An offer: Free high level craftingFollow

Hey guys,

I've come to you today, humbly, to offer a service: Free crafting. And especially to those of you in pursuit of your Imperial Wootz Ingots, a market I used to specialize in.

My Story:

This is going to be long. Skip down to section, The Offer if you'd rather not read an Alcoholics Anonymous style ramble.

I started playing FFXI in 2004 on the Leviathan server. I moved to Asura with the first World Transfer Service. On Asura, after reaching level twenty-two on my subjobless red mage, soloing all the way, and finally killing one of the weaker ghouls in the Gusgen Mines, I was able to walk away with a Magicked Skull and move on to greater, more heroic adventures! I quickly discovered, however, a fundamental limiting force on all activities in Vana'diel. Gil.

At that time, my gil making strategy was to complete the Teacher's Pet quest offered in Windurst Waters ad nauseam. The reward is 250gil, a pittance. As you can imagine, after a marathon session of doing that quest seven or eight times (taking a couple or hours or so if I remember correctly), and seeing that I still did not have enough to even buy the half-decent bow that I wanted, I became despondent. I bought whatever I could, and sat down in front of the AH, greatly put off and shouted (translated from Japanese),“What kind of economy does this place have!" Moments later, I received a tell from a very high level player, Brave (who, like me, has also moved to Remora from Asura during the second World Transfer.) “I will give you everything I am carrying right now for 500gil.” I was stunned at this sudden and unexpected generosity, but I never sent him a reply. Why? I'd already spent most of what I had earned and had less than that amount. I was simply too embarrassed to tell him that I didn't have it. I sat, unmoving, in shamed silence.

From that day, when I logged on I did nothing but scheme, experiment, and walk around town searching, wondering what I could do to make gil. That one activity became my great adversary. My only enemy. Because this was at a time when the North Americans were just starting out, there were many opportunities to be a provider of merchandise. Crafting at lower levels was break-even or profitable, and almost everything sold quickly. I dove into it and let it consume me. I took bonecrafting up to level 48 or so before it became clear that I needed subcrafts in order to add black ink inventory to my portfolio. Skeleton keys used to see very handsome returns before the great Astral Ring Relocation (stacks sold for 35K at the time but would go up as high as 50K on occasions), so I trekked on foot from Windurst to Bastok (dangerous and frightening!) to level Alchemy. It was expensive and frustrating, but after a week of craft level grinding, I had my first successful skeleton key synth! I was excited! What I didn't know was that there was a player who ruled the Skeleton Key market with an iron fist. It was his celestial kingdom in Vana'diel and he thrashed intruders to pieces by underselling by amounts between 2k-5k. His name was Senba. My keys kept getting sent back to me and he made all the sales. Then one day, I snapped. We had a great war in that market in which the buyers undoubtedly rejoiced as I demonstrated my great mental instability, initially cutting the price by 7K and then preemptively undercutting myself on all subsequent listings to ensure he sold nothing, quickly bringing the price down to 15K (negative return territory, because it was a tier 0 synth for me) and keeping it there. The war ended with him tacitly conceding to share the market with me, a result that I assume arose due to him realizing that I was psychologically unsound and fiercely vengeful, spiteful, and willing to eat extravagant loses and bring the entire enterprise down to its flaming, crackling demise just for the sake of revenging myself against him.

Later, I found chocobo digging at a time when RMT did not operate in that faucet of the game (or if they did I never detected it), in late 2004. It has procured for me tens of millions of gil; chocobo digging was all I would do for up to 15 hours a day on the weekends and between 4 and 5 hours on weeknights. After the bots moved in on my server (The infamous Sphagnum and later his co-bot cohorts Coty, et al), SE effectively removed chocobo digging from the game by capping the diggable items per real life day to 100. I realized that what I had to do with extreme haste was reenter the crafting market before the other disenfranchised diggers came to the same conclusion.

I took goldsmithing from 0 to 100 in about four months time. When I was ready for elemental beads, I had one of those once in a lifetime lucky breaks. There was a player, Lovinson, who appeared out of nowhere, buying elemental beads from the AH at basically any price that they were up there for. For unreasonable prices. Interested, I began following his movements and made sure that what he was likely to buy was on the AH. If he was on, I wouldn't sleep. I'd be online putting beads on the AH. Eventually, he sent me a tell and I became his direct supplier. I was thus power-leveled, so the speak, through one of the most difficult stages of goldsmithing, making a handy profit. (He has his own goldsmithing character nowadays, Goldbricker, if I'm not mistaken)

With 60million gil on hand and another 25million in materials, I took both woodworking and alchemy to 100 and blacksmithing to 99.

But having said all of this, the highest job level that I have is my level 47 beastmaster. The next highest levels after that is my level 36 white mage and 17 black mage (for the convenience of teleporting and dezoning during chocobo digging back when it was profitable). My highest rank is rank 2. This is because my Dark Lord, my Relic Weapon has been to rid myself of the unbearable shame of not being able to tell Brave that I hadn't even 500 gil to give him. That has now changed, and it is because of that incident. I am the Ferengi trader of Vana'diel. Windurst's very own Quark.

There are many stories of my adventures in gil making without-any-levels-or-rank-whatsoever, some of them being quite ridiculous (like dashing through the streets of Japan after class every day to buy the very rare Orichalcum Ores from the AH so that I could level before my adversary, Vard (who was also leveling) could. Or checking the AH manually approximately once every seven or eight seconds over a nine hour period, dragging the monitor and keyboard into the bathroom with me when nature could no longer be ignored (I am not kidding you) for days on end to buy all of the Alzahbi Wootz Ore. (Some of you will now know exactly who I am). But those stories are perhaps for another time.

