire crystal). All these things make crafting a recipe HARDER, but more likely to help you skill up.
* Doing a recipe 1-10 levels below your own gives you a 1-2% chance of HQ, over time.
11-30 levels below gives you a 10% chance of HQ over time.
31-50 levels below gives a 30% chance of HQ.
50% levels below gives a 50% chance of HQ over time. You would need to do 3 stacks of the recipe to reliably make 50% of them HQ.
HQ outcomes are also helped by the HQ crystals you can trade from the guild after level 30. Note that they do not help enough if you are doing a recipe only 10 levels below your own. These special crystals also sign your name onto the crafted item.
*Furnishings in your Mog House have elements. If you have enough Fire energy furniture in your MH you can get Mogenhancement: Fire. This will help out with fire recipes. Ditto with Earth energy furniture for Mogenhancement: Earth, which helps with Earth recipes etc etc. This information comes from the Vana'diel Tribune, which I suggest you read every month for the game-playing gems among the ... rest.
Each craft recipe has a level. You will have a craft skill level. It is "possible" to do a recipe 15 levels above your own, but you will only regularly succeed with a recipe up to 3 levels above your own, or 6 levels above your own if you have bought Advanced Synthesis Support from the guild or are using the directions/weekdays/moontimes to assist you. The higher a recipe is above you the more skill-ups you will get, but also the more breakages. Basically you can ignore the whole weekday/moon/direction thing if a recipe is only a couple of levels above your own. These things are most useful if you want skill ups to come faster, if you are using recipes 6 levels above yours or if gil is extremely tight and you can't afford breakages. This is one reason to craft with a mule. Your mule is always ready to start crafting immediately if the weekday or the moon phase are excellent for crafting. I personally usually ignore the weekday and moon phase thing and just use the directions to help crafting. However, I've been caught out whilst doing recipes 6 levels above my own, suddenly getting a huge run of failures, only to realise that it is the day my crystal is weak to, or Darksday, or a new moon.
GUILD POINTS
You will have a guild Rank. Every ten levels you will have to hand in a crafted item to pass a rank test. Yes you can buy the item from the Auction House or a shop. You can craft items that are above the rank you are (craft a level 33 recipe when you are level 27, and haven’t done the rank 3 test yet) but in my experience you get more breakages and less skillups until you have passed the rank test.
Once you have Rank 3 (craft skill 30) you can trade items for guild points. Guild points then can be traded for HQ crystals, craft items or key items. The highest items cost 150,000 guild points, and you can only make a limited number of guild points per Real Life day, so I recommend starting to make guild points as early as possible.
DESYNTHESISING
Desynthesising, or using a lightning crystal to break an item down into its ingredients, is somewhat the same as normal crafting/synthesising, but also somewhat different. You can desynthesise in order to get cheap ingredients to use or sell at a profit, or you can desynthesise to gain skill-ups. If you are at the same level as a “desynthesis recipe’ then you will get a 50% success rate over time. If you are more than 6 levels below the recipe you will almost always fail. If you are 6 levels under the recipe or less you will get skill-ups by desynthesising. You will not get all the ingredients from the synthesis recipe back out from desynthesisng the item. Some items, that have been transformed by their synthesis, cannot subsequently be desynthesised. You will probably need 3 stacks of lightning crystals and 2 stacks of the item to be desynthesised to reliably achieve a stack and a half of the outcome item. Take a level 47 Goldsmith craft recipe to make a mythril ring out of two mythril ingots. Desynthesisng the mythril ring will fail and break the crystal, fail and break the ring as well, get you one mythril ingot, or get you two mythril ingots. Note that as a level 41 goldcrafter, to skill up, you can start out with a stack of ingots and synthesise a ring, then desynthesise the ring, and repeat until all the ingots are gone. This will get you many more skill-ups out of a stack of mythril ingots than if you were only synthesising. (and no rings, but that’s fine, they sell at a loss anyway).
