Making Gil in FFXI Crafting!

How to make Gil as a Crafter!

I get plenty of tells daily from people asking me how the hell you make gil as a crafter. Unlike resource gathering professions (such as spider web farming, silks, camping NM’s), crafting is a totally different way of making gil. All you do is sit, poof, gil!

Most of them are “Fast gil now!” “Where are the gils!”. Honestly, there are no “tricks” or “miracle” in FFXI. Crafting is all about gambling with the percentages and probability.

We all learn from mistakes, some learn on their 1st try, others takes a long time to even understand the concept, but anyway, I’m going to try and break it down.

All servers are different, there’s no one recipe that is guaranteed to make gil. But one thing remains the same though, its Demand. The Demand of an item is what drives prices up and down. Simple economics lessons coming up!

Demand and Supply are friends, they determine what’s the price. The higher the demand of an item AND the less in supply, the higher the price it would be. Imagine SE today say “Ridill for sale!”, who doesn’t want Ridill? What do you expect the price would be?

Perfect example to use is Thief’s Knife. When supply goes up (everyone can now get one, 100%), the price goes down. Can you still sell 9m Thief’s Knife? Anyhow, enough economics, lets continue!

Tools to use:

• Calculator
• FFXIAH

First we need to understand crafting tiers. What? Where did you find this O.O. Here, this insane JP did some massive statistics on it. Here’s the juice of it

51 lvls above cap

failure rate = 5%
NQ rate = 47.5% = (1- failure rate) x 50%
HQ1 rate = 35.6% = (1- failure rate-NQ rate) x 75%
HQ2 rate = 8.9% = (1- failure rate-NQ rate – HQ 1rate) x 75%
HQ3 rate = 2.9% = (1- failure rate-NQ rate – HQ1 rate – HQ2 rate)

50-31 lvls above cap

failure rate = 5%
NQ rate = 71.3% = (1- failure rate)x75%
HQ1 rate = 17.8% = (1- failure rate-NQ rate) x 75%
HQ2 rate = 3.7% = (1- failure rate-NQ rate – HQ 1rate)x75%
HQ3 rate = 2.2% = (1- failure rate-NQ rate – HQ1 rate – HQ2 rate)

and
30-11 lvls above cap NQ rate = (1 – failure rate) x 95% (i think ~90%)
10-0 lvls above cap NQ rate = (1 – failure rate) x 99% (i think ~94%?)
(estimated…)

calculation of hq at 51 lvls above cap

start syn => failure calculation => 5% failure => material loss calculation
\/
95% NQ calculation=> 50% nq
\/
50% hq1 calculation => 75% hq1
\/
25% hq2 calculation => 75% hq2
\/
25% hq3

Source

All you care is HQ, so the stuff we don’t want is

• Failures (5%)
• NQ’s (47.5)
• 1- 52.5% = 47.5% = HQ Rate :)

So when you’re calculating if a recipe is worthwhile, 47.5% is a very important number. For simplicity, lets assume HQ rate for 51+ recipes is 50%
Today I want to make some money! Lets make um… Loyalty Ring! Materials is

10k for the ring
5k for the Jewel

Total 15k in materials.

The HQ sells for 30k.

Most people would be like, if I HQ 50% of the time, that means its a profit synth! Wrong! You forgot the price of materials!

30k – 15k materials = 15k profit.

Well that’s assuming you can HQ it on 1st try, if you do 2 synth, most of the time, 1 HQ 1 NQ’s meaning 15k profit from the HQ’s. Remember, if you do 2 synth, you got to pay 30k upfront, 1st one profit 15k after subtracting mat, second one NQ = trash but you still got to pay 15k in materials and therefore, you aren’t really making gil (well you do profit from the gil you NPC your NQ’s). That’s assuming no AH fee, no competition too!

FFXIAH does the calculation for you, of how much profit for this synth. When looking at those numbers, you got to consider the difficulty of that synth!

A good crafting tip is, craft item that’s low cost, and the HQ sell rate is at least 3-4x of the materials (for 51+ stuff)

Picking a Winner!

Luckily Scragg didn’t fail economics, he understands what people really need when calculating a profit synth. So he had that computed for you. Anyhow, what you want to pay attention is this.

That circle is sales rate, the “Demand” of that item. When you buy an item, its because you need it, need = demand, and when you make a purchase, there’s going to be a sale!

7.2 rings sold / day, you can’t sell .2 of a ring, so technically, 7 rings sold per day, oh no you see? 15 rings on AH. That means 8 rings won’t sell.

I wouldn’t make mythril rings if I were you. Not only you need to undercut, but you are competing with at least 3 seller. Each person can only put up 7 rings, so its safe to assume 3 people are selling, and they are probably trying to undercut each other.

Knowing your Market!

Is it easier to sell 2 STR rings, 2 INT rings or 4 INT rings? Consider this population, Fenrir only have 4 warrios and 4 RDM’s.

2 STR rings can be used by all 8 persons, whereas INT rings can only be used by 4 RDM’s. Warriors will definately want STR rings, so is RDM and INT rings, but the difference is, there’s melee RDM that want STR rings! Variety! Its easier and probably faster to sell 2 INT 2 STR than 4 INT rings. Plus they look pretty when you put it on AH. Different colors!

This means, craft many things and not just one thing. Craft in low quantities. The market changes on a daily basis and if people suddenly undercutting you, if you had low quantities, you only have to take off 1-2 items and relist them for a lower price! If you had all 7 up ‘-‘ lol.

