FAQ: Which craft should I choose?Follow

Admin Edit: This thread has been replaced with this one.

This question comes up all the time on this board, so I thought I'd take a crack at answering it. Hopefully, other experienced crafters can add their 2 gil and we can add this to the fake sticky. Thanks


No one can tell you which craft is right for you. There are several factors to consider when choosing a craft, such as guild location, jobs, funds, goals and complementary tradeskills. Evaluate these factors for yourself and you should be a happier crafter in the long run.

Guild Location. As will find yourself spending a bit of time at the guild when skilling up (access to supplies, advanced support and promotion tests), you may wish to choose a guild with a location convenient for you. Low level crafters (sub-20) are encouraged to start with a craft in their home city.

Jobs. The cost of skilling up a craft can be mitigated by crafting the consumables you already use: stat foods and drinks, arrows, bolts and bullets, ninja tools, etc. Having a ready market for your crafted wares can fuel your progress.

Funds. Some crafts are much more expensive to level than others. If your funds are limited you may decide to choose a less expensive craft, so your starting funds take you to a higher level. If you have a lot of gil to invest, you may find less competition at high levels in the more expensive crafts.

Goals. If your primary goal is to make money with your craft, you need to decide whether you plan to do so with consumable or durable items. Consumables will earn your less per combine, but also have less risk of a pricy failure. Durables can require considerable capital and multiple tradeskills to be profitable, but can be very profitable at high skill.

For an excellent list of non-food consumables see this post by Aurikan: http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/forum.html?forum=24&mid=1085787048300176802

Complementary Tradeskills. Some crafts have complementary tradeskills (including fishing, mining, etc.) and crafts. If you are already proficient in another craft or a collection tradeskill, you may want leverage off of this.

About the costs shown. As we get more information I am updating this list to show a range of costs to 60. The low end of the range tends to be enjoyed by the slow and steady types who raise their craft slowly by making items with profit (or minimal loss) and wait until they sell before continuing. The high end of the range are the costs being reported by power levelers who are interesting in raising their craft as quickly as possible, whatever the cost.

Alchemy (Bastok Mines)
Makes: medicines, fishing rods & lures, ninjitsu, bullets & arrowheads, weapons
Some popular items: Beeswax (5), Glass Rod Repair (24), Prism Powder (41), Ether (50), Porcelain Flower Pot (61)
Useful for: ranger, fisherman
Cost to skill 60: 150K to 400K
Product mix: 80% consumable/20% durable
Complementary Tradeskills: Fishing, smithing, goldsmithing

Bonecraft (Windurst Woods)
Makes: jewelry, armor, instruments, arrowheads, weapons
Some popular items:
Cost to skill 60: ~300K
Product mix: 20% consumable/80% durable
Complementary Tradeskills: Excavation, leather

Clothcraft (Windurst Woods)
Makes: thread, cloth, armor, ninjitsu, lures
Some popular items: Shinobi-tabi
Cost to skill 60: ~250K
Product mix: 30% consumable/70% durable
Complementary Tradeskills: Harvesting, goldsmithing

Cooking (Windurst Waters)
Makes: food, drink, pet food, fishing bait
Some popular items: Insect paste (29), Meat mithkabobs (39)
Useful for: beastmaster, fisherman, mages
Cost to skill 60: 50K to 150K
Product mix: 100% consumable/0% durable
Complementary Tradeskills: Fishing, gardening

Goldsmithing (Bastok Markets)
Makes: ingots, sheets, gems, jewelry, armor
Some popular items: Rings, earrings
Cost to skill 50: 800k to 2M
Cost to skill 60: ~4M
Product mix: 20% consumable/80% durable
Complementary Tradeskills: Mining, Smithing

Leathercraft (South San D'oria)
Makes: leather, armor, parchment, ninjitsu
Some popular items:
Cost to skill 60: 300K to 500K
Product mix: 20% consumable/80% durable
Complementary Tradeskills: Cloth

Smithing (North San D'oria & Bastok Metalworks)
Makes: ingots, armor, weapons, arrowheads & shuriken
Some popular items: (15) Desynth Gob Helms, (20) Iron Ingots, (22) Iron Sheets, (34) Padded Caps, (49) Desynth Quadav Helms, (51) Desynth Quadav Backplates, (52) Darksteel Ingots, (69) Haubergeon, (73) Darksteel Pick (heard it sells for profit to NPC), (89) Hauberk
Cost to skill 60: 600K to 1M
Product mix: 20% consumable/80% durable
Complementary Tradeskills: Mining, wood, leather, goldsmithing