SUGGESTIONS: NPCs and MULES
Use ctrl-c and ctrl-v to copy a complete recipe list to a word document and print it out. You’ll want it to help choose what you’ll craft, and occasionally to make notes on how much the ingredients cost you and how much you can sell the crafted item for. This lets you identify the profitable recipes early on. Also note that some crafted items just aren’t popular with players and won’t be bought no matter the price. Always check at the AH for the popularity of an item before you synthesise it.
NPCs (Non Player Characters, or computer generated characters) often sell ingredients that are 4-10 cheaper than on the AH, or not available at the AH at all. Talk to every NPC to find out if they sell items, then write down the list in a large notebook, along with how much the items cost and where the NPC is. (This sounds like too much work? You have to talk to them all to find out where the fame quests are, don’t you? What are you playing FF for?) Some NPCs are region-based sellers. They only have goods when the city they live in has won the conquest in that region. Some stores are permanent but they restock on a particular Vana’diel day of the week, and goods can sell out in the mean time. Don’t overlook the merchants on the airship docks, and don’t overlook NPCs all by themselves, without a store or a stall; they too might sell goods.
You will want to create a mule in Windy, Sandy and Bastok, and run a mule to Jeuno, as a minimum, if you are crafting. You need them to buy cheap ingredients from Npcs. It’ll be the only way you make gil by crafting, for a long time. You will find yourself selling most of your items in Jeuno, later on. You will want all those extra slots for storage. As an added benefit to all this you can buy cheap items from one city and sell them for a profit in another city. This is how I made most of my gil early on. As far as I know, the distance between the Mog House and the Auction House/ Mail Delivery is shortest in Port Sand’Orio, so I have a few mules there, that store things for later use. (Armour, crystals, ingredients etc.) Lower Jeuno is also a short distance but the lag there is really annoying.
TO CRAFT WITH YOUR MAIN OR YOUR MULES?
There are advantages and disadvantages to both choices, so it is purely a question of personal preferance. Have a look at all the crafting recipe lists before you choose whether to craft with a mule or with your main character. There are some recipes that require skill levels in more than one guild. In order to make them you will need to be able to pass rank tests every ten levels at the respective guilds, which will probably be in two different cities. Therefore you will want to be able to travel by airship with your crafter. If your main character is an alchemist or a cook, it can carry stacks of ingredients to parties, and synthesise new items on the spot. This is especially handy if you run out of food or medicine, or the food or medicine is unstackable. If you are fishing you will definitly want to do that with your main character, as many types of fish are in places only a highly developed character can get to. These are all the advantages of crafting with your main character.
The advantages of crafting with a mule are otherwise very strong. It’s much faster to skillup with a mule. Your mule’s slots are not cluttered with armour, your mule is always in the right city to buy Advanced Synthesis Support, to pass the next Rank test, and to check what item is required for guild point trading and hand them in. Swapping between partying and crafting is SO much faster if you are actually swapping characters, not moving one character all over Vana’diel. Your mule can have the Mogenhancement for the crystal you most commonly use in your guild recipes, leaving your main character free to have Mogenhancement: Experience. (This means you lose less experience points when you die. This is gained with Light aspected furniture. Once you have it, more light furniture will not help you lose less experience)
GUILD LEVEL CAP
There is one last advantage to crafting with a mule. You are allowed to have all guild craft levels at level 60, at the same time. After level 60, you only possess 40 skill levels to SHARE BETWEEN ALL THE GUILDS. For example you could take cooking to level 70, boneworking to level 80 and smithing to level 70. If you wanted to take boneworking higher, you would have to go to the culinary or metalworker’s guild and get them to remove some of your skill levels. Then you can skill up in boneworking again. If you want level 100 in a guild, you would have to have all other crafts no higher than level 60. However if you use a separate mule for each craft that you choose to skill up, this level-cap problem is gone.
