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. This week, Q continues his 60-100 series with the final installment: Goldsmithing. The special guest commentator/contributor is none other than the man who puts the "pooh" into Dutchypoohlicious, Gawayne.
Hooboy. I've had a lot of requests to get this guide published since I started writing this column. Why anyone wants to level this craft is beyond me aside from the fascination behind working with jewelry maybe (even if it is pixellated). Goldsmithing is in serious need of a boost from SE. Something that's an answer to all 3 of my crafting questions would help out greatly. Unfortunately, with FFXIV on the horizon, I'd venture to guess this isn't going to happen. Maybe the new Synergy skill will give it a boost, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
Does Goldsmithing have consumables? This almost falls in line with Smithing in the sense that all of the ingots, sheets, jewels, etc will get bought up rather quickly for larger crafts. It doesn't actually have a true consumable that's worth much of anything unless you count goldsmithing-related arrows such as silver arrows or Hiraishin(who lowers earth resistance or uses NIN for anything of important relevance anymore anyway?). Most items like Gold or Platinum ingots suffer greatly from a huge number of sources that have them available. A "consumable" item that has no HQ-related increase that sells for less than it's material cost has a fundamental problem that relates to too many sources for the product itself or too few methods for the ores to show up to sustain demand.
Gawayne Comment: The only often used “consumable” Goldsmithing item is the Reraise Earring. It sells often, but at a minimal profit (if any). Due to that, I would only recommend making them if the demand is high and there are no idiots on the AH undercutting all the earrings.
Does Goldsmithing have in-demand mid-range gear? Rings. That's about it. NQ rings are a huge loss while HQ rings likely aren't going to be enough to make up for it. Compound an already weak market with players re-selling their rings once they reach the next set and there's really not much room at all in this category to make any money.
Gawayne Comment: Most of the rings that can be made with Goldsmithing have been completely outclassed by the rare/ex rings that have become available over the last few years (CoP, ToAU). The HQ rings are still fairly popular for WS/nuke/cure/enfeeble sets, but the return on investment for HQ rings is too low to be profitable, unless you’re extremely lucky.
Does Goldsmithing have in-demand end-game gear? Yes. The Martial Set is the only cursed set worth noting as parts of it are still decent for most Paladins should they get their hands on the abjuration. Unfortunately, there are a lot of alternatives that can be considered better. Goldsmithing's real end-game set are in the level 72 and 74 rings along with a few odds and ends pieces that go into making other cursed items (i.e. O.Sheet in the Shadow set). Since there aren't a lot of people that actually get Goldsmithing this high (lowest craft above 60 by far on the 2009 Census), the market is generally pretty stable once you do hit 100. Unfortunately, w/o a large selection of items to choose from to begin with, this makes the standard "real money is off HQ" option far less likely.
Gawayne Comment: Over the last few years Goldsmithing has been suffering from the lack of consumables in its assortment. Not only are most of the synths quite pricey, but the market for them has become quite satiated too. Finding the niches on your particular server and playing the Auction House are usually the only ways of still making a decent profit. One important thing to keep in mind with Goldsmithing, is that most of the materials cannot be farmed consistently and will need to be bought off the AH. This means that you should always try to have at least 1 million gil reserve to buy crafting materials. Goldsmithing turns gold into more gold, it won’t create gold out of thin air ;-)
Guide after the jump.
Phase 1: This isn't so bad is it?
The first ~12ish levels of this guide aren't horrendous to your wallet and you can actually make a little bit of money here. Save up a ton of it because the next phase will make you cry. The single biggest thing to remember here is that you will not be able to burn-skill for very long stretches at a time. This should give you plenty of time to pick up your Goldsmithing skill+ items. Also try to make sure you catch "Artisan's Advantage" from the moogle powers to minimize your losses.
Pretty much an extension of where my 0-60 Goldsmithing guide left off. Definitely cap on these. They sell for a little bit of money on most servers. Buy the ingots off the AH as it generally costs more to make your own ingots than it does just to buy them.