I have not been on for a couple of months now. My life is changing. I've thrown myself into the study of Chinese and Korean, Mathematics, and educating myself about the world. I do not have a lot of time anymore. And certainly no time to pull stunts like camping the AH like the obsessive, compulsive lunatic that I am. But I am not willing to cancel my account. I've done too much. I have too much.

That brings us to:

The Offer:

I hereby offer my crafting services, free of charge. And to those of you still gathering those Imperial Wootz Ingots: If you're willing to camp the AH and buy the ores, I'll craft the ingots for free. (though be aware that I will not compensate you for any failures.)

My conditions:
* You must be present at /all/ synths. I will not perform a synth in the absence of the recipient of services. This is to protect my reputation. If there is a failure and lose of materials, it is necessary that it be witnessed so that I may not be accused of theft. Be aware that I live in Japan, so it might be challenging to schedule a time that is convenient for both of us.

* I will not hold onto materials before the synth is to occur. The recipient of services is to bring all materials with them to synth location. Again, this is to prevent claims of theft.

* I will not accept payment for services. Even voluntary“gifts” may make later persons feel obliged to give me something. I do not want your gil.

* I encourage you to bring a witness to the synth session. But I do not require that you do.

Policy on HQ synths:

Any item resulting in a HQ result, whether it be a +1 normal item or a -1 cursed item, will be immediately surrendered to the recipient of services with no fees or demands, just as a NQ would be. There are no exceptions to this policy.

I ask that you:

* Spread the word about me. When you receive your synths (and see that *gasp* you were not scammed), make a reply to this thread saying so. The more people that can benefit, the better.

My special request is as follows: I have no high level characters. I can't even use the things that I make. No Sky, Sea, Promy, nothing. I love crafting, but there are synths that I can never attempt because I cannot get my hands on the required materials. What I ask of you is if you have a rare crafting material, to give me a chance to buy it from you at a fair price. Send me a private message here on Alla. I am not asking for a discount. I only want the privilege of being the first person you approach saying, “Hey, guess what I just got! Want to buy it?” (Btw, I'm in the market for a Star Sapphire) If Remora takes advantage of my offer, I may cap the subcrafts on all of my characters using any returns I get from selling the rare crafts made possible by the buyer's privilege I'm requesting from you. (note: If you do sell me something, I will buy it only through your bazaar. No trades.)

Yours truly and with the warmest regards to the best gaming community around,

-ljacket, The tall female Elvaan in the alchemy apron who used to stand in front of the Ru'Lude Gardens AH camping the Al Zahbi Wootz Ores.

Char1: Bs: 99+3 Wd: 60 Gs: 60+1 Cl: 60 Lt: 60 Bn: 60 Al: 60+1 Ck: 60
Char2: Gs: 100+3 Wd: 59 Bs: 50+1 Cl: 02 Lt: 11 Bn: 00 Al: 60+1 Ck: 11
Char3: Al: 100+2 Wd: 23 Bs: 34 Gs: 29 Cl: 00 Lt: 00 Bn: 00 Ck: 10
Char4: Wd: 100+3 Bs: 57 Gs: 49 Cl: 52 Lt: 00 Bn: 27 Al: 10 Ck: 0
Char5: Bn: 81+2 Wd: 06 Bs: 00 Gs: 00 Cl: 03 Lt: 00 Al: 00 Ck: 00



Edited, Nov 9th 2008 9:09am by ljacket

Edited, Nov 10th 2008 8:40am by ljacket

Edited, Dec 5th 2008 5:02am by ljacket

Then let's get started!
Please check your private messages.

-ljacket

I've added a new section near the bottom of the original post. Use your browser's text search function on the string: Policy on HQ

I apologize for not having thought of this point when I originally submitted the post. It may be rather important to quite a few people.

I'll close by thanking Aayliah for giving me my first opportunity to serve the public. Thank you. And please feel free to call on me again anytime in the future.

-ljacket.

Edited, Dec 5th 2008 5:46am by ljacket

After I'd discovered it, Chocobo Digging was the reason I used to log on at all. It was my personal definition of "playing FFXI", and one of the very few activities I felt compelled to engage in. I genuinely enjoyed competing against the other legitimate diggers and did so with enthusiasm, for hours and hours and hours.

Seeing your stated frequent use of the search function, I'll vouch as well towards its (obvious but very under appreciated) utility. I had three full macro panels dedicated to searching diggers known to me. The panels themselves were ordered:

Bots appeared first. Dangerous diggers such as Katanaxx, Ichigotan, Changwufei, Crauge, etc (much later Soeun and others) next. Then there were a few temporary slots that were populated at any time by the names of the biggest immediate threats - in order to minimize time spent switching between panels because time consumed traversing macro sets bore the consequence not being able to input the next dig command immediately upon it becoming available, as the dig wait timer expired. That was /deadly/ when digging against even only one experienced opponent.

Other panels listed newbie diggers, ordered by their persistence. I monitored the movements of all diggers even when they were not digging, and even when I was not digging, very closely. I would be very curious to see a log of all commands issued from my client during the Chocobo Digging Period as it would contain sprawling lists of hundreds of search commands executed every hour I was on.

Though I have not mentioned what character I dug as, you'll probably feel a surge, or at least a few nostalgic twinges, of not entirely unpleasant hatred if I did so. Which diggers did you sometimes wish would meet with the most violent physical harm the most? I'll reveal myself should my name appear on the list you produce. It's not the case that you'll be able to yell "Revenge! Sweet *REVENGE!*" and hound me to the ends of the Vana'diel on chocoboback, digging on top of me in order to make my life miserable should I be discovered - because the Choco Age, as we remember it, has ended ;)

-ljacket

Edited, Dec 12th 2008 4:03am by ljacket