Guide: Making gil during Special EventsFollow

Holidays and special events are rare opportunities to do something different for a limited amount of time. Rewards are often Rare/Ex trinkets that won't be available until at least a year, assuming the same prizes are even given during the next year's event. What does this mean?

Demand. Players just "have" to have that piece of clothing that makes them look different in town, or prove to others that they've been playing since at least the last event. The triviality of the item is irrelevant- the novelty is what makes players rush to get their own item, to seemingly feel unique amongst other players, and to get the item before "time runs out," even if there are still days left before the event is over.

The next time a special event occurs, look at any opportunity to make gil. What are some of the rewards? What is the ultimate reward? What items are needed to get these rewards? What other items are associated with the event? And most important, what items are not EX?

1. Don't bother with fireworks. For as much novelty value as they have, they are still a poor choice to make money off of. There is little player demand for them, little inflation even months after they're no longer available, and they're not only worthless, they're disposable and worthless. Players would rather have something more permanent and worthless to hold on to. If you're spending hours to get stacks of fireworks, you're wasting an opportunity. Unless there is an event that requires trading fireworks, in which case you'll be set.

2. Find something that can be sold in order to get to the end reward, since the end reward is probably Rare/EX. In most cases, these event items will be Rare, meaning you can always have one in your bazaar, and one for each mule you have. See if the item can be sold on the AH, and check each city to see which has the highest price and demand for that item. See if there are multiple Rare items of this type involved with the event, in which case you should collect them all and have them available in your bazaar for player convenience. If the item would require travel to another city in order to obtain, then it may be in demand in other cities. Last, see if you can deliver the item to yourself or to your mules. By doing this you can store multiples of the same item indefinitely, even after the event has passed, and still sell the items when they're no longer available.

3. See if you can "farm" any of the items by doing certain parts of the event multiple times. If it's a "one per game day" item, make sure you get 1 per day, per mule. If you can find any way to get a Rare item repeatedly within a reasonable amount of time, then send the item to yourself by delivery (or trade to friends who can hold on to it) and keep repeating the steps needed to get that item again.

4. Have enough event related items to run a bazaar. While you may feel that abusing the shout channel is wrong, others will simply take it as free advertisement. Either way, find a good spot to set up shop and wait until the items are sold. If there's a Rare item in your bazaar, periodically check to see if it's sold, and make sure you restock it. You can set up shop in a crowded high traffic area and run the risk of getting overlooked, or set yourself in a unique spot with less traffic such as Bastok Mines rather than Bastok Markets- this way you can claim an area that isn't already saturated.

5. Normal items can be used to make money before and after the event. The most common items can be bought from vendors and sold in cities that don't have those items for sale. Be aware of which regional vendors are active. Travel to other cities and buy items at their lowest price, especially if the item has lower demand in one city but higher demand in another. Sell your items at a slightly inflated price- due to demand from the holidays, people will pay price, if it is within reason. Of course others will try to do the same, creating a market war of overpricing and undercutting. It's your job to find out what price players are willing to pay, what price has the most demand, what items have low supply for that city, and what competitor's prices are currently set at. If you want to sell fast, and make gil fast, you'll want to look like the cheapest bazaar in town, and therefore the most convenient to the player. Setting a ludicrous price for common items will get you nowhere, unless the event is dangerously close to ending. Either way, some kind of "market value" will naturally be established by supply and demand. Start selling high demand items as soon as possible to beat the fierce competition before it starts.

6. Check the AH in all cities. Determine what items you can sell quickly. Since you only have seven slots, you'll want to sell either high demand items that sell fast, or hard to get items that can sell for higher. Conversely, if the AH is flooded with too many items from the event, chances are prices will be much cheaper due to supply. In this case, buy as many items as you can at this bargain price if you believe you can sell them for higher later, after the event is over.

7. If the event has already ended, sell what you can. You may be surprised how many people will actually buy completely worthless items due to their novelty or collectability value. Set a reasonable or slightly high price for these items. If the item can be placed on the AH, check which city it sells best in and keep trying to sell it there.

8. You can make gil during special events by getting an item for nothing, getting an item for a minimal time investment, or getting an item for a minimal gil investment. In each case, you can sell for pure profit. This is one of the most risk free ways to make gil, compared to failed synths for crafting or broken pickaxes for mining. Most of the time you can make gil at level 1, or with barely any starting money. It may not be much to a seasoned high level crafter, but to a new player it's still free gil.

How this has been applied to past events:

Easter- Everyone gets one free Letter egg per game day. In theory, every player should have been generous enough to collect and trade eggs for free. This did not happen, due to player demand, and an implied value from being able to trade 12 lizard or bird eggs, making each egg worth at least that much.

Letter eggs were completely random, and so were player names. Demand for these eggs rose steadily from 500, to 1000, to 1500, to 2000 gil. Overzealous players charged 3000-5000, but most could make a steady living in the 1000-1500 range. Another factor that kept prices up was when players horded other eggs- if a seller dared to undercut their prices and sell ridiculously cheap, another seller would simply buy them out and sell them at retail. Then there was the concept of "slightly more rare" eggs, some seemed harder to find than others, and when players sought them out, demand and prices rose. The illusion of super hard to find letters meant that prices could be overinflated just for those players who sought them out. One of those was the "X" egg, which seemed especially rare, and was needed by those who were rare enough to have an X in their name. One sold for 10,000 gil.