Recipe: Fire Crystal, 1x Platinum Ingot
Cap: Level 64
The ingots for this synth are farmed up from Moblin Ashmen and Goblin Freelances in Oldton Movapolos. Meaning there aren't many to kill for these (3 total between the two). The pace will be excruciatingly slow, but this is here mostly as a filler. You can probably find the ingots themselves in various bazaars for relatively cheap and you should hold onto them for the final part of this phase. Definitely cap on these if you're that patient.
Recipe: Fire Crystal, 1x Moblumin Ingot
Cap: Level 69
This would be the burn synth if there was one for this phase. Unfortunately, you're looking at a 5-10k loss/synth. The ingots do sell pretty quickly if you decide to go this route and have the bank roll to back it up. I wouldn't necessarily cap on these, but definitely try to get a couple levels combined out of these and the Moblumin Sheets.
Recipe: Fire Crystal, 3x Gold Ore, 1x Fool's Gold Ore
Cap: Level 69
Another that can be classified as a burn synth due to the availability of the ingots. The rings themselves are usually right around the break-even part, so if that holds true on your server, then you're pretty much just going to lose money on breaks themselves. The only real catch to this is that you're going to be investing more money at once. Turn in a Mythril Breastplate for your Artisan rank.
Recipe: Fire Crystal, 2x Platinum Ingot
Cap: Level 70
While not exactly the fastest selling item in the world, it is the most cost effective. If you have a number of Moblumin Sheets you've farmed up or bought from bazaars, this would be the only place to use them. You'll need Smithing at 31 and Alch at 45. to make these, but those aren't expensive or difficult to reach and you could possibly even use this synth in the skill up process for those anyway.
Recipe: Fire Crystal, 1x Moblin Putty, 1x Moblumin Sheet, 1x Tin Ingot, 1x Beeswax
Cap: Level 73
Gawayne Comment: If you know any people in larger endgame linkshells, see if they’re interested in buying a few of these pop items to get their White Mages their “Haubergeon”. Or just see if you can sell it off to any White Mages directly.
Phase 2: Goldsmithing uses Mug. Goldsmithing steals 999,999,999 million gil from you.
This section is often referred to as "Gold Hell Part Deux: Now With 20x More Hellflames." There is nothing I can say or do here other than to offer my condolences to your wallet.
While you don't have to do the Jadeite Ring specifically, I placed it's picture because it's the one ring here that loses the least gil. Definitely check your server's pricing for the various level 54 rings and most importantly:
DO NOT MAKE HUGE QUANTITIES OF THESE AT A TIME.
The reason for this is that there are people out there buying these and reselling them constantly. The other reason is that gold prices tend to fluctuate quite a bit, so having the ability to be somewhat flexible on the AH is a must. Make sure you look at the cost of the gold rings themselves against the cost of the mats (2x Gold Ingots) and if you have to make the rings, save the HQ rings for later on or sell them (your choice).
Recipe: Fire Crystal, 1x Gold Ring, 1x HQ2 Gem.
Cap: Level 75
Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, here you go. You might consider skipping these and moving to the next synth to try to partake in "break-synthing" for skill (some will say they saved money doing this). If you don't want to do that, this is the cheapest way up due to it only needing one gold ingot. Alchemy needs to be at least 54 here unless you're wanting to try to break synth, in which case it needs to be at least 39.
To help ease the cost of these too, you might enlist the help of an Alchemy buddy who's got it at 87 or higher (highest possible HQ tier for this) and farm up a wide variety of items that can be used to make these. Doll Shards, Magic Pot Shards, or Golem Shards will be what you're after. Gloves can be bought from NPC for ~350/ea and Mercury is easily farmed up. Your results will be NPC'd. These things just flat do not sell on the AH due to not even being redeemable for guild points.
Recipe: Fire Crystal, 1x Gold Ingot, 2x Leather Gloves, 2x Cermet Chunks, 1x Mercury.
Cap: Level 77
Gawayne Comment: If you’re feeling lucky (and have gil to spare), you can try to desynth the gauntlets. The NQ (Sheep Leather x2) is useless, but the Cermet Chunks (HQ1, HQ2) or Gold Ingot (HQ3) can still be useful later on. You still won’t break even however, so most of the time it’s better to just NPC them.
