What can 3 mil be invested in?

[Amok]

Hey crafters and other money making people. I hope some of you can give me some tips on what would fit best in my current situation.

As the topic says I currently have about 3mil gil. I have Cooking leveled to 92 (+chef's hat and Raw Fish Handling) which I leveled pretty early on but never finished. I have Chocobo digging leveled to A25 and almost all of my money comes from digging (which I do almsot every day).

So, cooking is something I leveled because I liked the idea of having a craft makes products that sell fast. Also, it (for the most part) doesn't need sub-crafts. I had periods where I would make drinks and sell them in starter cities but I didn't like the idea of using up an AH slot for just 1k profit. I didn't realise early enough that comes with the territory when you pick cooking (low profit per item/stack). I also did pet food zeta for a while for more money per AH slot, but I hated farming Coeurl Meat. So that's where chocobo digging came in. It takes about an hour a day to get greens, tele around and dig then mule all the stuff to put on AH. Unfortunately on a good day I'll only dig 70k worth of items but it's usually closer to 50k. Oh yeah, I have fishing up to 40something. The fact that I don't know the exact number should tell you how serious I am about that.

So these are the things I'm considering:
-use the gil to max out cooking
-use it to level another craft on one of my mules
-buy a Lu Shang and level fishing some more til I can hit Talacca Cove

It seems obvious to combine option 1 and 3 and make sole sushi for a living, but I don't take fishing seriously and I find it mind-numbingly boring and discouraging when it seems like you're the only legit fisherman on the ferry (dunno if it's still like this nowadays).

Any advice? Something along the lines of:

• "Stop qq'ing and level fishing and make sushi."[/*:m:2g0y43x9]
• "Cooking is constant money even without fishing and it'll get you the same amount in the long run as trying to HQ big ticket items."[/*:m:2g0y43x9]
• "3 mil is enough to level [insert craft here] to [insert profitable level] and HQ [list of items] for money."[/*:m:2g0y43x9]
• "The hour you spend digging for unimpressive profit is better spent [HELM'ing] in [zone]."[/*:m:2g0y43x9]
• "50-75k a day is pretty decent, keep doing what you're doing and spend your money on gear."[/*:m:2g0y43x9]

[chewbar]

is that 50k-75k for an hour of choco digging?

edit:
i just wanted to be clear since you said this:

So that's where chocobo digging came in. It takes about an hour a day to get greens, tele around and dig then mule all the stuff to put on AH. Unfortunately on a good day I'll only dig 70k worth of items but it's usually closer to 50k. Oh yeah, I have fishing up to 40something.

[Amok]

Yes, afaik that's how much it is. I'm not maximixing it because I don't think it's worth my time to craft and sell stuff like Brass Ingots and Animal Glue so I just NPC femurs, iron/mythril/zinc.

[Viviton]

I don't know how others feel, but personally i'd urge you to max cooking and buy a Lu Shang's. Fishing is 100% profit; you have no worries of breaking/funding crafts to skill up/praying for HQ/running frantically back and forth from AH. I know fishing has its frustrations like all crafts, but when you can fish for 3 hours and turn it into instant profit (Sushi sells almost instantly), that seems like a good plan.
Then, if you get to the point where you can make gil and sustain a nice profit, consider leveling a craft. Because when you find a point where skill up gets expensive, you call allways resort to spending a week fishing/cooking in order to restore your funds.

People may well disagree, but welcome to the debate that is crafting!

[Sanoske]

If you're smart, 3M will get any craft to 100 outside of Smithing and Goldsmithing. Clothcraft you could get to 99, but not to 100.

So really, it's up to you.

[Azkarin]

As posted above you can get to 100 or close to in any craft. But with 4 months of leveling it (assuming) you would end up with the craft level and little gil. With the markets saturated enough today, it will probably be worse in 4 months meaning you'll need a good amount of start up money to try and get lucky pumping out HQs when the NQs sell for big losses.

