New Craft

[Raislin]

Hello everyone. I'm in the process of leveling Cooking to 100. However, once I finish zerging it to about 95 (I'm at 79 so far, and doing 1-3 levels a day), I'm going to slow down and would like to pick up a second craft on a mule and take it to 100 as well. I've already done Alchemy to 60 and I'm not really interested. I've dabbled in the early levels of the smithing(13), goldsmithing(9) and clothcraft(19) and liked all three. A friend of mine is doing Bonecraft, and I really don't like the overwhelming amount of bone chips that are needed, so I think I'd like to avoid that one.

Any tips on which path to take? I know all of the other crafts are much more expensive to skill up in, especially after 50-60, but that's ok with me. With Cooking at 95+, I should be able to fund another craft, albeit slowly.

Here's some useful information I can provide. I'm primarily a mage, with THF and BRD leveled and NIN to be soon, as well. For this reason, I was thinking Clothcraft. However, I'd also like to try and avoid relying on subcrafts as much as possible, though I'm certainly willing to level whatever I need to. But I know Clothcraft relies a lot on Leathercraft, especially for profitable synths (I think).

Looking for pointers from high leveled crafters about the rewards they have experienced personally and financially. Any feedback is appreciated, though. I don't want to be grinding for a skill up all the while feeling like it's not worth it.

THANK YOU!

[leeramond]

it is possible to level woodoworking pretty cheap and since all the arrows and bolts are consumables you can make money as you skill up depending on server prices. Also once you have it finished you are T2 for ele staves which requires no subs. I have leveled my wood up to 90 so far with very minimal leveling of subs. Though if you want to make shura pieces you will eventually need a few.

[Raislin]

I actually started looking into woodworking and a possible path about half an hour ago. I saw some run by with a signed HQ elemental staff and it reminded me that that was one of my dreams when I first hit 51 on my White Mage. I'm thinking Woodworking will indeed be my second craft. Now I only need to finish Cooking to at least 95. If only these items would sell...the next ones are the ones that profit most and sell fast and I need the gil and space XD

Edit: I'm at work, so this was rushed. It's definitely not the best and it's definitely the "fast" and expensive route. Feedback? I had a hard time finding anything decent at all past 59 most of the time. Also, the ranges listed are tentative. I tend to avoid sticking with a certain synth all the way to the cap as the skill ups seem to slow down a lot. For some of these, however, it seemed like I would have a lot of choice.

0-3 Luauan Lumber
3-6 Workbench **NPC products
6-8 Ash Lumber **Save for bolts
8-12 Holly Lumber
8-13 Willow Lumber
12-16 Status Bolts (Blind, Sleep, Bloody)
16-19 Holly Staff
16-22 Yew Lumber
22-27 Iron Arrows
22-29 Shihei
29-34 Mizu-deppo **Requires 7 smithing
34-39 Kawahori-ogi
39-42 Fang Arrow
42-45 Bast Parchment **Requires 29 Alchemy
42-47 Fire Arrows
47-50 Sleep Arrows
50-57 Earth, Ice, Water, Wind Arrows
50-59 Scorpion Arrows
59-61 Ebony Lumber
61-69 Demon Arrows
69-72 Ancient Lumber
72-74 Hume Fishing Rod
74-79 Ebony Pole **NPC Poles
79-84 Mythic Wand **NPC Wands
84-89 Mythic Pole **NPC Poles
89-96 Lacquer Tree Sap **NPC
96-98 Cythara Angelica **NPC
98-99 Lancewood Lumber
99-100 Iron-splitter **Requires 60 Smithing. **Use in other 100 level synth
99-100 Steel-splitter

Like I said, this was rushed so I had to go by what caught my eye the most on ffxiah (which is where I tend to get most of my recipes from due to its convenience). Try as I might, though, I could not really find much of anything that would profit by AHing it, and even if they did, a lot of them sold once a day or less.

[shihei]

I really don't think you should be so quick to dismiss cloth if you already thought about it. Did you mean while skilling up there aren't any profitable synths without leather sub? Or after when you are reaching for the HQs?

Either way leather isn't very hard/expensive to skill up to 60(100 even..) if you can spend some time farming the materials.

Bone chips are cheap/easy to dig.