A little less painful than the previous synth cost-wise and AH-wise. Some would opt to just skip to this synth altogether hoping that when it breaks, it'll leave the gold ingot behind and they end up with a skill up. It's your wallet, so you can decide how you want to approach this. If your smithing is ~36, make your own Targes. You'll end up saving 6-8k vs. the NPC price. Mercury is easily farmable. Take the pace slowly here and resell your results on the AH when the time comes for them to be redeemed for guild points. Turn in a Torque for your next rank.
Recipe: Fire Crystal, 1x Gold Ingot, 1x Targe, 1x Mercury
Cap: Level 80
Phase 3: Is the hard part over?
For the most part yes. Unfortunately, from here on out, the mats for your skillups aren't cheap. They don't sell for losses in most cases and even sell for a decent amount of profit for a successful synth, but it means you're going to be investing literally millions at a time for maybe 5 or 6 synths.
Seven level gap here means you need to have both of your Goldsmithing skill+ items, the ring, and synthesis support. While starting off won't actually get you to the cap (+5 skill total and +1% success w/o HQ chance), it should get you close enough that a break or two every now and then won't hurt you that much. Compared to years ago when these beads were up in the 600k range per bead, most of the ores being down in the 100-150k range is a godsend for 7 levels of this craft. Try to avoid the temptation of clearing the AH out of ores as that only makes the prices go up on the ores and the prices go down on the beads. It's a good practice to limit how much you have invested at a time (try starting off at 500-600k at a time and move it up or down based on how fast they sell).
You may also be able to cut a deal with some woodworkers trying to HQ staves too.
Recipe: Wind Crystal, Elemental Ore
Cap: Level 87
Gawayne Comment: I would suggest starting out with ice ores as they’re generally the cheapest and available in the highest quantity. Once you have reduced the gap enough, you can skill up on the more expensive ores as well. Resist the urge to undercut the beads, as you will only end up cutting yourself in the fingers in the long run. Also try to keep an eye out for optimal HQ staff synthing conditions (especially New Moon), as that is when woodworkers will buy almost all the available beads up at once. If you time your sessions right, you can actually make a little profit here.
These sell fast and for money. So breaks are the only thing that will kill you here. While the ores aren't always in huge supply, they're definitely not available enough to meet demand. Turn in a Colichemarde when you hit 88 for your final rank item.
You can choose to save the ingots you make for the next synth or you can just buy them off the AH again when you're capped here, or you can just skip this altogether and move to the next, money making synth.
Recipe: Fire Crystal, 3x Orichalcum Ore, 1x Platinum Ore
Cap: Level 89
Used in the cursed shadow gear. The implementation of these gave new life to the demand for this item, thus making it a viable skill up. These things sell for nearly 100k above the ingot cost due to the facts that A) not very many people have goldsmithing high enough to make 'em and B) there's a decent demand for them. This is another synth where avoiding the temptation to buy 2-3 stacks of ingots for burn sessions should be avoided as this will only make the ingot costs rise and the resulting competition to cause prices to drop on the sheets.
Recipe: Fire Crystal, 1x Orichalcum Ingot
Cap: Level 90
Same deal with the level 54 rings. Double check which ring loses the least amount of money (or makes some). Make sure you check the cost of Plat. Ingots vs. the cost of the Plat. Rings. And yet again:
DO NOT MAKE HUGE QUANTITIES OF THESE AT A TIME.
Recipe: Fire Crystal, 1x Platinum Ring, 1x HQ3 gem.
Cap: Level 95
Gawayne Comment: Creating your own HQ3 gems is usually more about luck than skill, and not considered a viable option for obtaining the gems for these rings. If there isn’t enough supply of them, find alternative ways of acquiring the HQ3 gems, such as the Ruby Quadav NM in Qulun Dome that drops rubies fairly consistently.
Another chance to make some money thank to the demand created by the addition of a gobbie bag. The luminium ore drops from ISNMs, so there might not always be enough on the AH for more than 1-2 ingots at a time. They do sell for a profit on Odin and probably do on other servers as well.