Woodworking (North San D'oria)
Makes: lumber, furniture, bows, arrows & bolts, fishing rods, instruments, weapons
Some popular items: Arrowwood Lumber (2), Shihei (29), Bast Parchment (45 Woodworking, 29 Alchemy required also), Scorpion Arrow (59), Elemental Staves (75), Lu Shang's Fishing Rod (80), Mithran Fishing Rod (83, 87)
Useful for: ranger, fisherman
Cost to skill 60: 200K to 1M
Product mix: 40% consumable/60% durable
Complementary Tradeskills: Logging, smithing

Note: Consumables include subcombines (such as ingots or thread) and items consumed in quests.


Revision 5.4.1: Expanded skillup-costs to show a range. Updated usefulness, items made. Added Key Items.
Revision 5.29.1: Added link to non-food consumables list.
Revision 10.5.1: Replaced the terminology "key items" with "some popular items", due to the addition of craft related key items into the game.




Edited, Tue Oct 5 14:17:36 2004 by popsi

Edited, Wed Sep 14 21:01:01 2005 by Railus

Thanks Popsi! :-) (Your new avatar...I'm not sure if it scares me more or less than the last one :-P)

Edit: Oh right, feedback.

Alchemy:
I'd say that for alchemy, up to 60, most of the profit is in consumables -- prism powder, silent oil, lures, fish rods, carbon fiber. 90% of my alchemy combines are carbon fish rods.

As for durables, and there isn't much you can do there except add status/elements to weapons (status katanas, flaming weapons). You can usually pull a half-decent profit on these, but it's not generally worth the effort I find. I do them mainly as favors for friends.

At least on my server, potions and ethers are pretty much only for self-consumption, as the profit on them is kinda meager for the effort involved. In a significantly large and advanced linkshell you might get to be a BCNM supplier though...

The price point looks about right.

Clothcraft:
Almost all the recipes I now make are durables. The reason I do that is because I find the consumable recipes, except for gobbiebag cloth, are all consumed by clothcrafters of higher level, which means that profit is rather slim: I can't push my margins at all. It also means I'm strongly at the mercy of the raw material supply. I'd rather make durables from raw materials.

Popsi knows clothcraft better than I do, though.

Edited, Tue May 4 01:42:08 2004 by aurikan

Aurik - I moved the product mix for alchemy to 80/20 consumable/non and for cloth to 30/70. High level cloth is way less consumable focused, but there are alot of gil to be made during the lower levels on consumables.

p.s. How can a cute little rice bowl moogle scare you?

Well - good post and hopefully people will actually look at the sticky (all that effort and too many people don't read it .. ::sighs::).

The only changes I would humbly suggest is

a) useful for which jobs - cooking is very useful for mages - making pineapple juice / apple pies / melon juice / etc etc.

Conversely there is only one woodworking synth that is really good for ninja - shihei - and I will repeat what has been said several times on the forums (and I agree with btw) it is not worth levelling woodwork for it. (On Ramuh at least there is one guy who spends hours making shihei under HQ synth in the guild house - most of the time shihei are sold at less than cost for a standard synth - you need to HQ it to even break even).

b) Add a line to show key items and their trivial level - i.e. the ones they all ask about - like Mithkabobs level 39? Every craft has "THE" item that piques most peoples interest ....

Your numbers seem really low compared to mine, so mind if I ask what exactly your "cost" entails? Is this the cost of powerleveling using sell-back to vendor/guild, or is this slow levelling with waiting for all your items to sell on AH? Are any of the materials "farmed" and thus not included in the cost?

I'm a pretty impatient crafter, so I generally tend to craft in spurts when my money gathers up. Now, I don't have any skill even near 60 yet, but extrapolation from my costs so far leads me to believe it's quite a ways more.

