Levelling by Crafting - Possible?

[Berabouman]

Levelling by Crafting - Possible?

Hi, I'm a longtime lurker on the BG boards, just recently quit FF11 and even more recently registered for real. I've always had a great respect for the community here (especially your number-crunching powers, which are far beyond my abilities) and I was pretty happy to find Aion forums here. This is going to be my first long post, so please so gentle!

In my pursuit of 5 Level 30 characters in order to obtain the Daevonian Armor set (I made a post about it in the Random Questions thread) I've thought about various strategies to achieve my goal. As I don't have as much time to play Aion as I would like to, levelling each alt to 30 didn't seem like a viable plan. Then I hit upon the idea to use crafting to level up, and began doing some research.

Some threads on the AionSource forums about levelling characters from 11-30 by raising 2 professions to 399 got me started, and I began to think about how it might be possible. My planned strategy avoids Work Orders whenever possible, because I don't want to be in front of my computer doing Work Orders, I want to be sleeping or at work and getting XP (yeah, I'm a greedy guy, which is why I'm doing all this research ^_^)

So I thought of doing solely normal crafts whenever possible, focusing on Cooking/Handicrafting/Alchemy since those crafts do not have recipes which require a high material cost. (as making armor/weapons from 40 onwards without Work Orders would be a serious drain on anyone's cash reserves)

At least on my server, it's possible to bring each craft from 1 to 40 by simply doing the level 1 recipes around 300 times (not an exact figure) With 273 XP from each craft, we will get 81900 XP from each craft. Cost-wise, I believe it may be possible to sell back the end-product of each craft (Lesser Elemental Water, Tikel Thread etc) and break even on the material costs (you may actually turn a profit!) essentially making this free XP while you AFK. Not too shabby.

I'm not sure how this will pan out at the higher levels, and I would probably need to research the market in order to find ways to break even or lose less Kinah, as well as find good "bridge-synths" (it's like FF11 all over again!) However, I don't mind spending some money to level - I see it as "buying" experience with Kinah. I may not make a profit, but I don't think the loss will be too huge either - I am reckoning on people not wanting to craft all the raw materials themselves and preferring to buy them from the AH.

I know there is a lot of guesstimation here, but I've only recently started planning out things and am looking forwards to plugging in more real numbers as I try to get this to work.

Some difficulties I can see with my planned strategy are :

1. Running out of recipes. If I skip Work Orders entirely, how am I going to get my new recipes? Most of the lower level ones aren't sold on the AH (at least not on my server)

2. Running out of supplies. This is part of the reason why I think focusing on Cooking/Handicrafting/Alchemy is the way to go - the materials needed by these professions are in abundant supply due to mobs drops and gathering (again, this is true on my server, YMMV)

My server is Nekezan, BTW.

Right now my main is only Level 22, so that only gives me so much Kinah to play around with. I originally thought of levelling my alts to 20 and playing them only when my Repose bar was full, but upon realizing that the Repose bonus is only 20% and that crafting may actually generate a LOT more XP in the long run, (and I won't need to gear my alts, which saves even more money that I can funnel into crafting, and hence, more even XP) I'm now focusing on a strategy to go from 10-30 only by crafting.

Also, I think that it may be more productive in the long run to focus on 1 character and farm materials/mobs in order to generate Kinah to level my alts, seeing as you stand to make a lot more money the higher level you are.
(I have no idea what kind of cash it's possible to get at 30 and 40, but I'm betting it's a lot more than what it's possible to get at 20) I also won't have to level gathering and extraction on my alts! And of course there is the not-so insignificant benefit of having multiple characters with medium-high crafting skills.

Basically, I'm trying to make the most of what time I have in-game, so I can enjoy myself more and not re-do the beginner areas again and again. Also, I like finding out new ways to gain XP and play the game.

What do you guys think? Are any of my assessments, assumptions or judgments in error? I welcome any kind of feedback on constructive criticism on this mini-project of mine.

[Trichocyst]

Totally possible, but very expensive. My ranger has gone from 10 to 22 just crafting work orders.

[Naiya]

No, just no, From my experience work orders are the cheapest and easiest way to level a craft, and you want to skip out on work orders completely?

Deava armor isn't worth all the effort it takes to get it.

Impossible and stupid imo.

[Saxon]

Just get a bot to be honest.

[Drex]

Going to be way too expensive to be worth it all the way to 30

I also wouldn't level 5 chars to 30 for the daevonian set. In the time it takes to do that, you could level one char to at least 40 and have better gear, plus more progress on your main.

A lot of people seem to misunderstand the point of the daevonian armor. Imo, it looks to me like it was put in to make leveling alts easier, since you get a couple pieces of cheap gear each time you ding one to 30. Making it a specific goal seems pretty silly to me since it's comparable at best to other gear sets that you'll get 8-10 levels later.

