Goldsmith grinding guide

First thread on the English Goldsmith forum? Let's make it a useful one!

Here's how to grind:

1-12:
leves, bone harpoon butts, copper nuggets, brass nuggets

through r15:
copper earrings, t1 gems, and silver nuggets when you can (would be wise to start stocking them)

r15-18:
copper rings

up to r25ish:
brass earrings then phase into brass rings (require the same mats, get a feel for it)

r24-28
brass rings mostly and electrum nuggets when you can (would be wise to start stocking them)

r28-38
silver ring into silver needle when you can reliably do it

r35-40
silver needle will go as far as 41, though slow, it is super cheap to grind. can also add in some silver chakram, tier1 gem rings, and white coral (arrowheads i believe)

r39-44
electrum rings (time to suck it up. mats are gonna be pricey, unless you can mine gold. And if you were thinking about leveling miner, and arent in any real hurry... now would be a good time.)

r44-50
silver francisca, mixed in occasional t2 gem rings, could keep going with electrum rings too if you're a masochist.
also red coral. but in my personal experience i find coral to be hilariously rare and mediocre, not something anyone should expect to grind off of. I personally never really reliably grinded coral, just like 3 or 4 synths per rank. Maybe someone can post an efficient way of collecting coral.

Note: Silver Francisca mats will require CRP20ish (ash francisca haft) and ALCH40ish (scale glue). Should not be too much a prob though. Especially if you're coming down off an expensive electrum grind.

Hope this helps. I'll tell you now the electrum grind is brutal, and may turn people away from GLD for the time being. It's only because the gold sand/ore market is so expensive and controlled by miners (their prices are justified). Depending on your bank you may wish to put your GLD on pause at this stage, it may be safe to assume that something in the future will happen that will cause gold to decrease in price. (and really, this disclaimer is mainly for those who are interested in leveling gold from the beginning. They may find value in knowing of this situation way beforehand. For the rest of you who are already 40+ and climbing, carry on! Godspeed!)

If you find yourself doing a bunch of faction NM leves, keep an eye out for Drake Collar drops off the Branded Drake type mobs. Ask your party members for those. They synth into 8 electrum nuggets and chances are those people are just going to vendor them for nothing.

Guide compiled from personal experience and a few references on other forums.

Thanks for this pepesylvia ^^

Im currently at 37 and getting to 38 prob tomorrow if i can! ll give it a go. I always pray for good leves and hope for 40 plus but get them very rarely :(

Great job, want to also point out that in the 44+ stage you can cut raw t3 gemstones if you have them, then set them in electrum circlets. Rare, but good SP when you can.

I would think franciscas would be more painful than electrum rings.
You can subsidize your electrum ring grinding with T2 gems as well. That's a R49 synth plus some side cash.

I'm gonna be the first GSer on wutai who had to go the entire final stretch to 50 without any use of silver needles. Freaking PAINful. Thank god for miner.

I found even at level 35 electrum rings weren't too difficult to level off of..expensive but very good xp per synth

Ride silver needles as long as you can, electrum is a pain

Do people think that (I think tier 2... Sunstone, sphene, malicite etc) Rings are not worth it from 37->...

I'm Rank 37 and I'm able to get silver nuggets for about 2k a nugget.... I pick up the gemstones anywhere from 2k-3k... (either raw or finished)

The synth costs roughly 6k and you get 2k back if you NPC it.... so you're looking at taking a 4k hit in mats.. Which really isn't too terrible considering the alternatives.... plus you're getting about 400/500 a synth....

So even if you go Silver needles... which will cost you 1 nuggett (2k) but probably nets you 150-200 (haven't done it in awhile) you're going to end up spending 2 nuggets worth (atleast) to accomplish the 1 ring synth.... which puts you already at spending 4k (not counting crystal cost) which you NPC for 1000.. costing you 3k a synth...

So at BEST you're saving 1k gil.... thoughts?

I agree, I never REALLY did them as a "grind" just only if I had the gems lying around or found some for significantly cheap. I did it because they were slightly better SP and they sold okay (not really what I would consider "income" but yeah they sell). Also the chance of HQing them is nice, you could keep the HQ, sell it for more, or give to a friend.

The easiest way of get GS to 50 is probably level Carp and Alc to 36. This allows you to get Mass Production and one of Assemble / Perfection right away. With 2 of the above skill it is relatively easy to grind Silver Chakram at low 30s and start on Silver Francisca at high 30s, by passing the most brutal Electrum all together. Also alc 36 allow you to make your own scale glue for Silver Francisca grinding.

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Originally Posted by Maverick_Hawkeye

Do people think that (I think tier 2... Sunstone, sphene, malicite etc) Rings are not worth it from 37->...

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Just wanted to clarify:

T1 (~r10 synth): Sunstone, Lapis Lazuli, Malachite, Sphene, Danburite, Fluorite
T2 (~r30 synth): Garnet, Aquamarine, Peridot, Helidor, Goshenite, Amethyst
T3 (~r50 synth): Rubellite, Turquoise, Tourmaline, Amber, Zircon, Spinel
T4 (recipe unavailable): Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, Topaz, Diamond, Iolite

I was able to start grinding with Silver Francisca's at R38 (The first rank you are allowed to start them at). It required Master synth support and I also had the following abilites to use: Maker's Muse, Fullfilment, Preserve, Ingenuity, and Close Inspection. It was hard and I used most of the abilities, but the failure rate was very low.

