60 To 100. How Much Gil?

Heya. I'm obviously not lookin for an exact number but I would be interested to see how much gil it would take for those 40 points. I know there are factors like sever economy, if i'm willing to wait things to sell, luck, etc.. Keep in mind I am only looking for an estimate!

Edit: I forgot to add that this applies to smithing

Smithing is the second-most-expensive craft, expect anywhere from 5-15M depending on your methods and how much you sell back/HQ.

Thanks for the instant feedback.
That statement hurts my wallet and makes it want to hide in a dark corner

I spent about 2 million on leveling alchemy from 60-100. but yeah it really depends how much you sell back and what you can HQ for profits. I spent 2+ million alone on Goldsmithing from 40-60. So I would say Goldsmithing/Smithing are two of the most expensive crafts.

Id say smithing is now the most expensive with the least return. Getting from 99-100 alone can cost 5M with the rest of the track of up to 30M

Gold is expensive in the 70-80s but has high returns later on so it would cost probably 20M

Wood can probably be done for under 5M

Not sure about smithing as i'm a woodowrker myself, but checking recipe lists and cross chekcing prices here has saved me alot of gil than if i had blindly followed guides. while the guides are usually very good, alot of them are quit old and prices on some things may have changed alot since then.
Like for 91-96 in ww atm i can do lacquer tree sap, where logs are 5k on ah and i get nearly 4k in npcables, which is nice for 90+, where if you look at most guides I would be losing a good bit mroe per synth at that lvl. It can pay off to go check the list for smithing yourself and do some research, though it may be a bit slower.

If you're talking Smithing its a huge huge investment.

Pay out is not the best even at max level. Other crafts are far more affordable and offer a far better return on investment.

My cost during inflation a few years back to get from 60-90 was about 45 mil and I was making good gil then.

Now things tend to sell slower and also there is such market saturation that HQ prices barely cover NQ costs.

Leathercraft, though easy, definetly isn't worth doing nowadays, considering there are a ton of crafters in that field and the prices for goods has pretty much tanked, (i.e. Dusk Gloves), only money is in HQ'ing and even then, they're really few and far between
from 60-90 it is dirt cheap, especially if you farm everything, though so can 90-100, but you're expecting to spend a lot more time, specially farming Wyvern Skins (at that point, the AH is your friend). All depends on what you want to do

It's hard to answer this question really. It all depends on how much you wanna farm your ingredients and then if you wann sell to NPC or AH it.

I know Bone is cheap but from 1-70 I lost literally nothing and 70-100 won't be more than ~1.5-2m if I NPC'd everything but HQ's.

Very hard for me to estimate for two reason: first it's probably been almost 3 years since I hit level 60, and because I'm only lv98 woodworking. I think it depends on how fast you want to level, as you can tell I'm not in too much of a rush to level it. Although.. I have likely made more money making bolts/shihei than I've spent leveling to this point.

As for dollar figures, in today's economy I just went from 96-98 within the last 2-3 months and lost probably close to 400k-500k.

I'm sorry to be blunt but if you have to ask the question, the answer is probably "too much" so don't bother wasting your time and money.

I've seen plenty of people shell out the 5,10 or even 30 million gil only to find out that once they hit 100 they have no clue how to make a profit.

I leveled to 100 Alchemy and made about 30 million gil in the process. (Granted this is almost entirely in the massive inflation era so it would translate to only a few million today.) Yes there were some gaps where I lost money, but there was always an end goal in mind. I'm kind of embarrassed to admit it, but my first profit HQ was animal glue. The profit from that carried me to Silent Oil which was my cash cow for a couple years until the RMT took over. Now my profits are from Anima and cursed W items and occasional consumables.

A common gripe I hear is that "the only way to make money is to HQ." That's the whole point! There are probably at least 100 people on every server with 100 in your chosen craft. Of those, probably at least 5-10 actually have a clue. If there was massive money in NQing something they're going to craft it too, but meanwhile they'll be HQing more often than you so they can afford to sell the NQ at a lower price or even a loss. You can't compete with that, and the high levels are not going to want you to flood the market so they will push you out.

The key to profiting is HQing so you need to know the tiers like the back of your hand. They are 11+, 31+ and 51+. The first time you can compete with a level 100 is when you hit 52. At that point you can HQ a level 1 craft 50% of the time just like a 100 crafter. After that, you start hitting max tiers after 87. For most crafts, the maximum skill is 106 so you can hit tiers on items that are level 55, 75, and 95. An item that is level 76 can never reach the next tier so your maximum tier is hit as low as 87.

One of the best examples of wasted money is taking Clothcraft from 99 to 100. It's going to cost about 5m and what does that buy you? The ability to hit the max tier on Elite Beret and Wedding dresses. How much money do you expect to earn on those over a lifetime?

Do your research. Plan your route. Pick the right craft for you.

I'm doing it right now - I started @60 in about February this year. I watch the AH pretty carefully, I have planned ahead carefully, etc.

So far I've spent about 3-4M, I'm currently at 87.1. I believe I can make 90 for under 5M total. I would have spent a LOT more, but I did a fair amount of farming for darksteel by doing desynth on antican in quicksand caves (you probably should too unless you have a better farming source).

From 60-100, you should plan on 10s of millions - I know I am, and from what I can see, that looks correct.

Edit: As for the profit part, I'm mostly doing this just for my own fun, being able to sign cool stuff for friends (I run an endgame linkshell). Profit is just a nice bonus. I do know the HQ tiers and so on, but a lot of that is secondary now. Once I hit 78, my farming rate is about 50k/hr, very consistent, doing antican pauldrons for darksteel. Any time of day, I can log in for just a few minutes and be up at that rate. A lot of people like to do things like Khroma ore and so on, but for the time spent, antican are hard to beat.