My suggestion is finish cooking and continue to level fishing. The amount of sushi you could make in the the time it would take to level the craft to max will probably be a lot and you could find yourself with a few million more than you started with. It would probably take a lot of luck or time to get that much money if you spent it all and hoped for HQs. Just my personal opinion.

[Raineer]

If you're smart, 3M will get any craft to 100 outside of Smithing and Goldsmithing. Clothcraft you could get to 99, but not to 100.

So really, it's up to you.

Good thing 99 is all you need

[chewbar]

50k-75k/hr worth of digging is ok I think. Though I don't have digging personally, I heard A10 diggers still make a decent profit in the current economy though. That's one route you can take.
A second could be in crafting. Personally, I don't think there is a bright future for most types of crafting, except consumables, which leaves cooking, alchemy, and to a lesser extent woodworking. My own reasoning for this is that durable items are not really leaving the system as fast as they are coming in, so there will be a saturation point. As far as fishing is concerned, I would kinda call it consumable crafting, since it operates somewhat similarly.
Not really sure what else you can invest with 3 million, perhaps playing the AH game (buy low, sell high), or working with a crafter to buy materials and hope for HQ with profit splitting or something.

[Eiyu]

I wouldnt lvl another craft to 100 and spend money on hq gambling unless you got all the gear and everything you need, because you may end up getting pissed off and losing all the money. So yeah i'd max cooking and buy the lushang ^^ (i wouldnt spend time on choco digging though, just because i prefer mining, but its all up to you).

[Kaelan]

Don't forget that in any craft you need an initial amount of capital to start synthing for worthwhile (i.e. multimillion) HQs. I.e., it's pointless to spend 2.8M leveling leather to 100 because Behemoth Hides cost more than 200k (and you always should have enough money to take a couple of breaks in the face without panicking). Start with something small that can get a decent amount of money, then work up from there. Don't use up all (or even most) of what you have leveling anything to 100 or it'll be a while before you see any money coming in.

[Sanoske]

If you're smart, 3M will get any craft to 100 outside of Smithing and Goldsmithing. Clothcraft you could get to 99, but not to 100.

So really, it's up to you.

Good thing 99 is all you need

Only for the gimps.

[evilpaul]

As a 100+1 Chef with Lu Shang's I can say that's a decent way to make steady money. Sushi, Fish Oil Broth, etc all sell at a respectable pace. I'm not sure it would beat the 50-70k/hr that the OP can make with Chocobo Digging though.

[Amok]

Thanks for the replies guys. As I expected some of you told me to 'keep' leveling fishing and max out cooking. It seems like the most logical route. However, it would fully replace my chocobo digging because I don't want to spend even more of my playtime trying to make gil than I already do. At first it wouldn't make me as much money as digging does right now, I'm quite certain.

I probably shouldhave said 50-70k per "DAY" not "hour". Saying per hour makes it sound like I could keep going for another hour and make 100-140k, but that's not the case. I said hour because it takes me about that long to saddle up, find an empty zone, spam dig and put all the stuff on AH.

I'm very surprised that 3mil could actually get me lv100 craft. This means as a base investment, yes? or is it? It's not like I could buy all the materials off AH (assuming there is supply) and powerlevel, let's say Alchemy, to lv90 in a week.... is it? Someone said 4 months, so I think you guys mean 3mil is enough if you sell the stuff you make along the way up.

Even if I did decide to level another craft up, I wouldn't try to HQ t0's or anything (not at first anyway) since I don't like gambling. Starting next week and for two months there will be a drastic decrease in my playtime, so I'll hold of any decision until I actually have more time to do whatever it is I deide to do.

[vegetaa]

Maybe you're giving up too fast on digging. If I was in your situation, with 3M gil and a somewhat advanced level of digging, I would :

1- Level most crafts to 60 (which is pretty fast and cheap if you do it the smart way)
2- Craft the items you dig up so you can get a better profit
3- Reach a better digging rank and dig higher value items
4- Level one of the crafts to 100 to HQ the crap out of the items you dig up

In the long run, combining digging + crafting what you dug + crafting some bigger ticket synths will be good gil.

