Oh, so FFXIV is pay-to-win? That's... stupid.

[Kaiser-Ace]

Well, actually...you can buy raid/ex primal clears (including their drops), with gil.
Or you know, a house.

One retainer is enough to make sure I dont have to gather certain hard to farm items (chimeric manes, skins). If I had 4 I could let them farm nearly all of the materials I need and I could produce 500k~ selling items nearly none-stop.

Argue about it not being pay to win if you want. But saying that retainers dont give an advantage over others is woefully naive.


Whether via inventory space (amount of items compared to inventory slots is very small compared to other mmos), or ventures; retainers give great advantages to those that have more of them.

Sorry man, RNGsus says that Retainers don't reliably bring back anything. For every pot of Metallic Silver Dye my retainers bring I get 20 worthless fish. So it's definitely only playing Chaos Theory on sending 8 retainers out instead of 2. You may actually get a rare item that way, but the other 7 will bring back <Insert worthless common drop here> and that's assuming the 8th doesn't as well. There's no P2W and there's no reason other than a ridiculous amount of compulsive hording to end up filling up your retainers. If I need Iron I go get it. If I get allagan leather, I usually sell it since I can't use it yet tbh, but rare items that are not easy to come by are the ONLY craft items I don't dump to the NPCs after my crafting spree is over. If I can get more easily I don't keep it. So maybe being a DoW just makes me incapable of understanding "The Crafter's Plight" but I really don't get why inventory is such a damn issue to you guys. If you max out DoL (Like I am) then you can get low level mats any time you want/need them. Thus leaving no reason to hoard them. (All I gotta do for HQ animal skins for ex is go out side Ul'dah and slaughter mice until they drop, AoEs kill like 4-8 mobs at once out there)

[Aeyis]

Sorry man, RNGsus says that Retainers don't reliably bring back anything. For every pot of Metallic Silver Dye my retainers bring I get 20 worthless fish. So it's definitely only playing Chaos Theory on sending 8 retainers out instead of 2.

Thats because your sending them on the wrong kind of ventures. I never send my retainers on quick ventures unless im after untradable dyes.
They are a very poor means of getting gil.[/QUOTE]
RNG? There is no rng involved in retainers hunting/farming items. Unless you count nq/hq but you will be making these items into refined items anyway, so that matters little.In fact...retainers are more likely to bring HQ materials from hunts then you would if you killed the mobs yourself.


Easily get some skins yourself? I take it you havent farmed chimera manes then.

If you max out DoL (Like I am) then you can get low level mats any time you want/need them. Thus leaving no reason to hoard them. (All I gotta do for HQ animal skins for ex is go out side Ul'dah and slaughter mice until they drop, AoEs kill like 4-8 mobs at once out there)

I've maxed out my DoL. Which is to say, nearly fully pentamelded BiS level 60. Strangely I still dont have the time to farm several hundreds of low level items. Not when I could rather buy them from the mb and farm something that sells for 10x as much instead.


By the way, I removed nearly every single low level material from my retainers when HW hit. It was literally the first thing I did when I logged into the game when the maintenance for early access was finished.

Yet despite not having any culi items stocked (apart from the ones I need for 2x cp food) most of my retainers slots are still filled. (including my own inventory slots)


The reason why crafters (and other smart people) stock certain materials is because they take a lot of time to collect. Because of this the markets for these items are highly in flux.
People dont want to be forced to buy them at a premium because the item happens to be selling for a lot when they need it, so they stock it up when the item sells for little.
In the process they save millions when they do need the items.

If I get allagan leather, I usually sell it since I can't use it yet tbh

My friend got some of that earlier today. After laughing and noting how worthless it is when she mentioned selling it, I gave her some Dawnborne Aethersand to sell instead.
Quick ventures are not a great place to send your retainers if you arent after minions or dyes.

[Zorlinta]

Easily get some skins yourself? I take it you havent farmed chimera manes then.

Chimera manes are get much easier through desynth Hundred Fin. Around 12% of get one, and can be hq, using proper bait around 98% chance to get that fish, in 1 hour irl is a lot.

So if you knew how to get more efficiently an item you really not need the retainer do the work.

[Aeyis]

Chimera manes are get much easier through desynth Hundred Fin. Around 12% of get one, and can be hq, using proper bait around 98% chance to get that fish, in 1 hour irl is a lot.

So if you knew how to get more efficiently an item you really not need the retainer do the work.

You call having a fisher at 60 and culi desynth at high level efficiently? Well, thats an odd way of looking at it.
Very few people have fishing at max. Even less people have culi desynth.

On the other hand, getting 10 manes per hour when all it takes is a few clicks (you dont even need to be playing, you could do this while busy with other things), is quite efficient. These can be HQ as well, up to 100% of the 10 collected per hour.

