Clothcraft 62+

[Marcicus]

Right now I'm finishing up making Hunter's Cotton, and I'm looking ahead on how to finish up the 60s. Right now there are no Apkallu Feathers up on the AH, and the last few haven't sold in over a month, so that's out of the question. Right now I'm thinking the best option to do would be to do Silk Headbands to 69 and just NPC them.

In before use FFXIAH. Just wanted to hear some opinions because the majority of the CC guides are outdated.

[Rilu]

I did White capes > 64 (to cover the gap to silk headbands a little more). If your smithing is leveled to at least 19 or 20, then you can try Hyo as well:

velvet cloth + cotton thread + iron ingot + wind crystal. This caps at 65. For gil savings, obviously you an desynth goblin armours etc into cotton thread, and then make your own velvet cloths and the only thing you'd need to buy off AH would be iron ingots (pretty cheap, and lots available usually).

Then Silk Headbands > 69.

I suggest synthing all your own silk cloth, just buy stacks of threads. It'll save you around 5-10K per stack of cloth (at least on my server).

[Deimos]

I started Silk Headbands right at 62, after finishing Green Ribbons (Hunter's Cotton didn't exist back then). Advanced support + glasses to lower the break rate a bit, then at either 65 or 66 I switched to Black Chocobo Fletchings and took those right to 72.

[Sanoske]

I did Hunter's Cotton to 63, then went straight to Black Choco Fletchings (there was still a small market for them at the time). It was expensive, but no more so than any of the other synths at that level... plus you could just power through and sell the fletchings at your pace.

[Marcicus]

Well, just by quickly glancing at the AH and wiki, it seems Sailcloth doesn't sell too slowly, so I think I can do those for a level or two, and then jump on Black Chocobo Fletchings to 72. I have 101k GP atm, no key items, so I guess I could spend some of those on glasses :/ Then at 72 I suppose farming spiders would be best to make Rainbow Thead until 78, but after that I'm at a bit of a loss on how to continue.

edit: Removed fletching cause I'm retarded. >.>

[Missnasty]

Well, just by quickly glancing at the AH and wiki, it seems Sailcloth doesn't sell too slowly, so I think I can do those for a level or two, and then jump on Black Chocobo Fletchings to 72. I have 101k GP atm, no key items, so I guess I could spend some of those on glasses+fletching/spinning. :/ Then at 72 I suppose farming spiders would be best to make Rainbow Thead until 78, but after that I'm at a bit of a loss on how to continue.

Why would you want fletching? So you can perform fewer synths with more materials?

[Deimos]

Well, just by quickly glancing at the AH and wiki, it seems Sailcloth doesn't sell too slowly, so I think I can do those for a level or two, and then jump on Black Chocobo Fletchings to 72. I have 101k GP atm, no key items, so I guess I could spend some of those on glasses+fletching/spinning. :/ Then at 72 I suppose farming spiders would be best to make Rainbow Thead until 78, but after that I'm at a bit of a loss on how to continue.

Well, you should definitely get the glasses, but don't bother with fletching/spinning. Those both reduce the number of synths needed to make a product, which is the exact opposite of what you want to do for skillup. You want to do as many synths as possible to maximize the chance of a skillup from your materials, so compressing 3 fletching/thread synths into one is a bad approach.

As for skillup after 78, let me have a quick look:

Rainbow Cloth to 80 (assuming it's profitable, meaning at least 3x price of thread, if it's not, sell the threads and skip this instead)
Puk Fletchings to 82
Cilice to 85 (go farm Dhalmel Hair in past Saruta)
Wamoura Silk to 88 (can buy cocoons from guild in Al Zahbi)
Wamoura Cloth to 90
Giant Bird Fletchings to 93 (this will hurt a bit)
Foulard to 98 (will probably take a long time, Arachne Webs are in short supply)
Rasetsu Samue to 99 (ouch)

Man, you new clothcrafters have it good. Puk Fletchings, Cilice, Wamoura Cloth, and Foulard all make this so much cheaper and easier than it used to be.

[Theraven]

62-72 Black Chocobo Fletching
72-78 Rainbow Thread
78-80 Rainbow Cloth
80-82 Puk Fletching
80-88 Wamora Silk
88-90 Wamora Cloth
90-92 Rasetsu Sune-Ate
90-94 Errant Slops
92-97 Rasetsu Hakama
94-95 Rasetsu Tekko
95-96 Blessed Mitts
95-96 Cursed Mitts
95-96 Errant Houppelande
94-97 Cursed Slacks
94-98 Dance Shoes
94-98 Errant Cuffs
94-99 Rasetsu Samue
98-99 Alzahbi Sash

This was my plan, though it was before Foulard was a decent option.

[Rilu]

Dance shoes people, dance shoes!