Also take into account FFXI’s patches. If assault suddenly drops STR rings, that means not many will buy your ring, well maybe you should stop making them because not only they won’t sell, but people who got that assault ring will resell their STR ring

Inflation / Deflation

A lot of people sells their crap when they get it. But what also drives the economy is the inflation / deflation. A year ago, I was skilling up from 95 – 97 on some Cursed M.head piece. 100k mat a pop selling 80k, 20k loss T.T, I went back to Hong Kong, came back and woot! Shit skyrocked and selling @ 500k! Merry Christmas for me. I made a truckload of gil. Inflation means its better off to keep items because money’s value is decreasing. Deflation is the opposite, better to keep gil.

Ciermel quit around 8 months ago with 10m, 10m 8 months ago roughly can buy her 1.5 Royal Cloak. Today, she came back and 10m can buy her 5 Royal Cloak. Deflation means the value of gil is increasing, hence keeping cash is better.

What has this to do with crafting? It means you shouldn’t be holding your gil in terms of item. You are better off keeping Gil than holding them up in terms of item and take your time to sell.

Auction House Taxes

There’s only a few things that are certain in this world… Maiev is cool & AH Taxes.

AH Taxes is the price you pay to list your item to the AH server. This is bad news T_T because if you include the AH taxes to the 15k ring synthesis, you would have had a loss! The good news is, you get advertisements!

Final Fantasy’s in-game AH lists item up to 3 real life days for a cost of 100gil + 1% of the seller’s asking price. If you’re selling 100k Rings, AH will take 1k + 100gil = 1100 as taxes. Ouch, 1k gone, but hay look, everyone in vanadiel who wants this item WILL look on the AH, NOT everyone go pay a silver to go look in bazaars in Saromogue. The exposure you get from AH is different. You also get buyers who had no intention to buy, but wanted to buy because

1. 1st time he saw it, he liked it
2. Price is cheap compared to last sale.

Bazaars is rather different, people only go if they are looking for something, so you aren’t getting those random buyers who just liked an item and desparate. Hay, you also get Gilbuyer’s shopping too. They don’t care about gil, hence would pay a higher price on AH not only to buy the item, but have their name listed for e-peen.

Just how important is advertising? Japanese now offer free drinks for watching advertisements! Its that important!

Pricing Items!

Final Fantasy’s in-game AH runs a system call “lowest sells first” What I mean is..

Jowah lists Heavens Ring @ 10am EST for 1.00 million
Maiev lists Heavens Ring @ 11am EST for 0.99 m
Etain wants to make a purchase of Heavens Ring for 1.00 m.

Sorry Jowah, mines sells first! I’ll still get 1m in my dbox too!

Not only you save AH taxes (remember, AH taxes is calculated on your asking price, I saved 10gil worth of taxes), but mines sells first too!v Remember to undercut!

Banking on the RMT / Idiots

A lot of people don’t know prices when buying stuff. Numerous times stuff in my bazaar was only meant to look pretty got sold. Honestly, I sometime put items up because I like the bazaar bag icon. The bag looks so much prettier than a solid color pearl.

So back to banking on the RMT / idiots, a lot of people make purchases in bazaar. The good thing about bazaars is…. there’s no price history! People don’t know the market price! Sometimes the stuff in my bazaar is tempting and poof sold! It was only priced higher to create a bazaar bag, and also encourage those that’s interested to ask for a discount. So yea, its nice to bank on the idiots!

RMT’s different, they play this game with infinite gil. Sucking part of AH is, you can’t charge higher than requested price if their forehead says “I RMT GIL”. Bazaar’s different, rich ass gil buyers usually say “awww lower the price”? I see their face, and I say “Nope, that’s the price you pay”, and they usually pay! Start banking on them, good gil!

Enough BS, So how do Maiev make gil? *Secret Weapon*

• I do my homework and research my market, and to do all these, you need to /befriend with FFXIAH. With FFXIAH, the process is much shorter, I click on my spy list, and I quickly compute if its worthwhile. Remember to take into account HQ rates when calculating what’s really worthwhile.
• Craft where profit lies. Keyword, PROFIT! If an item sells for 2m, 10% HQ rate and material cost 200k and sells for 0 gil, then you aren’t really making a profit even when you HQ.
  When an HQ item sells for 1m, but the material is 100k, SELLS for 100k, that means when you HQ, you earn a profit of 900k. Don’t let the numbers fool you.
• Test Synth. If this synh supposingly to have a 50% HQ Rate, you did 4 synth and none of them are HQing, you shuold stop. Statistics don’t lie and when you can’t HQ a 50% hq rate item in 4 synth, then today is not your day. This is one of your 7.5% horrible HQ days.
• I stop crafting when the market is shit! The economy is deflating, keeping gil is better because they are more valuable each day, you are indirectly making a profit for not crafting because your gil is more valuable over time (if it keeps deflating). Many crafters do not see deflation or ignore them, that’s bad news.
• Price stuff accordingly. Undercut prices on AH but overprice in Bazaars. If they are interested with bazaar item, they will ask, and when they ask, they were desprite enough to ask for my name, and sending me a tell. Desprite = urgent, and that means if you really need it, I have no motivation to offer you discount since you’re going to buy it anyway.
• Last but not least, keep notes. Final Fantasy’s crafting is deeply related to elemental strengths. Its hard to have a definite conclusion of what item favors what, so when you HQ, write down the condition and try to figure it out. I collect my own statistics hence allowing me to replicate my HQ synthesis better.
• Remember, if the market is very saturated and not healthy, doing nothing is actually a good thing. In fact is actually in economics too. Saving is part of a strategy ^^ that goes for FFXI. Utilize it!