I have currently got 300 manes in my inventory, 100 of which HQ; all of which collected by my retainer over the course of a few days. No grinding, no fishing, no desynthing required.

[Kaiser-Ace]

snip.

You still haven't explained WHY you keep so much useless crap. I do craft a little but it's mostly for self sufficiency. (That way for about 10 minutes of mat farming I can make an HQ item that SHOULD cost a 2k at most instead of paying 12k for the same item which is an hour's worth of dungeon grinding as a dps)

But you realize you ARE hording right? If you can not fit items you ABSOLUTELY NEED into you inventory slots then you are keeping things you don't need. Hoarders are hoarders and just like IRL there is no reasoning with them. You can make your 5-star 1.8 mil craft items with less than a full inventory (Vanity Items are THE big market and there's no point HQing a stateless glamour item) and there is no reason why you shouldn't. The mentality of "I may need it" is what gives SE 4 USD per month per extra retainer. Because no matter how you justify it hoarders are idiots that keep more than they need. If those chimera whatevers (No I've never seen them my highest level Crafter is lvl 20ish and I don't believe my lvl 50 fisher will pull a chimera out of silver tear lake anytime soon. And if he does I'll stop fishing there for good) are so valuable then keep them instead of the 999 HQ animal skins in your inventory. What you say and what you're apparently doing are polar opposites. (And for the record, Allagan Crafting Mats sell really well on balmung. I made almost 40k off of three items from T5 today alone) So stop BSing and start prioritizing.

[Radial]

You still haven't explained WHY you keep so much useless crap. I do craft a little but it's mostly for self sufficiency. (That way for about 10 minutes of mat farming I can make an HQ item that SHOULD cost a 2k at most instead of paying 12k for the same item which is an hour's worth of dungeon grinding as a dps)

But you realize you ARE hording right? If you can not fit items you ABSOLUTELY NEED into you inventory slots then you are keeping things you don't need. Hoarders are hoarders and just like IRL there is no reasoning with them. You can make your 5-star 1.8 mil craft items with less than a full inventory (Vanity Items are THE big market and there's no point HQing a stateless glamour item) and there is no reason why you shouldn't. The mentality of "I may need it" is what gives SE 4 USD per month per extra retainer. Because no matter how you justify it hoarders are idiots that keep more than they need. If those chimera whatevers (No I've never seen them my highest level Crafter is lvl 20ish and I don't believe my lvl 50 fisher will pull a chimera out of silver tear lake anytime soon. And if he does I'll stop fishing there for good) are so valuable then keep them instead of the 999 HQ animal skins in your inventory. What you say and what you're apparently doing are polar opposites. (And for the record, Allagan Crafting Mats sell really well on balmung. I made almost 40k off of three items from T5 today alone) So stop BSing and start prioritizing.

If keeping commonly used mats that can swing in price + or - up to 200% or more in a day on the MB is hoarding i don't want to be normal Honestly you sound like you don't have a clue about markets or basic economics and then admit to not having high level DoH/DoL and yet want to lecture us on "hoarding" and call us idiots for following basic smart sell/buying practices.....

PS: LOL at making 40k on MB so you must be an expert. 40k is nothing.

[Aeyis]

You still haven't explained WHY you keep so much useless crap.

I do believe I've mentioned the items I collect are not ''useless crap''

But you realize you ARE hording right?

I have no space to hoard. If I had 2 more retainers, only then would I consider collecting items just for the sake of collecting.

You can make your 5-star 1.8 mil craft items with less than a full inventory (Vanity Items are THE big market and there's no point HQing a stateless glamour item) and there is no reason why you shouldn't.

You only craft small time as you mentioned yourself.
The real money is in producing high level items (be they equipment or vanity) whenever the demand is present. For this you need to keep supplies. Whenever an item I've make sells I can replace it right away because I kept supplies of the materials.

What you say and what you're apparently doing are polar opposites.

It is?
It's pretty simple. I keep supplies of the items I will need. This includes one full retainer tab of (gathering and crafting only) materias, to give an example.

(And for the record, Allagan Crafting Mats sell really well on balmung. I made almost 40k off of three items from T5 today alone) So stop BSing and start prioritizing.

The 2 dawnborne Aethersand I gave my friend sell for 100-200k each (depending on the day). Prioritizing indeed. 13k for a single material is not exactly my defination of ''sell really well''
It goes without saying that selling prices differ per server. But I dont think 40k~ is a great price on anywhere outside of Gilgamesh.