94-98 Dance shoes.

I concur, since release of ToAU, leveling this craft has gotten MUCH more inexpensive, as well as not as in dire need of the capped sub-crafts.

Dance shoes!

[Deimos]

The only reason to do Dance Shoes is if you're in a hurry and can't wait for Arachne Webs to come up on the AH (and won't go farm them yourself). Foulard covers the same skill area and is break-even or a profit. Dance shoes are currently about a 30k loss per synth on Sylph. I'll stick to Foulard.

[Rilu]

Man, you new clothcrafters have it good. Puk Fletchings, Cilice, Wamoura Cloth, and Foulard all make this so much cheaper and easier than it used to be.

I'm confused, you sound like you leveled your craft years ago, before ToAU came out, yet you are CURRENTLY leveling on Foulard?

Either way, people can do what they want when leveling a craft. I mention dance shoes simply because it is very inexpensive comparatively (with Spider Webs dropping practically every kill now, or just 2K a pop), and you don't have to camp the AH for materials (which is a really annoying thing to do)

Back to the original thread:

My path through the 80's and 90's was thus:

After getting to 78 on Rainbow Thread:

78-81 Jester's headband (just farm the dodge headbands, they drop frequently)
81-88 Arhat's Hakama (made so many of these, I HQ'd 3 while skilling up, helped fund this range)
88-93 Giant Bird Fletchings, Sirens macrame, Cashmere Thread, Rasetsu Jinpachi, Rasetsu Sune-ate, Yasha Sune-ate. (yea, this stage sucked, pretty much just grabbed whatever I could afford/find to craft for people. Bird feathers were VERY rare to find up for sale, and expensive back then, probably 20-30K each)
93-94 Errant Slops (with spider webs costing 30K a piece, these were expensive to make)
94-95 Rasetsu Tekko (yes, its alot of Drkstl, but I partnered with a Blacksmith that was skilling up, so I got materials for very very cheap. did the same thing leveling my gold sub, partnered with a Goldsmither who would buy all my gold rings right away etc. I suggest doing this as much as possible.)
95-96 Yasha Hakama
96-98 Dance Shoes (made my own moccasins while skilling up Leather through this part at the same time)
98-99 Rasetsu Samue
99-100 Dalmaticas, Blessed Briaults, Errant Cape (probably 1/3 Dalmaticas from LS needing them made, 2/3 Briaults, and a couple of capes for people.)

Definitely not the path i'd suggest now, but back then this was pretty much the most cost effective way, that I saw, to get through. Total cost for me to level clothcraft: ~ 55-60M. Most of my income came from 2x Shinsoku I got from GC99 Behemoth fights, and sold for 20M+ each. I never have HQ'd anything super profitable, but rather have just made money slowly and surely with my craft.

[Deimos]

I'm confused, you sound like you leveled your craft years ago, before ToAU came out, yet you are CURRENTLY leveling on Foulard?

I just started playing the game again (about a month ago) after a year and 9 months away from it. I was 96 when I quit. So I'm kind of in the middle of what you're describing, I got most of the way the "old way", but now I'm finishing 96-98 on Foulard, currently at 97.7 with 9 Arachne Thread in my safe, should be done with it soon with some decent luck on skillups.

It really just depends how the person wants to level their craft. Foulard definitely won't work if they want to get to 99 as fast as possible, but if you're not in a hurry it takes a huge amount of pain out of the last few levels.

Edit: And yes, your path is basically exactly what I did to get myself to 96, except I skipped your Rasetsu Tekko:

http://steam-punk.net/ffxi/yasha.jpg

[Sanoske]

Dance Shoes are where it's at. I used Moccasins to skill up my Leather sub and then saved those on a mule. Booya.

[Eldelphia]

Man, you new clothcrafters have it good. Puk Fletchings, Cilice, Wamoura Cloth, and Foulard all make this so much cheaper and easier than it used to be.

I benefitted from Wamoura and Foulard... except I sat on stacks of Foulard for ages, sold a few slowly then npc'd 2 stacks. Next update - Foulard gets crazy boost... by being a gobbie bag upgrade. Sold my remaining foulard and cried a lot lol.

[Theraven]

I benefitted from Wamoura and Foulard... except I sat on stacks of Foulard for ages, sold a few slowly then npc'd 2 stacks. Next update - Foulard gets crazy boost... by being a gobbie bag upgrade. Sold my remaining foulard and cried a lot lol.

Same thing happened to me except with Deathstones. I crafted many many many many rocks to get hq3 gems to level my goldsmithing and trying to make painites for profit. I sit on stacks and stacks of Deathstones figuring one day I might use them and finally get tired of them taking up inventory and just npc them all. Next update they get used for Gobbiebag and go for 100k+ each, I was so pissed.