Everything becomes obsolete after a certain time in MMO's.
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PotD gives out materia V that sells reasonable well
The new hairstyle sells for a lot as well
Most outfits from potd hoards sell for 100k ish or more
Buying a dragonskin map usually lands some profit mainly if you get a wool top that sells for 5m+
Lore items are currently a great way of money making as every crafter needs them in bulk
You're only poor if you really want.
Meanwhile my crafting and gathering gear will last a year and potentially spiritbond many times over. Battle gear? Maybe it will be spiritbonded before it's replaced. Maybe it won't. There are pieces of battle gear I've just received and I already have obsolescence plans for.
Ok, that seems to be server dependant. And well, maybe my comment should be treated as an advice for the future then.
In the first week all prices for those mats were times 10. I still feed on my money I made in the first week and I'm still in the plus-side, although I bought (well, bought the mats for) at least 5 crafted gear pieces + pentamelds.
It's just 1. imo you don't need money at all (if not focussing on housing and/or glamours) and 2. it's soooo easy to make money. And with some pre-planning in mind you can also buy some V's every last month of a patch for really cheap prices, because just like the prices of those mats now drop over time those materia prices will too.
Everyone who sold their precious crit IV materia in 3.35 for 20k gil each... well tough luck, I held back 50+ of those, sold one half and melded the second in 3.4 and likely made more money than someone who sold them right away.
It's just.. if I hadn't meld my gear the only difference would be 150+ less crit, but 3-5 more millions on my bank. Wow. I don't need.
In the same time I bought 7 V's for my crafter for 9 million gil, which I didn't make back by crafting yet, and supposly never will because I'm too lazy to craft beyond self-demand, lol.
Also you can get 75*7 + 100 centurio seals a week without "real" hunting, which is 3-4k Grand Company seals per day alone. One new A-Rank is 1800 seals?! One weekly old B-Rank is 2800 seals. And so on.. Lel, 1-3k seals a day. xD
If your not raiding then its unnecessary.
The most expensive, the moonfire halter, goes for 89k. The rest is between 500 and 15k gil. Only the hairstyle still sells quite well.
As for the V materia - weren't we talking about how socketing materia instead of selling it is a waste? That was my original point.
I personally don't meld that much unless I want to be "totally effective", and even then I don't do raids or extreme so why would I even bother? I can only meld secondary stats and how many of them are actually useful? Exactly.
Melding itself is quite unpolished anyway: unless it's crafted gear you really can't put any main stats into your slots, cannot overmeld either, and when you upgrade you lose your hard-earned V grade materia. Talk about waste!
If you could meld more main stats into it - and also give stats bonus, like WoW JC (worst game ever, yadda yadda) used to do - on top of also being more lenient (overmelding feels like I'm playing a cheap p2w game without the % boost) and overall being "better", I can see more materia melding being done.
As it is, it's just pointless to even bother and whenever I can, I just sell V materias until I can upgrade my gear, which will be in months anyway. I can only see an utility for gathering, crafting and if you want to min-maxing your potential but beside these, what's the point?
Crit for all, Strenth for tanks, accuracy for the healers and SS for BLM. Those are "effective" enough to feel the impact usually.
What things, which you can buy with gil (besides crafted gear), are more useful than this?
After all the fluff (like you have all your glamours you want and earn a house/appartment) the main focus of this game is battle content. And that's why I focus my spendings on that type of contents. After having all my fluff the only options are either 1. get more and more money or 2. get more AP. I don't see the point in "1.", especially if you do it only for the sake of it.
I rather clear contents (even the slightest) faster, than just to have a number growing up in my upper right corner of the screen.
Why would you? If you aren't raiding there's no point at all in melding. Your gear will suffice for any content anyway and it will be obsolete in a month or two. Makes way more sense to sell the materia than meld with it.
I meld my healing (have to, for raiding), casting, and aiming gear (I play blm and brd often). Maybe eventually I will meld my tank gear, since I play pld every now and then (when doing easy content solo and I want an insta queue). But eh, it's not really a priority. I don't play drg or mnk so even though those are at 60, I don't care to meld slaying/striking gear. Same for nin, if it was at 60 already. I'm just lazy about doing beast tribes for tier 4s.
I don't meld my alt character's gear because frankly I don't need them, my alt's just there to get me an extra mhachi matter per week. Besides, why bother when 95% of df pugs are so bad I don't need melds to be top dps? :)