Which Craft...?

Ok, I have been trying to decide which craft to really to level to 100 and I got 50 in Alchemy which years before was worth it but seems like you really dont make as much money anymore with it so I stopped it. I have 30 in woodworking which was one of my choices to level to 100, then I was considering cooking to 100, and I can't make up my mind. I don't want a super expensive craft, just something to make some gil off of. I have a mule at 92 cloth that I did not level. I have tried with it but the things I made wouldnt sell.

I am in limbo with woodworking and cooking. I don't mind the fishing part either for cooking. fishing may just come in handy to relax some. They seem cheap to level and have good things to craft to make some gil with. A little advice please :(

Unfortunately I am not experienced much in the art of crafting, however I can make some insightful suggestions from what I have heard and seen from more experienced crafter friends. My primary suggestion is to choose a craft that would benefit what you play the most. For example, one with Ninja as their most primary job should consider woodworking or alchemy to make their own stockpile of ninja tools with minimal costs. Alchemy would benefit a Corsair in the crafting of bullets, woodworking for ranger's arrows, and so on.

Putting that aside another way of looking at it is if your craft is primarily to make money, do you want to do it in the fashion of making high demand gear with a possibility of HQ for big ticket profits, or create constant demand consumables that fly off the shelves but at a lower but faster paced price.

Alchemy is a decent mix between the two since it creates various weapons, armor and consumables as well. Crafts like Smithing, Goldsmithing, Bonecraft and Leathercraft are more gear (thus HQ) dependent while crafts like Cooking, Woodworking, Fishing and Alchemy are more consumable based.

Any craft can yield good gil if you closely watch the market. How you want to make it is up to you. Hope this helped.

I'll tell you my personal experiences as a fisher/cooker.

Fishing up your own fish for cooking is a great duo craft. There's no "get rich quick" schemes like synthing cursed gear and hoping for an HQ, it's all honest (Unless you fish bot, which I've caught 2 LS mates doing so far) hard work, with no risk involved. (Who cares if you lose a squid in a failed synth, but you'll definetely miss that Angel Skin)

The only problem is trying to get that Fishing Skill up.. that is a doozy. I've been fishing for a couple months now, not regularly or for long periods of time, and thus far I'm about 18.7ish. I spent about 2 hours fishing yesterday and got .4 skill ups, which for me is an average day.

If you go down that route, you'll definetely want to take a look into Pelican Ring. So far I have yet to get it, but after monitoring the scoreboards for a few weeks I've determined that on average, 20-25 people play weekly on my server. In order to get the Pelican Ring, you need to score in the top 20, leaving you with a good chance that you'll get your ring.

The great thing about skilling fishing is that you can make a pretty penny off of it. Moat Carps, Nebi's, Shall Shells are all great profit pre 50. You can synth a stack of two of Nebi's every week for Fish Mithkabob. And boy have I got a lot of Nebi's to synth. I tried synthing 5 stacks of Nebi's in a single day... I ended up flooding the market and dropping the price by 1/3 a week later, and I'm still trying to finish selling them. Most people go for Tacos so try to avoid synthing Nebi's, it's probably best just to sell em on AH to Alchemy users, saves you a lot of hassle.

Cooking is pretty damn cheap to skill up in my experience. You don't make a ton of money per synth, like with other crafts, but you make a little bit on lots of stuff. There are stretches in skilling up where you will lose money, but these are pretty rare, and never really more than a few hundred gil per synth. Usually, through AH, and sometimes even NPCing, you will make a little bit of gil. High demand items like Yag drinks and Au Laits tend to make a pretty good return, but there's a LOT of competition on these items, so you really have to watch the market and sell your ***at a good time...undercutting is HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE with some cooking items.

I like it because, due to low vendor costs for ingredients, it's pretty much free to skill, and when you can start HQing stuff it saves you bunches of money being able to make your own food. If you actually enjoy fishing, you've got a leg up...I buy my fish cause I can't stand it lol. You'll also want to get Raw Fish Handling so you can make your own sushi, but this isn't something you really need to worry about until you get a little higher, the high level cooks tend to drive the price down on the AH below cost to someone that doesn't HQ it. Plus, you'll be using lots of water and fire crystals, which are generally cheap on the AH, and drop all over the place. Dark crystals may suck from time to time, but they're easy to farm...

A recommendation I would make is to get into gardening somewhat. I haven't done this myself, but with cooking if you can get Wild Onions and Coral Fungus without having to buy them off the AH, you'll be much happier. Those two ingredients are the biggest thorn in my side when it comes to cooking. ^^

At any rate, good luck ^^

Yea I think I may lean more to cooking and maybe fishing too. On my other character I have her fish and I didnt mind standing there to fish; I would make some gil enough for songs and items i needed.

I do have a mule for the gardening, she is completely full in stacks for food ingredients. Think I'll have to make another mule for it again.

If money is what you want I'd suggest goldsmithing, but that's just like real life, money comes from more money..lolol

Smithing.

I don't need to argue why - Just do it :P

Uh no gold and smithing is alot of gil that I do not have. I'm sure it has lots of good crafts but its expensive.

Come to Garuda and I'll sponsor you!

(Amongst do other things...)

I notice among alot of servers Smithers are a rare breed. Probably because it's slow to skill up, expensive and finding certain mats necessary to level up are a pain in the ***. However, the upside to all that is this would alow you to dominate certain markets alot easier, allowing you to call the shots for profit ^^

2/7 Haubergeon +1 yesterday on New Moon Darksday... You bet your sweet as I do!

I believe at this point I am well and truly in profit from my craft. I try not to consider how much I spent levelling it, but now it's that high, with a bit of luck I can make a lot of money. Smithing really is worth it if you either have the barrel fulls of cash or the patience to farm everything.