If you want to do it though, I would recommend grinding each char to 25, and then doing NTC runs every day/every other day with a repose bar on each char until 29. 29->30 you can just grind out in each char in a day each probably.

edit: The other issue is that you wont have a big starting supply of kinah, so you can only realistically buy supplies for a limited number of synths before you have to sell the results and wait for them to get sold. With all the undercutting that goes on with crafted goods, you could be looking at multiple days of waiting to get your money back so that you can resume synthing.

[LurkaKitty]

I think they really want us to level alts, what with the Nini`s (dunno what the equivelant is for elyos) charms that give +20% exp for 2hrs are specifically for alts under certain levels.

[Berabouman]

Thanks for all the replies, it's good to have more info to work with. Judging by what's been said, perhaps I should reconsider the idea itself!

Some more questions, though :

1. Can I get more than 1 Nini's Charm? In which case, I would just level my alts to 20 via crafting and then get the rest of the levels by grinding with Nini's and Repose.

Thanks for this tip though, I didn't know how about the existence of such charms...

2. Am I still right in supposing that levelling my main to a higher level would generate more Kinah in the long run than levelling multiple 20s?

Also, just to clarify some stuff...I might actually play an alt for "real" once I have the level 30 set, so I'm not getting it just for my main. Also, I would like to unlock the level 50 weapon quest, and I can't do that if I don't have the 30s done, right?

If it's not possible via crafting alone, I don't mind doing some work orders - just trying to minimize the amount of WOs I have to do, and maximize the possible gain of AFK XP.

[Kerberoz]

2. Am I still right in supposing that levelling my main to a higher level would generate more Kinah in the long run than levelling multiple 20s?

Yes. Tards who just grind lvl50 mobs all day make 10x more than crafters.

[Naiya]

If it's not possible via crafting alone, I don't mind doing some work orders - just trying to minimize the amount of WOs I have to do, and maximize the possible gain of AFK XP.

1. I'm guessing that's a exp band, yes you get 4 i think it as as the one month veteran reward.

2. Yes, much much more, you'd also have to buy new skills/gear for all of those characters which can be quite pricey.

3. Ok you never made a 3, but this will address your leveling an "alt" part, ok fair enough you could use that set on your alt, but it's only good until 38~ Blue's at a push. (Not sure about the Weapon but I don't think so, it's a level 30 weapon you get from doing the deava set, I don't think the level 50 weapon is attached)

4. Like i said i'm pretty sure work order's are the cheapest way to level a craft, but i'm guessing you want to do a "normal" synth so you can do 100+ at a time while your afk. I don't really think the exp gain/kinah lost will be worth it.

[RKenshin]

As other people said, my impression of the Daevonian armor is more of a 'hey, this'll make leveling any alts easier/cheaper' than a 'level 5 characters to 30 to make your main super strong for to leveling as a reward.' The Daevonian armor is completely trivialized by a significant margin by the level 33 gold expert gear and quite honestly if you spent all the time leveling 4 other characters to level 30 making money, you'd more than be able to afford that gear. I honestly wouldn't even feel comfortable wearing the set past 43.

As someone leveling other alts just for fun, this is exactly what the Daevonian set is doing for me as well. It's a free, very decently strong set of gear that makes leveling each alt past 30 even easier. It's nice!

As far as leveling by work orders goes, getting on craft from 0-399 starting at level 10 has got me to 25 and a half without killing a single mob or completing a single quest. This was by doing every work order available for the entire time; did this on sin and ranger. After that point it literally just takes a few NTC runs and a few hours of grinding to hit 30 from there.

2. Am I still right in supposing that levelling my main to a higher level would generate more Kinah in the long run than levelling multiple 20s?

FAR more kinah in leveling a main to a higher level; money comes much easier as you get higher. For a while I was grinding off of mobs that were not only giving me excellent exp/hour, but also around 1.5m/hour worth of sellable items.

[LurkaKitty]

1. Can I get more than 1 Nini's Charm? In which case, I would just level my alts to 20 via crafting and then get the rest of the levels by grinding with Nini's and Repose.

You get 4 per quest turn in, and there are multiple quests. But these quests are kinda higher level, the first one starts at 35 and can be used on characters level 20 and below.

[Berabouman]

Ok, I think I have a much better idea of what the Daevonian armor set is now, and what crafting really entails...

I'll probably just focus on levelling my main for the time being, and perhaps do some crafting on the side. I'm still very attracted to the idea of AFK-able XP, but I see now that it's probably only possible for certain recipes in certain crafts - some crafted materials actually sell very well, some...not so much. It's probably not possible AT ALL in some crafts, like Weapon and Armorsmithing.

I may continue to do some number-crunching, but I think I realize now that the higher level WOs generate so much XP that spamming low-level recipes for XP isn't the greatest option - unless of course they also make a profit.