Pondering A Main Craft

Forgive my ignorance. I'm currently finishing the task of taking all crafts to 70. I'm trying to decide which craft to take 110. Of course I want the gil-making ability to play a factor in my decision. I also want to craft the gear that best suits my main jobs, those being WHM, BLM, SAM, THF.

If I can find a craft that satisfies most of that combination then I'm a happy man. So far, I believe Alchemy might be most useful for BLM. Beyond that, I'm not sure.

An unrelated, but equally ignorant question:
Should I complete the item for each guild required to achieve Artisan, load up on GP and purchase everything (acquirable as an Artisan) for each craft?

Thanks for your consideration ya'll

If you want to be able to make gil crafting, you need to make the relevant crafting shield or you'll never compete, if you're happy to do that, it largely won't matter which one you pick as your main craft.

I'm sure there will be more knowledgable answers but I used to do some crafting before they introduced the crafting shields, now with the cost of mats and HQ rates, I certainly can't make profit crafting.

Crafting follows free market rules. That means people will keep entering your crafting circle and undercut you by obtaining whatever you managed to obtain until none of you are making anything worth your time and efforts.

Every craft should be pretty much the same except cooking and fishing where you aren't making the big bucks but spend a lot more time making small change.

At this point I personally think smithing is the easiest because you can buy a lot of GP items just from sparks. That's how my mule has been saving GP. My main character craft is cooking and I can't even do 1/2 of what my mule making in GP.

TL:DR for crafting is you need to decide, are you a gambler.

If you are, you have to go balls deep and make the shield. Period.

If you're not, then it kinda doesn't matter, but you can cook for small constant gains. People -always-, every day, forever, buy food. Smith (things like darksteel pickaxes are literally free money) Gold (avatarites are literally free money). Leather (hides > leathers are literally free money).

Shield it is. Still stuck between Alchemy and Smithing. Smithing seems the easier shield to complete perhaps just because of the ease of massing GP.

Thanks for your replies.

On the question about my subcrafts, should I become Artisan and getting the aprons for each craft before taking Smithing to 100?

If you are SERIOUS about crafting, you should 100% get the gloves/glasses/torques for each craft.

Aprons/stalls, can be useful, it could be the difference between T0-T1 or T1-T2, but that's a lot of extra work, and you have to be incredibly careful since all your subs will be unlocked there is danger of deleveling from 110 main.

How do I get the aprons/goggles without deleveling my main craft? Can I do the test item for Artisan in these crafts to get the GP item but just never level them up and still be allowed to take my main to 110?

I wouldn't recommend getting the stuff for sub craft. Sure it seems useful but on crafts that you need to HQ then you probably have to equip your main craft stuff so the other would not be used.

I mean the crafts that you could take advantage off would have something like 100 main 70 sub. Not sure if you can make money from those.

I personally think crafting is all about making money or make your life easier. There is no point in doing something that costs you a big chunk of money but earns back little.

Instead of trying to get items for subcraft, spend your time and efforts to make a crafting mule. That would cover most of the stuff you really need and allows you flexibility.

Crafting is getting into the very narrow path of top-wins-all. Either you get max level and get a shield or you are stuck making low margin items for high level crafters.

The items for the gold shield are a perfect example of why you DO want to get the sub items.

You cannot T2 the Jadagnas without the leather gloves.

If they add new recipes that are 62~65 subcraft, you'll wish you had them to t1. It's not much "work" at all to get them. a week at most to get the gloves/glasses

You can delevel your gold and relevel it after. Takes a couple mil and a couple hours, much much less than the GP from doing leather.

At present, there aren't really any recipes that get a higher tier from having other crafts' GP items. You could do it to be ultra proactive, but I'd say it's pretty unlikely that will change. SE is pretty aware of their tiers these days.

These torques are proving to be absolute ***, haha. Have been working on the Smithy's torque for days and still squat.

Only go when the kupower is up, it totally blows without it.

Also, make sure you use boxdestroyer, takes the effort out of it. Thief tools can score you a free clue too.

The shields are nothing spectacular until the final form in terms of difficulty. And don't give me Brass Jagandas(sp) you goldsmithers, you know that's child's play compared to final form sphere farming.

The fact is that every time a final-form shield gets finished, it then destroys that craft for any non-shield owner on your server...and to be honest there's so much cross server selling these days that even a few shields of your chosen craft on OTHER servers can hurt you.

The math on just the final form is frightening- I mean like original relic weapons back in 75 cap days frightening. If you farm EVERY crystal you use and EVERY sphere you use, you're still talking about a gil investment to an NPC for items called "catalysts" in the realm of 150-200mil...if you buy crystals and spheres you're talking around 1.8-2BILLION gil. Tens of thousands of synths/chains of a system that never existed until these shields were released. And only those on the last stage of the final form can even make spheres to buy, so average Joe synthers can't make 'em.

Finally, not every craft honestly gets the same benefit from the final-form shield. Some crafts have great SU3 sets (Oshosi, Turms, Ea come to mind) that can never be T1'ed and need the shield for acceptable HQ rates while others (Baayami,Arke) just don't pack the same punch or the same market for the HQ set. Neck and weapon options are something else entirely and when the augments are released we'll know more about the value of these pieces.

Can you be viable without final form shield? (ie 2nd to last form shield) probably not, but you can be functional at least for personal/friend synths in most cases. But as a clothcrafter, I find myself aiming to purchase most HQs these days rather than craft myself, because its just not worth the gil loss on something that doesn't even hold a signature (abjuration synths) for personal pride.

I don't mean to be negative Nancy, but I do want you to be aware of the road you are starting, rather than getting 20% down said road only to realize you're trying to do a 4WD dirt road in a Maclaren.

Everything about that last stage of the shield can't be described as anything other than insulting.

They had to develop a whole new style of crafting that has no other use than to be irritating. because synergy wasn't bad enough.

You can make something cost time, and no one will complain. You can make it cost too much money and no one will complain. This stupid *** thing takes way too much time, and entirely too much money. Double fault.

... and that's exactly why they all got botted and completely defeated the purpose. and spheres never should've been sellable.

Is that 150-200mil for a shield actually accurate or is it just a "IT COSTS TOO MUCH FOR WHAT IT SHOULD BE" cost? >_> 150-200mil seems a bit much for just one (Even a final) tier.

That 150m-200m is ONLY for catalyst.

That stage can vary, wildly, depending on how many spheres you're willing to waste.

Numerous posts about it, I think that you can pay 30m in catalyst, if you're willing to burn 200,000 t1 spheres.

As cost of catalyst (total) goes up, number of spheres used goes down.

I don't think this is totally accurate, but they ran their own numbers;

If you did T1>T1 it should take exactly 100,000 synths (no breaks/no HQs)