Recipe: Fire Crystal, 1x Orichalcum Ore, 3x Luminium Ore
Cap: Level 98
Finally the end. While I wish I could tell you that the last synth in this rather excruciating path to 100 was better, it's definitely not as bad as it could be. Some of the rings might make money, but odds are they're a bit of a loss. Mostly the same thing applies here that applied to the level 54 and level 72 rings. Check the cost of the beads against the cost of the results. You're going to be making your own Orichalcum Rings as there's not many people making the rings to put up on the AH since they only have this one good use. The bright side is, these things are now bought a little more frequently due to the augment system that's been put into place. Just for good measure:
DO NOT MAKE HUGE QUANTITIES OF THESE AT A TIME.
Recipe: Fire Crystal, 1x Orichalcum Ring, 1x Elemental Bead
Cap: Level 100
Gawayne Comment: WARNING: If you are making your own orichalcum rings, be SURE to have the Goldsmithing Ring equipped. While not very likely, getting the HQ version of the Orichalcum Ring (Triton Ring) effectively destroys 500k, as the result cannot be used for any synths and has no noteworthy stats at all. Obviously, you will want to create your own beads for these synths at this point as well, saving you about 15k per bead.
Congrats, now you're part of a VERY select group of people to reach this and you'll likely be able to enjoy some profitable times ahead due to the lack of competition for these higher level synths. Goldsmithing is definitely not for the weak of heart.
This concludes my 60-100 series. Please keep in mind that these guides were written as updates to reflect various game changes that have occurred over the past year or so. This means that something better could come along for a certain range at any point in time, so always keep your eyes peeled for other solutions.
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Critical Break: 60-100 Series: Goldsmithing
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Critical Break: 0-60 Series: Goldsmithing
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. This week, Q continues his 0-60 series with the final installment: Goldsmithing.
Easily the worst craft to get to 60. Virtually every synth it has is a financial loss. The primary reason for it is stupidity. For starters, SE uses many of the ingots found through here as a reward in various BCNMs and Einherjar tiers. This causes a a rather large influx of the more popular ingots like Gold and Platinum ingots and as we all know...
...when the AH has 10 or more of an item up, people start getting really stupid with their undercutting habits. On the surface, this looks like a good thing since you can take advantage of said stupidity and keep your costs down, but since Goldsmithing is similar to Smithing in it's Ingot - Sheet/Ring/Hairpin/Earring - Scales pattern, the stupidity just keeps spiraling down through the various levels of financial hell.
I wish there were a way for me to write a Goldsmithing to 60 guide without starting off in such a negative way, but reality is what it is. You will lose a lot of money getting to 60 with this, so make absolutely sure you have a rock-solid method of income (or a ton of patience) before you attempt to tackle this. Some of the ingot synths can be slightly profitable, but any profit you make from them will get eaten up ten-fold shortly afterwards.
Read on for the pain...
Phase 1: Copper and Brass - Nothing Witty to Say About Them
This will be as simple as it gets through this guide. What you'll find is that you will be spending a lot of time making ingots early on, then taking advantage of the stupidity of people selling the ingots only to get victimized by more stupidity trying to sell off your results to recoup your money.
Guild. Buy the copper ores there, it doesn't get any cheaper. Stacks of these sell for a slight profit due to lazy crafters, so take advantage of it while you can. Keep some around for your next synth. If Guild prices are out of whack (i.e. more than 14 gil ea.), buy from Denvihr.
Recipe: Fire Crystal, 4x Copper Ore
Cap: Level 3
Use your previously made ingots to cap on these. Might be able to AH a few of these for a little profit, but don't count on it. Save one for your rank up, but NPC your results otherwise.
Recipe: Wind Crystal, 1x Copper Ingot
Cap: Level 7
There are usually a ton of Zinc Ores up on the AH in Bastok due to the fame quest there. Buy 'em at 500 gil or less, then buy your copper ore in the usual places. Stacks of these usually go for 9-10k on the Jeuno AH, so it might behoove you to make a few stacks specifically to sell and keep building that cash buffer if Zinc Ores stay in supply. If not, Palborough and Zeruhn Mines are the easiest spots to mine these things up with Palborough having the best rates, but far more spread out mining points.
Recipe: Fire Crystal, 3x Copper Ore, 1x Zinc Ore
Cap: Level 9
Use some of your previously made brass ingots to cap on these.