Smithing to 36.8 costed me about 500k already, and the stretch from 36-44 is a rather expensive one, and so would 54-60, I'd assume. Of course, there are profit lines at 22 and 52 (Iron Sheets and Darksteel Ingots, respectively), but profits from repeatedly doing trivials synths I think shouldn't count against costs. (Otherwise all crafts have 0 cost, because crafting is my only real source of income :P)

I was also doing a bit of leathercraft the other day (so I could make iron subligars), and going to 10 skill in that costed me about 60k (doing sheep leather to 2, rabbit mantle to 7, and solea to 10, selling rabbit mantle and solea to vendor and holding on to sheep leather for solea). So, unless the rest of the way is much easier, I'm guessing it'll cost me more than 400k to get to 60 in leather as well.

Now, I'm actually quite draconian the other way in calculating costs... I include all crystals at AH price, ores that I've mined at typical price, etc. Basically, if there's any way to argue something as a cost, I'll file it under my cost column.

Dave

Edit: Example, I make the silver ingots I use to craft silver rings, but while it costs me 18k to make a stack, I list it under cost at the market value of 24k... this may be the cause of our discrepancies. But, I figure I could have sold it to AH if I hadn't used it for crafting, so it really is at 24k cost.

Edited, Tue May 4 10:37:12 2004 by ghostaxe

The problem with that is that it will be different for everyone. For example, many people are complaining that Popsi's estimates are too low. I think they are too high. I've been profitable in clothcraft since grass thread, without farming. Is everyone seeing these results? Probably not.

Some additions to products:
Clothcraft : add fletching (good for rangers, mages)
Smithing : add farming tools
Goldsmithing : add lures

Well I kinda do and don't agree with the smithing cost. I've spent WAY more than 500k but I've also made that and more back again. For example: I just finished darksteel ingots. Now "technically" I spent 100k per stack and it took me ~8 stacks to cap it out. So we can say 45-52 cost 800k. BUT, each stack sold in AH for 130k. I failed a bit, but no more than usual. So we'll say I lost a full stack out of the whole experience. Leaving me with 7 stacks to sell. That means I made 910k. But since I didn't have 800k ON me, I made 2-3 stacks at a time and waited 3 or 4 hours for them to sell before starting on the next set. So yeah, when you get down to technicalities, cost to raise Bsmithing to 60 is infinitely higher than 500k. But if you think of that number as the amount of cash LOST after resell..then yeah I'd say that's about right. (iron mittens and subligars are the DEBIL)

I won't share all my recipes but here are some major ones for Alchemy:

Beeswax (6) -- only if HQ
Silent Oil (24) [slime oil version] -- only if HQ
Repaired Glass Rod (24)
Enflamed weapons (Various, 39-48)
Prism Powder (41) [artificial lens version, unless you farm arimen]
Carbon Fiber (45)
Shrimp Lure (48, Goldsmith 21) [Mogsafe 2 item]
Ether (50) [BCNM / Avatar Battle item]
Repaired Carbon Rod (49)
Cermet Chunk (56, 58 or 60) [Gobbiebag 4 item]
Hi-potion (60) [BCNM / Avatar Battle item]
Porcelain Flower Pot (61)

(Woe be my profit margins now x.X)

Good list. You are missing ninjisus for almost every tradeskill, though. Only 2 guilds lack the ability to make ninjitsu powders: cooking and fishing. As far as I know, all the ninjitsu powders trivial by around 30~35 skill, making a not too bad HQ rate if you cap 'em all at 60.

Hi! ^_^

I was just wondering if you thought desynthesis was a helpful/profitable aspect when choosing a craft. Perhaps another thing to keep in mind is that it can lead to skill ups, too: my Alchemy went up 0.1 points last night after desynthesizing a Yagudo Bead Necklace into a Copper Ingot. I'm at an extremely low level, however, so I'm not sure how much that effects desynthesis.

/M

Desynth is part of the part seem in every craft, except cooking. So, I'm not sure that would factor much into a decision. Perhaps a Desynth rating?

Thanks Rex! Updated goldsmithing costs.

I have not found this to be the case. Mining your own zinc, you can actually profit to 24 GS making Brass Hammers and selling them back to the guild or stores. Then from there it's Silver hairpins using all the silver ingots you made before 20 and since. This doesn't make as much money as the silver earrings or rings, but you can still raise your skill faster because you use fewer ingots each synth. Still profitable unless you bought ALL your silver ore/beastcoins. ;) That will take you to 27. Then Brass Mask to 28 and you are ready to move on to Novice. Very cheap, very efficient, but you have to plan early (as with all crafts).