PRICING SUGGESTIONS
Finally, when pricing the items you have crafted, if there is no other of the same item on sale, take the opportunity to try and drive the price up to one where you break even, take a profit, or at least take less of a loss. If there are many of the same items already on sale, and you want to undercut the price in order to sell your item, try to undercut by only a little, not a lot, unless you think the sale price is outrageously high given the material costs. Lowering a reasonable sale price too much hurts everyone, especially those who couldn’t pay the cheapest price for ingredients. Remember you are trying to make up for all the huge loss you made in the early days of crafting. A 100-200% profit is reasonable on normal quality crafts, and 1000% profit on high level HQ crafts, although you will not always get those sort of prices.
MY OWN CRAFTING HABITS
This is how I work when I am skilling up a craft: I look at a recipe 6 levels above my own, check that it’s popular on the AH and what it sells for, then work out how much the ingredients are going to cost me. If it doesn’t sell at all or the loss is too great, I look at the recipes 4 and 5 levels above my own. I buy several stacks of the ingredients with my mules or retrieve leftover ingredients and crystals from a mule, and send them all to my crafter. I buy the rest of the crystals I need, and Advanced Synthesis Support. If it’s a recipe 6 levels above my own I check it’s not the day my crystal is weak to. For a recipe 5-6 levels above my own I face in the direction the crystal is strong to, and craft away. I repurchase Advanced Synthesis Support as it runs out. When my inventory is full I mail the crafted items to my other mules, especially the mules that are going to sell the item. One of my mules stores crafted items to exchange in future for guild points. I then return to crafting, Once the recipe is 4 levels above my own I notice the skill-ups aren’t coming so quickly, so I then turn to face the direction the crystal is weak to. When the recipe is 3 levels above my own, I allow Advance Synthesis Support to run out. Without A.S.S. on, I face the direction the crystal is strong to, until the recipe is only 1-2 levels above me. Then I turn around to the direction the crystal is weak to. This pattern of crafting usually gets me regular skill-ups with minimal breakages.
If the elemental day is strong against your crystal, that makes the crafting slightly harder, and breakages more common. In that case you might have to make crafting easier for yourself by buying Advanced Synthesis Support for recipes only 2 or 3 levels above your own, or by facing in the direction your crystal is strong to, for longer.
If the elemental day is weak against your crystal, that makes crafting slightly easier, and skill-ups seem to come less often unless you make the crafting harder for yourself by NOT using Advanced Synthesis Support for recipes 4 levels above your own, or by facing is the direction your crystal is weak to, for longer.
I use the same recipe until I am level with it, then move onto another recipe 6 levels above my own. Doing many stacks of the same recipe to skill up 5 or 6 levels cuts down on the organising I have to do to aquire ingredients, and means I am very familiar with what price to sell the crafted item for.
The Full Moon seems to give more skillups and successes at the same time, so I always check what phase the moon is in whenever I log onto the game. You can find out the moon phase by clicking on the "Current time" button in the second main menu.
The New Moon also seems to give more skill-ups, so that is a secondary time I like to craft, if I have the chance.
Crafting can be very profitable, but sometimes you have to be careful, patient and smart in selecting what to craft for gil, how to price it and when to sell it. Making an effort to obtain and hoard cheap ingredients can pay off. Checking an item look-up on a fan site like Allakhazam, so you know the various ways to obtain an ingredient, can be most helpful. Always check the price history to see how many of that item sells per Real Life day.
I try to sell a mixture of different items at any one time. I don't sell more than one or two of the same type of thing at the same time, unless it is a VERY popular item. This stops other people looking at how many of the items are on sale, deciding there are a lot, and deciding to radically undercut the price in hopes of getting their own item sold.
I always decide on a minimum price I will settle for, based on the price the ingredients cost me, and I never go below that. If I can't get that price I will store the item until I can. Prices fluctuate enough that eventually I can sell most things for the price I've set myself. Sometimes selling it in a different city works. Occasionally I have to admit I've made a mistake and I'm not going to make the gil I hoped for from an item, but I only give in if I've run out of storage space.
The real profits from crafting come from HQ itemss. A good strategy is to get your crafting level as high as you can, then select some low level recipes (that sell frequently!) and concentrate on those. Remember the higher you are above a recipe, the more frequently you will get HQ results.