From ~R33 (don't recall exact rank) - R38 I did my grinding with Danburite and Flourite rings. Very good SPs at those ranks. I did Mine my own gems and silver ore. Plus I could sell the Danburite rings for 15K-25K on my server fairly quickly (was very little competition at the time I was doing those ranks). I also had Inlaying Training.

It does seem that having the proper training, for those synths that recommend it, allows you to stretch a couple more ranks then you otherwise can, so use those Guild Marks wisely.

an alternative to the electrum grind/chakram grind is silver spectacles.
you get more bang for your buck from the silver ingots because 2 ingots = 12 wires, only thing relatively hard to get is the glass but if you find cheap mats you should go for it. Another thing is the fact that these bad boys sell for 3.3-3.5k each iirc to the npc and you might sell a few on retainers for 20-30k a pop, 50k if youre lucky

synth level rank 40 needs inlaying training and uses a silver wire a nugget and a clear glass lens

I'm stuck at 37 goldsmithing as well. Electrum nugget is so hard to come buy and price of gold ore is so expensive. I hope i can get past this! So ready to give it up >.<

Alternative from R35-R40 is "White Coral Arrowheads" if you are fishing. White coral can be found off Cedarwood (Grade 4) and Bald Knoll (Grade 5). Sweet spot is -3 and you can expect to get 30-40% of your catch in coral.

Blue and Red coral is only found in schools of fish so not so nice. Moving on to electrum rings - thanks for great guide!

curious to see if we have an updated guide for GS since patch 1.19. any help 40+ would be great. thanks!

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Originally Posted by Chlymera

curious to see if we have an updated guide for GS since patch 1.19. any help 40+ would be great. thanks!

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I second this!

Brimstone is much easier to come by now, so red coral breastpins would be a good recipe.

I don't know if anyone on here posted anything about GSM and 40+ recipes yet to grind on, but farming the fire flies in Shposhae (which drops tons of red coral) allow you to grind x2 red coral = red coral arrows for some good exp, especially with a crafting scroll from the Grand Company Halls.

Hope that helps any 40+ GSM's out there having trouble hitting 50, like I used to.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Leonesaurus

I don't know if anyone on here posted anything about GSM and 40+ recipes yet to grind on, but farming the fire flies in Shposhae (which drops tons of red coral) allow you to grind x2 red coral = red coral arrows for some good exp, especially with a crafting scroll from the Grand Company Halls.

Hope that helps any 40+ GSM's out there having trouble hitting 50, like I used to.

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Thanks for the info but where is Shposhae? Can u point me in the right direction?

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Originally Posted by DocPunisher

Thanks for the info but where is Shposhae? Can u point me in the right direction?

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Shposhae is a low level open dungeon introduced alongside patch 1.19. It's located @ Lower La Noscea (28,33), near to the Limsa Lominsa's main entrance.

Electrum ore is also plentiful now. Mining in nophica wells and halatali for an hour and you'll have more than a stack. 4 electrum ores turn into 12 nuggets btw so the conversion rate is very good.

Mining at these locations also sometimes give raw gems that you can turn into gems which give about 300xp at L40. These gems can then be kept for later use (L50+ circlets use them and they're not that expensive to make).

As an overview, I think 1.19 actually made it easier for GSM to lvl to 50 compared to a few other crafting classes.

Anyone have any tips for 45+ GSM? :/

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Leonesaurus

I don't know if anyone on here posted anything about GSM and 40+ recipes yet to grind on, but farming the fire flies in Shposhae (which drops tons of red coral) allow you to grind x2 red coral = red coral arrows for some good exp, especially with a crafting scroll from the Grand Company Halls.

Hope that helps any 40+ GSM's out there having trouble hitting 50, like I used to.

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I can confirm this. I spent one long grind session in Shposhae doing the chests, and came out with almost a full stack of Red Coral.

if you have high lvl miner and wanna collect mats you can mine siltstone (about 15 a quarry in dh) for lvl 25-32) youll also get a lot of gems(cant remember the gem) mythril and silver. if you mine DH mine the west side near the quarry point, its usually got 2 nodes there plus the quarry point.

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Originally Posted by syntaxlies

if you have high lvl miner and wanna collect mats you can mine siltstone (about 15 a quarry in dh) for lvl 25-32) youll also get a lot of gems(cant remember the gem) mythril and silver. if you mine DH mine the west side near the quarry point, its usually got 2 nodes there plus the quarry point.

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DH = Dragonhead?

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Originally Posted by Hyleman

DH = Dragonhead?

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ahh, yes dragon head, sorry for abbreviation.

im 47 miner and i dont get any aggro from mobs there.

Ahh ok, I have 50 miner but have never done any mining at Dragonhead.