[johnboy]

99-100 Iron-splitter **Requires 60 Smithing. **Use in other 100 level synth

I would advise not to lvl smithing past 47ish for this, it works out cheaper to break synth hoping to save some ingots, than to make them all.

[evilpaul]

You can take Clothcraft, Woodworking, Leathercraft, and Bonecraft to 60 all while making a profit (or no more than a small loss) overall if you farm a lot of your materials.

Skill Clothcraft over BIG gaps on fletchings. Skill bone over moderate gaps on arrowheads in the field. Skill woodworking over BIG gaps on arrows made from the two. Skill leathercraft off the skins you got farming the other things. With THF leveled, farming the stuff is easy.

Bone chips are soooo cheap that you can make money while paying 1k/stack or whatever for dozens of stacks still.

If you're going to level a craft besides Cooking/Alchemy to 100 and aren't 100% sure which you want to do yet, I'd take the possible subs to 60 and see which you like. I've been leveling all my other crafts to 60 lately...

Smithing 30
Clothcraft 60
Alchemy 60
Woodworking 60
Goldsmithing 47
Leathercraft 35 (58 on my Leathercraft mule I'm leveling)
Bonecraft 60
Cooking 100

and made a decent amount of money doing it. So it's not a total loss even if you end up with a blue '60' that you really have little use for.

If you farm a lot of your mats, then doing a 11 level gap isn't really a problem. You'll probably need to make your own arrowheads for Sleep, elemental ones, etc if you go with your planned path on WW. They aren't exactly hot sellers on the AH. And while you can skill on Bast Parchment, I think the yield is 12, so you'll end up with 40+ stacks of it to get rid of.

So, I'd really recommend to just skill most of your possible subcrafts, and then figure out what your main is.

[Weeks]

I had bonecraft all plotted out on a mule. It seems very affordable to 100. I've considered woodworking instead, which is basically 0 loss to the high 90s, but I think the profit potential is a little better in bonecraft. All I can say for sure is that neither craft seems nearly as cutthroat as leathercraft, on Caitsith anyway. I did leathercraft and it's been very good to me due to some insane luck HQing the items I leveled it for, but I honestly wouldn't advise anyone else to do it.

Head to FFXIAH and do a little math figuring out how you'll make a steady profit. Decide what to do based on that, not how you feel about using bone chips.

[Raislin]

I'm not terribly worried about cost (unless it's ridiculous), since all my money will basically be going towards leveling this next craft and I'm hoping to have a steady income from cooking consumables. I liked some of the suggestions I got.

- I liked the suggestion on how to do 99-100 on woodworking cheaper, but
- I really liked the suggestion on taking all the possible subs to 60 and seeing what I like. However, I made the mistake in cooking of starting my guild points around the late 50s and now I'm in a predicament. I've been getting my guild points everyday (except one where the cost was stupid), and I'm still 7k away from being able to buy my first 30k ability (I'm going with noodle kneading before raw fish handling).
- This probably won't be my last craft. I don't have tons of time in the game in one sitting and not always at convenient times for anything else, so I'll likely continue crafting something new even after finishing my next one. I will definitely level subs to 60 at some point, but for the initial leveling, I would like to keep it to a minimum if possible.

I haven't dismissed Clothcraft. I just did research on Woodworking. I'm still getting used to the idea that sometimes you can synth something and NPC the product without making a terrible loss. You can't do that in cooking because even the unstackables go for about 100-150 at most. Knowing that sometimes I can make something that is 5k a synth an then NPC it for 3-4K+ is something I'm still wrapping my head around.

I think I've got it down to woodworking and clothcraft for the time being. I still have 16 levels to go on Cooking before I'm going to slow down on it and pick up my next one and at the moment, I'm still waiting to sell a lot of my last couple products so I can't do much yet.

Thanks for the tips and ideas everyone. Keep them coming.

[leeramond]

idk the prices on your server but may wanna look into jacaranda logs to finish in stead. On my server the logs are about 160k each but the lumber sells fairly quickly and makes it break even and this caps at 101.

[Raislin]

An annoying note on that. When looking at the recipe list on ffxiah, synths that cap over 100 don't appear on the list. They'll be there if you search for them, but they aren't on the recipe list itself, which is quite irritating.

[Saithorx]

In the recipe page,
Search Level:________ Min___ Max____

just type, Min 100 Max 105 and then click go.