Critical Break: July Update - Weapons

Critical Break is our crafting and economics column written by Qtipus. Q is an experienced crafter and also well versed in using the Auction House to turn a decent profit. Enough so that he was able to fund his own relic, Gungnir. Every Tuesday you will find Q's rants, raves and good crafting practices here. Today, Q is poking around to see if he can find anything of value in the July Update.

In July's update, SE released a number of new weapons and crafting ingredients for the various crafts. While they typically will release a number of new crafting items in each update, it's not all that often they actually release something useful.

On top of that, it's not all that often they actually release something that's not only useful, but affordable. Most of these require one or two subs that should already be leveled to some degree if you're serious about making money in the crafting market. A lot of them won't be in high demand due to the lack of people that either A) Don't have the job leveled or B) Don't see anything particularly appealing about the weapons. Some of them will be though. Particularly the 1h weapons where the Dancers, Blue Mages et al of the world will be subbing NIN more often than not.

The money and demand portions of these are not why I'm writing about them though. Keep reading to see why I'm hyped about these.


First, a run down of the items themselves:

Crafting Materials

Dweomer Steel Ingot(Smithing 67)
Ruszor Leather(Leather 83ish)
Feyweald Lumber(Woodworking 67)
Oberon's Gold Ingot(Goldsmithing 69)
Oberon's Gold Sheet(Goldsmithing cap unknown, but probably within a couple levels of the ingot)


New Weapons

Fay Crozier (Woodworking 63)
Fay Gendawa (Woodworking 70, Bone ??)
Fay Lance (Woodworking 67, Smithing ??)
Fay Staff (Woodworking 63)
Fane Baselard (Smithing ~64)
Fane Hexagun (Smithing ~67)
Oberon's Sainti (Goldsmithing 64, Woodworking ??, Smithing ??)
Oberon's Rapier (Goldsmithing 69, Smithing ??)
Oberon's Knuckles (Goldsmithing 64, Smithing ~53, Woodworking ??)
Ogre Jambiya (Bonecraft 64, Smithing 52, Goldsmithing ~30)
Ogre Sickle (Bonecraft ~67, Smthing ~52, Woodworking ??)
Dweomer Knife (Smithing ~64)
Dweomer Scythe (Smithing ~64, Alchemy ??, Woodworking ??)
Dweomer Maul (Smithing ~64)
Erlking's Blade (Smithing 61)
Erlkings's Tabar (Smithing ~66, Woodworking ??)
Erlking's Kheten (Smithing 74, Woodworking ??)
Erlking's Sword (Smithing ~67)
Rindomaru (Smithing ~64, Leathercraft ~52, Woodworking ??)
Tsukomo (Smithing ~70, Goldsmithing ~54)

The pattern I want you to notice here are the level ranges for the crafts involved. For most of these crafts, 60-75ish is a veritable sinkhole of gil. Obviously some can argue anything above 20 for Goldsmithing is a sinkhole, but to that I just say these synths become even more important. At least for the time being. SE adding these in this range gives a player some very solid options for skill up and a little profit along the way.

The other thing to notice here are the sub-crafts on these weapons. It's not all that often that we run into crafts where the sub is nearly the same level as the main. This will generally discourage a lot of people from making these as they're usually too lazy to level their subs to begin with.

Depending on how much gil one wants to sink into that "perfect augment", these things shouldn't drop below the break-even point for at least a couple months. If you're at the latter points in skilling up subcrafts (like I am with Smithing and Goldsmithing), give these items a good look. Odds are, you can make a little gil and finish off your subs at the same time. That's particularly difficult to say for some of these crafts. Smithing obviously got the lion's share when it comes to these new items (and it was sorely needed as this is as close to a "consumable" as smithing will probably ever get).

The last thing to note here is that these weapons do drop from union spoils in campaign. Some may choose to take their chances there instead of buying off the AH. This will also add to the influx of weapons on the AH for sale.