The other solution is of course fishing + cooking...that's how i've been making gil in the past 6 months...it's a good plan, but when I compare my AH histories with those of some diggers, I have a feeling I'm wasting my time. Here is an example of a guy who is (actually was, he quit a month ago) at A10 rank and made very good money by digging on a daily basis. I wish I did that since I started playing...

[chewbar]

I probably shouldhave said 50-70k per "DAY" not "hour". Saying per hour makes it sound like I could keep going for another hour and make 100-140k, but that's not the case. I said hour because it takes me about that long to saddle up, find an empty zone, spam dig and put all the stuff on AH.

Well I would still consider that per hour, I always gauge money making like that - how much I could make hourly for the time I spend while including overhead. However, since you can't make more beyond that, it just simply means if you wanted to make more, you just need to supplement it with another source, or somehow make your digging more efficient.
Also, if AH slots is your bottleneck for earning from digging, perhaps vegetaa's advice will help. I'm not sure what you dig up in particular but if for example you dig up a lot of logs that you throw away, woodworking may help in that regard. Like an example would be ebony logs. Each one may be only 3k, but synthing a couple logs lets you lump it together into a stack worth 34k (going by your server's prices).

[vegetaa]

Not really related, but the FFXIAH profile I linked appeared directly as the top of the "Players Most Viewed Today" column Lots of people reading O.O

[Kyreth]

I've always looked at crafting as a way to take raw farming materials and turn them into more profitable sales. With that much oomph in cooking, fishing is logical.

You want to improve, invest some of that money into leveling sub-crafts. Push your smithing, goldsmithing, etc. up. It means you can squeeze more out of a run, and that means you get more out of your time spent farming.

[SamanosukeShiva]

a friend in my shell has 100+3 cooking, he was trying to get money for imp wootz ingot, he crafted non-stop everyday, made like 6 mil in 3 weeks

[Darwinion]

My cooking is only around level 81 but my Fishing is 100. When I was levelling my fishing in Sea Serpent Grotto I kept every single Nebimonite and Bream I caught on mules. I had stacks upon stacks of them. The Grimmonites I sold on the AH as they are non-stackable. Nebs I made into Black Ink till that market bottomed out (Alchemy synth). At the time my Cooking was in the 60s but I used those Breams to make sushi and sold it all on mules in Jeuno. I still have loads of Breams left from when I capped out my fishing in SSG. Then I went to Qufim and moved onto catching Gigant Squids. Made squid sushi on the spot there as I took ingredients out with me. NQ synth makes 6x Squid sushi so I always had plenty to sell.

Overall I'd say I made about 3 million profit doing that over time. Of course RMT cooks were making more HQs than me with their level 100+3 cooks but I was spending minimal Gil on ingredients by catching and keeping all that fish. I spent hardly anything. It is slow of course and that's the rub. You have to enjoy fishing or else it's pointless. Personally if you have the time I would say keep that 3 million Gil and go along the lines I did. Invest in a Lu Shang if you haven't got one already. You can always sell if later if you decide it's not for you. I even completed the Ebisu quest, but that was just a mountain I climbed because it was there. Doesn't help any with crafting/making money.

Some of my LS friends are 100+ woodwokrers and they make money from that, but they rely on HQ synths and drop Gil on NQs. They have to get lucky every so often. It's a rush when they do of course... instant profit. But personally I don't like that route. Slow and steady is my way, but then again I'm an old man so I have no choice.

[Thistle]

50k-75k/hr worth of digging is ok I think. Though I don't have digging personally, I heard A10 diggers still make a decent profit in the current economy though.

Digging is how I make my money, my crafts are currently just used to process the stuff I dig up. It takes well under an hour to hit the 100 item daily limit, and on a good day I can break 100K (bad day would be ~30K maybe, which still isn't so bad). That's not counting things like plat and ori ores, which get sent to my goldsmithing mule for skilling instead of being sold.