Low level market seems to be dead

[Gokuhan]

In FFXI if you didn;t HQ, you lost money. And it cost people MILLIONS for gil to get a craft to max level. This is nothing. If it's costing you too much, farm your own mats.

[Riv]

High level sucks too. Crafting is worthless unless you're HQing 2 star equips, and even then you usually only break even or make <10k profit thanks to the under cutters.

[Giantbane]

Well, it was about time I opened a thread with a genuine concern. So here it goes.

I've been leveling my Leatherworker after maybe a month of being stuck in lvl 10 or so, and I'm hitting a bit of a roadblock. This is: crafting is a waste of gil, since I don't get a profit from my crafting. I spend and spend gil on materials but then noone buys my crafted gear. Granted, I'm only making lvl 15 gear, but it's still quite an inversion money-wise, and I've had things on the market go unsold for over a month now. I know it will probably get better later when I'm doing high level HQ gear, but right now crafting feels like I'm just wasting gil. Anyone else feel the same?

If you are losing much (if any) gil crafting up til level 15, you are doing something horribly wrong. Almost all of the materials required by <15 crafts for every craft can be bought very cheaply from the vendor inside that craft's guild. You also get a ton of crystals from the first few quests for that craft so you shouldn't need to worry about that either.

You should be able to level up to 15 in any crafting class pretty easily by just crafting gear and selling it back to the vendor. If you use the AH before level 15, you're doing it wrong. If you want it to go a little faster, and have some grand company seals to spare, buy the engineering buff which gives you more crafting xp for each craft you do. Also, be sure to use the most basic food for a small xp and stat bonus. Frumenty, salt cod and mint lassi are all very cheap (less than 15gil for each one) and there is a vendor in every major city that sells them.

After level 15, don't bother crafting to sell to other players. You'll want to do levequests for that craft. Each quest will get you back some gil. Select the leves that require the cheapest materials and/or give back the most gil if you're worried about not losing gil. If you're able to HQ items, you get back double the gil (and double xp earned) for the turn in so that can be very helpful to make leveling more economical. And remember that you don't *have* to do the latest set of leve quests just because you can. If, for instance, you reach level 30 and the level 30 quests all are too expensive and too difficult to HQ, then it's perfectly fine to stick to the level 25 quests to keep leveling. Especially if you can reliably HQ the level 25 quests but cannot do so for the level 30 quests.

Also, don't just level up leatherworking to 50. You'll want to start by getting the best level 15 cross class abilities from other crafting classes before you continue. You'll probably want to level Alchemy (Tricks of the Trade), Carpenter (Rumination), Culnarian (Hasty Touch), Goldsmith (Manipulation) and Weaver (Careful Synthesis) all to level 15 before you progress further in a single craft. This will give you a good stable of basic cross class abilities to work with which will help you HQ your crafts for better rewards from leves.

[Scamperoo]

So what is the point of crafting anything then ? As far as gear is concerned it's by your own admission inferior but adequate for leveling an alt...which is and of itself pointless because the only thing an alt is really good for is storage...oh wait.....as we can't send or receive from our alts guess there's not much point in that either....Um.....food how about crafting food.....which no one buys....furniture yes that's the ticket.....and as soon as people buy all those houses..we can make gil off that.......except no one is buying houses so no one is buying furniture. You say you made dungeon gear better than crafted gear on purpose....so you made crafting redundant before we even started....You might as well have not put it in the game to begin with. How thoroughly disappointing.

[Gilthas]

I hate it that the best gear in the game doesn't require any crafting at all (they should use a system like the abjurations from FFXI), but you can make money crafting, you just won't be making a fortune with a single HQ item like you could in FFXI.

Craft a lot of lower level items that sell fast and you can make 50-100k a day on a server like Phoenix.

[Taruranto]

Well, no shit op. Why would anyone waste gil on level 15 gears that are going to become obsolete in 5 levels? (And with the way the game is designed, you can easily get geared with quests or running dungeons or someone simply gets carried)

Its like you dont even play this game.

There is absolutely no use for low level gear or low level materia. When leveling a second class, you already have Grand Company gear, dungeon gear, and you can just buy white gear from vendors if you're that lacking. Either way, it will only last you a few hours, maybe a day or so, before you outlevel it and replace it.

So basically, thank you for confirming in your two posts that crafting is useless and will remain useless.

Yeah, it's pretty worrisome. "Materia-melding" on low-level gears? who does it? Maybe if you are a bored crafter with too much materia at hand lol.

I don't understand what the logic is to have crafter classes when the crafted gear is deliberately designed to be inferior to the rest of the game's content.

Because Yoshi is afraid people are just going to buy the best gears. Because people don't do this already with tomes, right.

[MrSmiley]

Confirmed with Disciple of the Hand lead

Currently there are no plans to add any new low/mid level crafting recipes.
We designed FFXIV so that gear obtained from dungeons is more effective than crafted items.

For their first class, players can gain equipment from the main quests so we don't think they should face any problems. But we believe there are other chances to use low-level gear, such as creating materia or equipping them when leveling a second class.

WHOOOSHHH

I know your just the messenger, but this thread wasn't about this...

[Roris]

Seems they also applied the flawed concept that only endgame matters to crafting just like they did to battle classes, too bad even endgame crafting isn't really that necessary aside from a couple of crafts.

[Zfz]

It never occurred to the devs that people horde gear for alt classes. I have a whole retainer full of gear for alt classes. I don't need crafted gear.

My monk is wearing full Strikers set the minute she dinged 15. My Conjurer will have half battlemage and the other half aetherial gear when she dings 32. My archer is level 10 with again gear horded from my main, and already has 10 aetherial/unique bows from level 15 up to level 50 stacked away waiting for her.

Not that everyone's like this, but the assumption that people will need crafted gear when they level up their second class, is flawed.

[SolArisa]

Confirmed with Disciple of the Hand lead

Currently there are no plans to add any new low/mid level crafting recipes.
We designed FFXIV so that gear obtained from dungeons is more effective than crafted items.

For their first class, players can gain equipment from the main quests so we don't think they should face any problems. But we believe there are other chances to use low-level gear, such as creating materia or equipping them when leveling a second class.

Please tell your disciples of the Hand lead that maybe he should read threads first before dumping his pre-made standard replies on us.
That's it then, goodbye. Thankfully the Elder Scrolls beta tests starts on Friday.