For the Hiraishin I found it best to sell it in Jeuno.... Bastok will give u a fat lost in my experience.

For goldsmith... I see if you are careful you can make to 50 with 800k. Thats what it took me.... could of been less. I did GS from 1-50 less than a week time.

The cooking price is soooo wrong... maybe that's accurate if you sell everything back to the AH, but hardly any cooking items sell in the AH (as far as the good leveling ones go).

I used wolf's guide to about 80% accuracy, and did a healthy mix of selling to the AH and to vendors. I probably spent around 100k just to get to level 40. 40 - 50 probably added another 30k. When you get to 70+ you might be spending 20-30k just for one level -- but this guide doesn't cover those levels.

I'm currently at 90 and I'm confused about how to approach the next set of levels because everything is ridiculously expensive and the ingredients are hard to get. (and nothing sells to the AH)

well i didnt read all the threads but, if you are asking what craft to choose you will probaly go into many crafts. sometimes with recipes you use different items from different crafting types. If i were to craft a bronze subligar i would be using the blacksmithing and leather crafting skill.

*earth crysatl
Bronze Sheet x1
Grass Clothes x1
Sheep Leather x1

and i would get small skill for leathercrafting and blacksmithing. so after a while you would probaly be in almost all of the crafting guilds. be warned that crafting is alot of money so i sugest going to the auction house, buy : bamboo rod, all the fishing clothes (fishermans boots, fishermans tunic, fishermans hose and fishermans gloves) which give you one to fishing per item (if you don't have alot of Gil start with the gloves aand work your way up to the more costly fishermans clohes) and 1 or 2 stacks of insect paste (for moat carp). then you can head your ass down to knightswell lakein w.ronf and get 4,000 gil per stack (note. there are certain times when fishing is good like when there is a waxing gibbeus, full moon and new moon). and print out a recipe list for all crafts from http://vault.ign.com/ffvault.html and keep them close. crafting is really fun because you can create new and cool things (plus you can create hatchets and pickaxes). Also its good to make your pickaxes and hatchets because you will get skill for those. you can use the item lookup on this site and find any recipe (note. the ign vault lists do not include every single recipe, but they are good to start out with).

well thats pretty much it . . . not sure if you still want to craft after all this complicated stuff lol.

It does including selling the items you gained (or tried to gain) skill on. It does not include items you sold to raise money along the way.

Edited alchemy costs to show a range.

I use this site quite often for synth recipies etc. along with a few others.

Just registering tonight I would just like to comment that goldsmithing/smithing are the most expensive crafts to lvl up.

I'm currently 50 GS and 23 Smithing.

Being all Goldsmith I'd have to say that if you don't have extra gil to burn. STAY AWAY from this craft. It will eat you alive.

Fishing is not listed because it's not a craft (i.e., doesn't use crystal to synth). I'm not a fisherman, but it's my understanding that you will make a profit skilling up fishing no matter what. I guess complementary tradeskills would be cooking, woodworking and alchemy.

See this excellent guide:

Desynthesis: The Art of Breaking by Noxxx

I've only crafted a bit, but i think the items you farm should be included in the cost, bcus instead of selling the items you're using them. Farming the items your self cost less than buying them, but its still a cost bcus its time consuming. You can either A. buy items and lvl ur craft really fast, then go and farm for gil, or b. farm your items so its a bit slower, but u save a bit a gil. I think it evens out unless you are able to farm easily attainable pricey items.

Important to note is that we are trying to show the cost of skilling up to 60 when selling back the items you made while skilling up. We do not include other profits made with the skill purely for making money. So unless you are desynthing gob masks for skillups, we wouldn't count that income in the cost to 60 range.

Thanks!

Try this post:

http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/forum.html?forum=24&mid=1082388294312713647

Woodworking, Key Items:

Arrowwood Lumber (2)
Shihei (29)
Bast Parchment (45 Woodworking, 29 Alchemy required also)
Scorpion Arrow (59)
Elemental Staves (75)
Lu Shang's Fishing Rod (80)
Mithran Fishing Rod (83, 87)

I have experience with all recipes under level 60, however, you can tell those last 3 are important ^^



Edited, Fri Jul 2 13:25:04 2004 by Evanesce

Updated woodworking and smithing key items.