Other "farmed" items? Fireworks and Chocobo tickets. Chocobo tickets sold for 500-1000 gil, and required 3 eggs for the chance of to obtain them. This obviously wasn't worth it, as each individual egg could be sold for more. Colored Drops were also given by trading more eggs, but these had less demand than the eggs themselves.

As the event died down, and eggs were sold be nearly everyone, prices dipped to around 500 gil. This was the time to liquidate, as nobody wanted 26 worthless rare items sitting in their inventory afterwards. Unfortunately, my ISP went down at that exact moment.

Summerfest- To counter rampant item selling, items for this event had to be traded by the same player that you journeyed with. This meant that hoarding items would serve little value to the event itself. After the event, however, the items sold for 1000-5000 based on their novelty alone, particularly the "Galka Tailcutter."

Most players found Fish Scooping to be a waste of time, and is granted mostly fireworks. However, there was a rare chance to get a Colored Drop, which hasn't been available since Easter. Colored Drops were now farmable, with less expense than the last event. They can sell from 5000-10000 and upwards due to their limited availability, and can aid desperate high level players who don't mind spending too much on a half hour consumable item.

Halloween- While players set ludicrous prices for crafted pies and other sweets, it was soon discovered that fruits from local and regional vendors worked just as well. This meant that one could stock up on the cheapest fruits, move to another city that didn't sell them, and inflate prices. Due to the number of prizes, and the random chance that nothing would be awarded, players created high demand for even these easy to purchase items. Many players were simply unaware of vendors that sold fruit for far cheaper. Besides importing fruit from other cities, another tactic was to buy fruit from regional vendors just as the region was about to change to another city, cutting off supply for that item. Typical items included Yagudo Cherries, Faerie Apples, and Saruta Oranges. I chose to price them at around 90 gil each, which was slightly more than double the amount they cost from the vendor. I was effectively doubling the amount of gil I spent, without charging too high a price. This worked well in Bastok, but not in Windurst, where the citizens know the fruit trade all too well.

The AH was a slower outlet to selling fruit, as indiviudual pieces were too trivial, and stacks sold at a reasonable pace, but nowhere near as fast as the bazaar. There was one side effect of the event, however- Jack o'Lanterns were given out freely and in great numbers. Though an excellent item for Rangers, not all players needed them, and the AH became flooded with them. Supply was much greater than demand during this period, meaning prices fell drastically, and I was able to buy enough Jack o Lanterns and send them to my mules, combined with the ones I'd already received, to make myself thoroughly sick of the Delivery Box system. Sure, you can send them to yourself to create an infinite inventory, but you start to realize just how painful resending sets of eight of the same unstackable item to yourself can get. I still have some left over, but demand and price have increased since they're normally craft only, so they sell fairly well at 1500-2400 gil, while I obtained them all for 400-600 gil or a stack of fruit.

Christmas- The end prize was a hat that gave free cookies. These cookies sold for 3 gil each. There had to be an alternative, and thankfully that was in the easy "Tree run" portion of the event. See, not everyone was willing to actually do the run to get their tree. Trees regularly sold for 5000 gil, and some players would buy one from each city due to the novelty of owning them, and saving the trouble of going to each city to get them. This yielded 5000-15000 gil for free. Since the trees were Rare, I found they could be stored via the Delivery Box, and sent myself and my mules multiple trees from each city. As long as you had a tree in the Delivery Box instead of your Mog House or inventory, you'd always get a tree rather than worthless fireworks. The tree run was easiest in Port Sandy, so I acquired an abundance of Sandorian Trees, which sold very well there. People preferred to buy the tree from their own city, since it gave them their hat, but would still buy other trees anyway. I didn't bother much with the AH, as demand was low and some of the "sold for" prices were only 1000-4000 gil. But, for some reason, the Sandorian trees would steadily sell in the Sandorian AH for 5000 and 10000 gil. Even after the event, and days into New Years, they'd sell for 10000. I can only contribute this to the lack of availability after the event, the lack of people willing to part with their lovely trees, and the lack of judgement some people have with spending gil.

New Years- Sadly, the only farmable item here was the Kodamatsu, which sold for around 1000-3000 gil. One could have farmed these repeateadly, but I noticed too many on the AH to bother, and the time it took to get the right cards was more of a hassle than I needed. But for some reason I spent the time to get six Rare/Ex inventory slot wasters. Oh well.

Again, the key is to identify what people want from the event, and what steps are needed to get there. If you can't make money from either, then observe the "side effect" items you might get such as free fireworks. You can at least sell them to someone. Eventually. I mean, vendors buy them.

Man, I swear, everytime I see your name I read it as Shogun *****.
I apologize.



As for special events, all I can say is that when the Easter Egg lunacy was going on, and during the Summerfest (after I got my Yukata) the farming in Tahrongi Canyon was sweet.

Maybe a tenth of the usual population was out. It made it so much easier, to have so little competition