Recipe: Fire Crystal, 1x Brass Ingot
Cap: Level 11
Can skip these if you like, but probably not a good idea. Save some money again by making your own brass ingots.
Recipe: Wind Crystal, 1x Brass Sheet
Cap: Level 13
Save one for rank up. Possible to sell on AH for a slight profit, but again, don't count on it. NPC results otherwise. It's possible to skip this synth and move onto the next one depending on the availability of silver beastcoins, but again...you probably want to pick up at least a couple levels off these things before moving on.
Recipe: Wind Crystal, 1x Brass Ingot
Cap: Level 17
Phase 2: Silver - Your Wallet's Last Stand
Sometime during this phase, throw a goodbye party for your wallet, cause afterwards, you're going to lose it.
Silver beastcoins are usually cheap on the AH. This synth comes in around the same price as buying the silver ores from the guild for 341 each as long as you buy them for 4k/stack or less. Save your ingots for a later synth.
Recipe: Fire Crystal, 4x Silver Beastcoins.
Cap: Level 18 Buy these from Goldsmithing guild at their lowest point. Cap on these and save for later synth.
Recipe: Fire Crystal, 4x Silver Ore
Cap: Level 20
NPC your results here. These have no purpose to anyone whatsoever. You can cap on these or move to the next synth and cap on that. You will have less invested in the next synth and you will make more in return to NPC.
Recipe: Fire Crystal, 1x Silver Ingot
Cap: Level 22
This is purely a bridge synth. You will lose a little money on this unless you farm up your zinc ores for the brass ingot. Buy a bronze hammer from Ciqala for 300ish gil and craft away. Just NPC the results.
Recipe: Fire Crystal, 1x Brass Ingot, 1x Bronze Hammer
Cap: Level 24
Save one for rank up. These cap at 27, but at least make to 26. You're going to lose about 500-1k/synth minimum here. As with the previous hairpin synths, you can possibly recoup most of your cost if you manage to sell on the AH, but I wouldn't rely on it happening.
Recipe: Wind Crystal, 1x Silver Ingot
Cap: Level 27
Keep your costs to the absolute minimum here. If you manage to do that, you'll break even on these reselling them on the AH. These sell about average there, so you could reasonably expect to move 2-3 stacks a day. Problem is that these are pretty much one of the only consumables that Goldsmithing has, so there are people who will HQ these as a bit of a side-money-maker.
Recipe: Fire Crystal, 1x Copper Ingot, 1x Silver Ingot
Cap: Level 31
This is the last chance you have to really break even or profit from any of the synths in this guide. They sell for cost or slightly above on the AH, but move about as fast as the Hiraishin. Again keep your costs to a minimum and cap on these.
Recipe: Earth Crystal, 2x Silver Ingot
Cap: Level 33
Phase 3: You Didn't Like Gil Anyway
Farming is the only way you're not going to lose your ass here. Farming the materials for some of these next synths sucks too, so that's usually not an option.
Here's the good news: You can cap this at 38 without really losing your ass as long as you buy mythril beastcoins off the AH for 14k/stack or cheaper. Ingot prices may be a little higher on other servers, but on Odin, the Ingots themselves are turning around for about 4-6k ea. Make as many of these as you can and then some, pay close attention to single ingot prices and stack ingot prices and sell according to the higher one. Turn in a Chain Gorget when you cap for your next rank.
Recipe: Fire Crystal, 4x Mythril Beastcoin
Cap: Level 38Here's the bad new Odds are you're going to lose money here. You can buy mythril ores from the guild for as cheap as 1.5k ea and the AH is usually around the same point. Unfortunately the AH doesn't keep many ores around and the guild isn't down that low most of the time. Your only other alternative is to farm golems or antica or anything else that might drop the ore semi-regularly. A little relief is in sight with the next synth though.
Recipe: Fire Crystal, 4x Mythril Ore
Cap: Level 40
Use your ingots you just made to cap on these. The sheets sell for about the same as the ingot or a little more.