[Rath]

I do believe I've mentioned the items I collect are not ''useless crap''

Material-wise what do you actually have filling your retainers? I am curious as I have all my crafts at 60 and have quite a bit of room, even holding all my randomly collected "junk" that I really won't ever use.

[Aeyis]

Material-wise what do you actually have filling your retainers? I am curious as I have all my crafts at 60 and have quite a bit of room, even holding all my randomly collected "junk" that I really won't ever use.

Hmm.

All HW ores, metals, stones, lumbers. Different types of (highlevel) whetstones. All types of HW cloth, and their raw materials. All HW skins and leathers. The raw materials are needed to leave the option of making HQ materials open.

Untradable dyes. Pigments for the regular dyes. Upgrade materials/off set equipment, glamours.
Crafting + gathering materias. Some hard to find housing materials/items. (IE: primal items)
HW Alch items.

In some cases (like skins) HQ materials are kept. A lot of the HW refined items require keeping stock of some other (lower level) materials as well.


How much you need to stock up on depends on your server. On larger servers I imagine a lot of items can easily be bought at any given time.



There is also a matter of accessibility. Simply having ''enough slots to fit items in'' is not enough if you access your storage often. You also need to be able to sort it all so you can quickly find what you need.

Its just a whinging point for people who want freebies. They give you more than enough to play the market by default. The exuse that this allows you to earn more and therefore buy runs is a piss poor straw man.

Uh-huh. The people who reason that retainers earn you an advantage, are actually the people who already make a lot gil in the first place. (in part due to their retainers)
How would we want freebies?


Your argumentation makes no sense.

<Shrugs> I've just been trying to understand why this is an issue.

So the basic reason I don't get the issue is the fact that I'm not a dedicated crafter and there for don't have a reason to play the markets.

As a dedicated high end crafter I can afford to only keep a few materials around. (that is, if I wanted to increase my costs/reduce my income) It is precisely the low level crafters that dont have much gil that really need to stock up on materials.

Because they cannot just buy items off the mb when the need arises.


As such im surprised you use a weak argument like this. If you dont care for having items, whether its for selling them or using them; then ofcourse you dont care about inventory space.

[Kaiser-Ace]

No the basic reason is that you trow away your entire inventory for practically free. With that in mind it makes sense that you never keep items around and thus dont see inventory space as a problem.


What baffles me however, is that you still ignore the part where retainers earn you gil. You dont need to be a ''high end crafter'' as you call them. All you need to do is send them on ventures to obtain items you can directly place on the mb.



PS: I kept way more items when I only had little gil to use on anything. You know as a level 10-40 crafter? I couldnt afford to buy items off the marketboard. As such I cannot understand the reasoning that ''im not high end so I dont need to keep items''.

What are you, so rich you can just buy whatever you want when you need it? If that is true, then indeed; you have no need for retainers.

Ok I'll address this in parts since there are a lot of separate points.

I'm a combat type player. I raid, I run dungeons, and make new combos and rotations that are both unique and effective. My Specialty lies in the Disciples of War disciplines though I am not object to using magic when the need occurs. Most of my actual inventory is in my Armory Chest which has on multiple occasions spilt over into my normal inventory. Any crafting or gathering I do is strictly for leisurely purposes to relax from the stress of the battle field. (Thus why my fisherman is well above all other DoL/DoH classes, just take a seat by a lake, cast a bait, and let the RNG do it's thing)

Now, on to the matter of retainers. My retainers are NPC banks and Arsenals to me. Thing is, gear has upkeep, and leveling classes means I occasionally need new items. (Which is perople like your competitors come in as I typically don't buy any thing over 20-30k from the MB as 100k is difficult for me to get quickly via the spoils of war) So the quick ventures I send them on usually pbing back compleatly worthless items that sell for less on the MB than to NPCs. A lot of useless loot I get in dungeons meets the same fate.

And as for the "Throwing away" my inventory, well I'm on a very large server, Balmung, and there for unlike your server, Crafting is competitive to the point where untill you are a High End Crafter with at least one maxed DoH class, there's no profit to be made. I've been to Zodiark, I've seen your population, and I've seen your markets, High End Crafters are few and far between meaning you have a verry monopolized market where as on balmung it's not uncommon for an item that was work 15k a piece the day before to drop to a few hundred gil and vise versa depending on who'd farming and crafting what that day. The Allagan leather I sold for 35k a week ago now is barely worth 10k due to mass farming of T5 by unsynced parties.

So, I've addressed my points quite validly where as you seemed to shoot more holes in your own argument than a lvl 60 machinist on an opo-opo killing spree.

Now that we've established our differences, what is your real argument for how you have any ground to stand on, because now I'm even more convinced that I should be taking advise from a lvl 1 noob than an "Expert Craftsman" like you.