Clothcraft and Bonecraft seem pretty decent if you're not super rich but want to make some reliable income. I have several friends with these crafts levelled and they all tell me how it keeps them afloat, etc.

Im sitting at 69 woodworking atm, havent leveled it in FOREVER really should start on that so i can actually make some money from it...

Sponsor me huh, so you mean like make me your *** lol? Hell no! I'm my own pimp!

I don't really know what to do with my 92 cloth mule...Everything I see that is worth something hasn't been sold in months or since 2006... lol

If someone knows some ways to make use of my mule plz let me know lol

My friend says she makes about 2mil off Prism Capes a week. She is something like 20/80 overall - Let me ask her when I login, if she's on. That's quite a bit of gil though! The secret to a good synth is one that's cheap to make and one you can spam... Haubergeon makes a lot of money if you're fortunate with a HQ, but you can't really spam it... Even if you have millions of gil for the ingots, there won't be that many on the auction house. Prism Capes, on the other hand, are very cheap to make and the materials are widely available.

And damn, you saw through my plan.

The easiest profit is to HQ low level gear and sell it off for small but steady income. I know stuff like Seer's gear is pretty standard for anyone leveling a mage job and lots of people now a days will spend an xtra 10k or so for the whitebox.

Bleh, Wooooodum beat me to the punch. I was gonna suggest getting it to 100 and working on making Prism Capes. They're pretty cheap to make and if you get lucky that's 400k in your pocket.

Agreed. Federation Knives were my main source of income before I jumped into the high level synths.

That is true, I guess I could spend a little to make some hq's for low lvl.

at 92 cloth I can't hq the rainbow cape to prism , im under the skill.

the items to even skill up to 100 is ridiculous amount of gil to me.

That's why you need to get 100+6 =)

Well I may just do the cooking lol and ill try with my mule first and see what i can do with it.

I have these crafts spread out among 4 characters: Clothcraft99, Alchemy100, Bonecraft100, Woodworking100. Clothcraft I still need the final GP item, so I cannot really comment on it besides that it was very expensive 93-99. Woodworking is a DECENT craft. You may think you will make tons off of HQing staves but do not be decieved. Most of the time you find yourself breaking even. Many of my fellow woodworking friends have given up on staves alltogether. They do make a decent profit off of HQing Cursed Haidate, or making Cursed Togi's and are really lucky if they HQ. I find the risk in these too high so I just avoid them. Bonecraft is an amazing craft for the little gil it costs to level. I know its even cheaper then when I leveled it now because of things like Trumpet Rings. Scp +1 are overflowing on most servers now because of how long they have been around. However Genie Weskit is a very nice inexpensive Tier 0 synth yeilding a nice profit. This craft as well has its Cursed Tier 1's and 0's. I am just not a risk taker, maybe its why I can't make gil. I tried Cursed once and broke 2/4 synths...really a letdown, but I also know of people HQing 2/2...I don't have leathercraft, but its really an amazing craft, probally my next to 100 if I still continue to play. I know of a guy who has gone 11/25~30 on Cerberus Mantle +1, HQing 2 in a row as well... Alchemy, man idk if I can even comment on Alchemy. Lets just say Ive made diddly squat and am still in the gutter from it and it was my first craft to 100. This too relies on Cursed -1 at the higher levels, but I am like 1/50 on Cursed Cuisses -1..Idk maybe I am just really unlucky. Good Luck hope this was in the least a bit helpful.

Speaking from experience I'm a Fisher / cook (known to my friends as a fooker... rofl). I must admit that this is a really sweet deal since consumables are always in demand.
Unlike armor which gets re-sold on the AH by crafters and other characters, once you use a piece of food, it's gone and you gotta get a replacement.
The sad thing is though to make a decent profit, it takes time running from vendor to vendor, city to city for your ingredients, and if you're brave and wanna try the sushi, then if you're wanting a profit, it's time to sit out there for an hour or so with your bait and rod.
Now I've thoroughly managed to put you off! (j/k ^^ lol) There's several plus sides to fishing and cooking, fishing alone and skilling up can net a nice amount of gil which can pay for cooking skillups, so you're at a break even right away, or focusing on skillups that revolve around fish (I can't count how many levels of friggin' fish oil broth I did, but it was free so I mustn't complain!) and if the AH is flooded with one type of food there's tons more to try out until the supply has run its course and is back to a steady price. (Alternating between things like tacos / pies / subs and sushi is a good way to stop flooding and keep prices at a constant).
I hope my wall-o'-text helps^^ and if you've got any Q's, feel free to PM me :)

~Rin (Israfel)

Cool thank you, I started the cooking and got from 5-30 in a few hours, then got it to 35 last night. I kinda got stuck around 32 cause bastore sardines were out of stock in th ah's. tried to fish them with the rod and bait it said to use but got only 2 bastore sardines and a skil up lol. So I looked at more recipes and found one that was 7 lvl above cap that was cheap and easy to make. So I can get to 41 with that synth and use what I make for another synth. My friend says it gets a lil harder around the 50's but eh I dont mind.

For bastore sardines, hit up port windy with a sabiki rig and halcyon rod^^; this will hook Sardines and Quus. Quus fight a lot more than sardines, but after a few catches you'll recognize which fish is on the end of the line ^^;
If you want I can PM you a cooking guide I wrote (I went the feesh route for cooking, but the majority of fish were low levelled) and avoided spamming myself and the AH with cookies and pies

cool cause I made a cooking guide for me without making pies lol just to skill up. But ya that would help. I'll PM you my email :) Thank you ^^

np at all :)!

Ninja Edit: If anyone else is looking for a cheap cooking guide, feel free to PM me and I can email you a copy :)
Have a good day, everyone^^