How does one break into crafting?

[Semmi]

I've done some casual crafting over my playtime on this game, but I've never really understood how to get good at crafting, especially when the barrier of entry seems so high. I'm not sure how to get into endgame crafting to make money when it takes money to get started. I also don't really understand crafting rotations and when any particular skill should be used.

[Werhusky]

You don't need endgame crafting to make gil just find that one item that currently sells well and if the market gets overflooded move on :P

For rotations you basically will more or less need all classes on 50 for the crossclass. I consider myself a casual crafter even though I have a 3 star and do my weekly caps for like 4-5 weeks now.

Basic Crossclasses you should get either way:
Careful Synthesis 2
Bryegots blessing
Comfort Zone
Tricks of the Trade
Steady Hand 2
Hasty Touch
(might've forgotten another obligarory)

Rest depends on rotation you feel comfortable on.

On 50 I started:
Comfort Zone - (Tricks of the Trade) - Inner Quiet
Did my progress with 1-2 Piece by Piece and mostly Careful Synthesis 2 under Ingenuity 2
And Quality with Steady Hand 2 - Hasty Touch -> end it with Bryegots Blessing
Used Tricks whenever a Good

With the 50+ additional skills I go:
Muscle Memory - (TotT) - Comfort Zone - (TotT) - Inner Quiet - (TotT)
Progress with Steady Hand 2 rapid Synthesis and finish off with Careful Synth 2 (dem maths)
Quality with Steady Hand 2 and Hasty Touch / on red(good) use Precise Touch and TotT only if u hit the end of Durability or need the CP for another Masters Mend
Depending on Good or not Ed Quaility with Bryegots Blessing/Brow

Maybe that helped, but as said I only craft casually for own needs.

[Sethira]

Wanted to chime in and say that money in crafting isn't a faucet that turns on and off with cross class skills and the grandmaster title. Bouncing from one item to the next is short sighted, but any single craft class can make decent gil providing what they can to the market board. I'd say that "breaking in" should only be descriptive of Mastercraft/Grandmaster as like I said, it is not an on/off switch. You can craft as much or as little as you want and the time you put in will be reflected in what you can do.

Now raiding on the other hand...

[Dement]

If you come to terms with the fact that you aren't going to go from casual crafter to 3 star crafter in the span of a few weeks without dropping millions of gil, the barrier of entry isn't nearly as high. If you level your gatherers, you can get all of your materials for free, it will just take time. The driving costs for the crafter gear are the favor items which you can get quite a bit of relatively easily, only you are capped on how many you can get per week due to gatherer red scrips. I did 5 MIN (received from 1 red gatherer favor) and 5 BTN favors (received from 1 red gatherer favor) on Saturday night and over the course of 2 hours I had 35 Odorless animal fats which would make 7 griffin leathers for items, if you don't spend the gatherer red scrips on gatherer gear, you can get 9 red gatherer scrips per week. Alternatively, you can also just cap your red crafter scrips per week and buy the 180 gear as you are able to.

The next hurdle is materia overmelding. You can spend a fortune getting the materia off of the market board, or you can make a few sets of 55-60 white crafter gear, meld them with very cheap materia, and spirit bond those sets while you quick synth large stacks of raw materials. You then have your own stacks of materia to meld your gear with.

The key is to trace back to the materials you need and see how they are originally acquired if you don't want to spend a fortune. You will likely miss the incredibly lucrative phase of the 3 star crafter boat in this patch cycle but you have plenty of time to get them geared before the next cycle begins.

[ChameleonMS]

Get all your crafting classes to 50 to gain access to all cross class crafting skills. These skills allow you to reliably make HQ items with NQ materials.
Crafting is expensive, you pay with time or GIL.
Lower Gil with higher time, if you gather your own materials.
Truck loads more Gil, with way less time, if you buy your materials. Many, many base materials can be purchase from in game vendors, not requiring use of the MB.

DoW Gil Guide, you need GIL to pay for your crafting. At least until you have the skills to make items HQ that population wants to buy from you.

Caimie's Crafting Guide something every craft should read at least once.
Crafting simulator for practising different rotations without burning your materials
Unspoiled Nodes for end game gathering.
Emphemial Nodes gathering rotation.
Gear Guide for end game crafting.
Fisher Reference.
Desynthesis Guide, it was more useful before 3.0 but still has value.

Crafting Rotations follow some basis rules:
1. The opener, Comfort Zone, Inner Quiet.
Each successful quality touch will increase your inner quiet stacks. Each increase makes you a stronger quality crafter. Inner quiet has no effect on completion.

2. Get your completion to within one Careful Synthesis II of 100%.

3. Use skills to restore/conserve your CP.
Comfort Zone, costs 66 but over 10 steps, restores 80, thus, +14 effect.
Hasty Touch and Rapid Synthesis, costs 0 CP as the expense of RNG.
Tricks of the Trade, restores 20 CP for each use.

4. Use skills to buff your skills.
Steady Hand (22 CP), Steady Hand II (25 CP), increase reliablitiy of your actions.
E.g. Pop Steady Hand II, the use Hasty Touch mutliple times. This will give you an 80% success rate on 5 quality touches costing 0 CP.
Great Strides doubles your next touch effectiveness.
Innovation increases your skill for up to 3 touches.

Ineguity II is generally only required for crafts above your own level.
E.g. Lv60** or Lv60*** crafts

5. Use skills to restore/conserve your Durabitliy.
Masters Mend, Masters Mend II, Manipulation, Waste Not, Waste Not II.
For Durability 70/80 crafts, Master Mend II is the most efficient.
For Durabiltiy 35/40 crafts, Manipulation is most efficient, followed very closely by Masters Mend.

6. The finisher, you have many, many Inner Quiet stack built up, time to use Byregots for a hugh quality jump.
E.g. SH2, Ingenuity II, Innovation, Basic Touch, Great Strides, Byregot's Blessing.
I use this for macro crafting.
E.g. SH2, Great Strides, Ingenuity II, Byregot's Brow (only on good), Innovation, Byregot's Blessing (only if Inner Quiet still up)