Smithing. !

[Darby]

I finally decided to level a craft. My cooking is at 30, but I don't really wanna finish it. I decided to take up smithing. The big one!

I browsed around the internet, and found a few decent smithing leveling guides, but not very good, they will do i supose.

I have browsed other forums and what not looking for general info.

I just wanna know some basic things. How much will this take 1-100 an aprox. estimate. When do I start to stop loosing money, at least breaking even. When do I start profiting.

Just some basic questions.

Thank you

 

[Sanoske]

I finally decided to level a craft. My cooking is at 30, but I don't really wanna finish it. I decided to take up smithing. The big one!

I browsed around the internet, and found a few decent smithing leveling guides, but not very good, they will do i supose.

I have browsed other forums and what not looking for general info.

I just wanna know some basic things. How much will this take 1-100 an aprox. estimate. When do I start to stop loosing money, at least breaking even. When do I start profiting.

Just some basic questions.

Thank you

You start losing money around lvl 10, and will probably continue to do such all the way til 100. If you're patience and do your research you can come close to breaking even, at least up until the mid 60s.

Steel Ingots and DS ingots were profit last I checked (55/52 caps), but that's all I remember.

No real way to tell how much it will cost you. It all depends on market fluxuations, and what kind of luck you have. If you pop out a decent HQ while lvling(on whatever synth) that will cut your costs. And if you take 55 synths to lvl up on a painful synth... obviously your going to lose more.

Do your research, and be prepared to spend a lot before you see any real returns.

 

[Tim Wakefield]

As goes with any craft, the best advice that can be given is to do your research. At this stage in the FFXI universe, there are numerous guides and endless information on any craft. Don't commit to one guide, use an assortment, plan ahead, and don't be afraid to take your own route if you see something you think could cost you less gil over the long haul. (Obviously FFXIah is the superior tool in checking these sort of things)

As far as an estimate to get to 100, I have no idea, but clearly at 90+ when you get into Adaman stuff you're going to be spending a boat-load of gil per synth, so make sure you're getting the most for your money.

 

[TanShui]

I'm sure you've already read something along these lines if you said that you've been researching - but most everything depends on market fluctuation like Sanoske said. I can tell you that almost everything in a guide that was once profitable is now a losing/breakeven-at-best synth by virtue of everyone else doing it and causing supply to be greater than demand at its former equilibrium point.

With that said though, I recently did smithing from 1->52 and it was largely a break-even process for me. In between the guides and the 'Recipes' search function on FFXI you should be good to go. Everything that applies to buying/selling from the AH intelligently applies to crafting. Doing the research and planning the right path is over half the work. The only one true advice I have is there are some stretches where selling back to npcs is your best option at minimizing loss (this usually happens with non-stackables). There are two very important things to remember during these stages. The first is that different smithing guilds buy different things. For example, you can sell War Picks at the San Doria Smithing Guild but not Bastok smithing guild (or maybe it was just sold to maximum, but I checked the buy list and didn't see it there). However, I have found that everything you make at least sells back somewhere. The second, is that you really want to do these synths *after* a guild merchant reset, usually caused by a version update. This way, you get the maximum price returns for things that you npc. The stretch from 41->45 is commonly regarded as a major gil-toss stretch, but I luckily avoided that gil-toss (and even made a slight profit). Another thing is if something sells slow and doesn't npc well, don't make it. Unless you don't mind taking months of time to liquidate.

Like I said, smithing 1-52 was a break-even (or maybe even profitable) process for me. But, I was patient and didn't try to power through it and took 2-3 weeks to go 1-52 and not 2-3 days. If you want to power through a craft, I would guess cost and speed has a direct correlation. I also did a good amount of research. Good amount as in monitoring our server's economy actively for the 3 months that I've been playing again, constantly researching all the other available recipes, asking other crafters I know for advice, reading messageboards, etc. Your results may vary. I have found smithing 55+ to be a dark tunnel and I'm not so sure where the light is, yet.

(I only got 2 HQs synthing armor from 0 to 52 and I didn't find the HQ armors doing me much good. A Spatha +1 sold for 9.5k more than I was npcing it for, so I guess it's not bad).

Hope this helps,

~Tanshui

 

[Darby]

thnx for advice!

tim where have u been;;

 

[Tim Wakefield]

thnx for advice!

tim where have u been;;

I kinda took a mini-break I guess. Lots of stuff going on in RL. I'm sure I'll be back on sooner than later.

 

[Darby]

hot me up in game when your back man, I miss you man ; ;

 

[Phraust]

Smithing Sucks.

There's no money in it unless you are already rolling in it. Basiaclly there's limited Money synths and all os them are dominated by a small handful of guys that would much rather throw away 5mil an hour to run you out of resources and profits then share the space. In the period of 2 days one will drop the Haub price form 400k to 200k, that's a sheer drop, no gradual thing. They will literally put 7 haubs up at 200k even though they been selling for 400k and the trend is towards a rise in price, just to spite you, all the while they will buy crafting materials for 150% to 200% market rate to ensure profitability is lost. I tracked one while i was skilling up on Adaman Ingots, he was lierally throwing away 4 mil a day undercutting himself... for two weeks straight... Same guy bought Damascus ingots that were 300k for 500k just to sell Haubs for 200k that were selling steadily for 350k-400k.

It's expensive. And you will need Expensive Subs to do anything...

To go from 99 to 100 I blew up about 4 stacks of adaman ingots, at the time they were only 300k/stack, now they are 1mil/stack. From 96 to 99 I was making Wootz ingots, and NPC'ing em at 10k cost each. Now each costs in upwards of 100k.

I would suggest another synth unless you really want to make somethign for yourself that is in smithing. But if you needed something made for personal use I could craft it for you, free of charge, NQ/HQ/Whatever, so long as it's for personal use.

I am however kinda oblivious as to the other crafts' situations, so they may be much the same.

 

[Darby]

D:

I wanted to smith a hauby+1 one day for myself lol

IDK I seem to be having money issues and was looking for an alternative to farming all day long, I figured a craft could help me make some money one day. I would like to ask straight up whats the most profitble craft, but it seems there is no definate answer for that.

My smithing is curently 15, I'll keep rolling with it till 60, then see what I think.

 

[Phraust]

D:

I wanted to smith a hauby+1 one day for myself lol

IDK I seem to be having money issues and was looking for an alternative to farming all day long, I figured a craft could help me make some money one day. I would like to ask straight up whats the most profitble craft, but it seems there is no definate answer for that.

My smithing is curently 15, I'll keep rolling with it till 60, then see what I think.

I could tell you... But I have an old saying:

Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day...
Teach a man to fish, and you've destroy your customer base...