Recipe: Fire Crystal, 1x Mythril Ingot
Cap: Level 41
I put this here mainly as a bridge and didn't mention it's Vivified Mythril Ingot synth from earlier. The reason I didn't was because making your own animas requires you to have Alchemy at 75. Buying them off the AH is a joke on Odin. To me that pretty much tosses that particular synth out the window. However, there are some that make the ingot and sell it or some that find it in the Chocobo Hot and Cold Game. Compare the cost of the two materials to the sale price of Reraise Earrings and decide from there if you want to do this synth. You can buy the Mythril Earring from Scamplix or Matoaka. Due to it's low level cap and low level use, this item is spammed like crazy on the AH. They sell fast, but there's almost always a huge supply of them up.
Recipe: Wind Crystal, 1x Mythril Earring, 1x Vivified Mythril Ingot
Cap: Level 45
A brief reprieve in the mass spending dept. Make your own mats and definitely synth to cap here. You can probably skip Reraise Earrings or even Mythril Sheets and the second Mythril Ingot synth if you don't mind a 9 level gap. NPCing the results will net you a slight loss, but it takes a ton of breaks and a ton of loss before you even come close to matching what you'd lose by busting one or two reraise earring synths completely.
Recipe: Wind Crystal, 1x Brass Ingot, 1x Copper Ingot
Cap: Level 47
Phase 4: May As Well Be Charged 87,489 Every Time You Log In
There is no easy way to finish this off. Just grit your teeth and do it.
Gold Beastcoins are regularly thieved from higher level beastmen, so they're usually in steady supply. Make to cap here and keep for later synths. Turn in a Mythril Ring when you hit 48 for your last rank up.
Recipe: Fire Crystal, 4x Gold Beastcoin
Cap: Level 51Same progression as the other ingots. The coin version is a couple levels below the ore version. Gold Ore is usually up in decent supply on both the Bastok and Jeuno AHs. You will likely lose 2-4k/ingot if you decide to resell these, but if you've been following these guides, you know to hold onto them and use them in the next synth.
Recipe: Fire Crystal, 4x Gold Ore
Cap: Level 53
These sell on the AH for a loss, but they sell kind of decently. Cap on these instead of Gold Sheets as you'll lose more money on those and the level gap is covered by synthesis support anyway.
Recipe: Earth Crystal, 2x Gold Ingot
Cap: Level 55
These next few synths are probably going to hurt or make you sit on your inventory for a while. These do sell and they sell for about the same loss as the Gold Chains. Should definitely consider capping on these, but be prepared to have your inventory space killed on a mule for a while.
Recipe: Wind Crystal, 2x Gold Ingot
Cap: Level 57
Insane loss on Odin server. You lose about half the ingot value making these and reselling. Avoid these unless you just don't want to risk a double ingot bust on the next option.
Recipe: Wind Crystal, 1x Gold Ingot
Cap: Level 58
Higher level Goldsmithers will buy these in quantity attempting to HQ the mid-level stat rings. This makes their sales streaky though and the only way you're really going to move them is to sell them at a loss. On Odin, they sell for about a 5k loss, which isn't bad all things considering, but can still add up quick. They'll kill your inventory space while you wait for them to sell too.
Recipe: Fire Crystal, 2x Gold Ingot
Cap: Level 60
This an appealing option due to the fact that it's a single-ingot synth and the results sell for a profit. The unappealing part of it is that it's cap is 64 and you're probably going to bust a few of them. Catch Artisan's Advantage and try to cap on these instead of Gold Rings if you don't want your wallet or inventory space destroyed.
Recipe: Fire Crystal, 1x Platinum Ingot
Cap: Level 64, but level 60 for this guide's purposes.
There you have it. Goldsmithing at 60. You probably lost about a half-mil to a mil if I had to estimate following this guide. Hopefully you made some gil from the actual profitable synths prior to the huge loss ones.
This also concludes the 0-60 Series. What I hoped to accomplish with this entire series was to shed some light on newer options that are available due to updates that have happened since a lot of the guides have been written. I also hoped to shed light on the options that were available to make getting from 0-60 as cheap as possible. These guides will likely not have their own dedicated section on this blog, so after they've all been published here, I will publish them on my own blog and dedicate a small section to them. Hope you guys enjoyed the trip and look for my next series, 60-100 to start up soon.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
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.
#1 ~ Monk
#2 ~ Samurai
#3 ~ Ninja
#4 ~ Dragoon
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