Dear Square Enix - I want to Craft

[andreopalomino]

I think this thread is just perfect, cause doesn't matter how much gil or time you will invest into crafting, you're locked by the red scrips, and that's just frustating for those that like crafting and want to improve; the problem is not craft being hard, or expensive, but the fact it's inaccessible, cause we can't craft. Just end this weekly cap and things would work way better, I would get 450 scrips daily.

[Katlyna]

You're telling me an omnicrafter cannot find a recipe that's cost efficient to spam out for red scrips?

Some are more efficient than others but they still all cost materials which are simply destroyed (in return for scripts). In my case last week the best I could find was an item which cost ~33k to make requiring 18 hand ins totaling roughly 600k for my weekly. Now I have that money spend. But most intermediate crafters don't have that kind of money to spend unless the end goal results in a sale which allows them to recuperate their losses.

The problem with the red scrip system is even with your red scrips in hand as a crafter, to get materials to craft with you need 10 ooids and 10 botanist folklore tokens (which are super rare and expensive) just for a single material. As noted on my server crafting a single 2 star item costs around 6-10 million minimum (assuming folklore items are 100k and available) Very few folklore items have more than 10 available. At 200k per folklore item pricing an item can easily cost over 20 million to complete a 2 star craft. After buying the parts you still have to HQ the darn thing (which is NOT easy). After you're left with an item which has a value of 10-20 million.

How many players can afford to pay 10-20 million for a good? Not enough for the two star economy to function. And as highlighted in my rants. No money is going out to adventures for materials... so they're going to have even less money to spend over time. Likewise other crafters in that money bracket aren't really interested in buying such an item, they would rather make it themselves. So we're left with not just a broken red scrip system but a broken red scrip economy. They really need to do something, its a bloody mess.

[Rath]

Some are more efficient than others but they still all cost materials which are simply destroyed (in return for scripts). In my case last week the best I could find was an item which cost ~33k to make requiring 18 hand ins totaling roughly 600k for my weekly. Now I have that money spend. But most intermediate crafters don't have that kind of money to spend unless the end goal results in a sale which allows them to recuperate their losses.

I am curious as to this. This amount of gil can easily be made almost daily by any lvl 60 craft.
GSM - buy aurum regis sand and gold ore - quicksynth or maco synth nuggets = profit
BSM/ARM - buy adamantite, titanium ore and make nuggets = profit
Weaver - make lmost any HW thread or cloth and sell = profit
cul - make HQ crafting, gathering, raid food = profit
leather - make amph, dragon, dhalmel, wyvern leather and sell = profit
crp - make birch lumber = profit
alch = make grade 1 dissolvents = profit

Each of the above includes crystal costs. At least on my server right now all of those are from 20-400% profits. All the lumbers, leathers, nuggets, cloth can also be sold in stacks or partials very quickly. Foods such as CP foods sell fast or slow depepning on how high-end the food is. HQ seafood stew, not so fast but 400% profits at the least, HQ bou sells in stacks of up to 99 quite fast. None of these items require any real skill to make once you hit 60, except seafood stew. Now an "intermediate" crafter should have no issue doing any of the above. Choosing not to do so, is not a lack of opportunity.

Also as a side note, you can SB on pretty much all of these types of crafts for T3-4 craft material quite easily. I quicksynth a lot of what I just listed when I make dinner or w/e just to SB.

[Katlyna]

You are right Rath there is money to be made still in sub components, lord knows I'm selling quite a few myself. But on our server the profit margins are much lower. There are very few things of notable value which sell for 200% profits (let alone higher). Our server has more crafters more likely, or at least more competition.

I agree crafters should be able to afford X for red scrips each week. Personally I feel they should be half their current cost.

[Rath]

You are right Rath there is money to be made still in sub components, lord knows I'm selling quite a few myself. But on our server the profit margins are much lower. There are very few things of notable value which sell for 200% profits (let alone higher). Our server has more crafters more likely, or at least more competition.

I agree crafters should be able to afford X for red scrips each week. Personally I feel they should be half their current cost.

Quite a bit of crafters and competition here, but more crafters buying up the mats. A lot of what is made is from desynthesis as well, so it is hard for those people to reduce their costs. As to the cost of the items you need, SE cannot control that without increasing the supply. That sort of hurts the gatherers/farmers that are currently supplying those materials. It is one thing when SE does it to combat position hacking bots as they did with fleece and such, but to do that to their players that do this to earn gil would be a bad thing.

[Yumi_umi]

So out all of these ppl complaining i ACTUALLY took the time to craft the bsm ( all HQ)
( these r all my materials, no shared effort )
- mainhand
- offhand
- 1 astral ring
- body
- head

Its a nightmare i tell u.
Sure having OP stats is awesome ( lol i don't need food besides cp food anymore )
I gather for 10+ hrs straight ( with a few short breaks ) just so i could craft 2 pieces of gear. I have enough to make my 2nd ring tmrrw as i am burnt out.

It takes A LOT of gathering just so u can play " diffuse the time bomb " for 10 mins.
Each time i hq'd a piece i feel like i cleared t9 for the 1st time.
Hands sweaty, nervous, breathing shallow lol cuz we all know what happens if u NQ / blow up a 2 star craft.

I refuse to gear up another crafter with this type of grind.
Im barely surviving gearing up my bsm.

[Jade-Nephrite]

I am curious as to this. This amount of gil can easily be made almost daily by any lvl 60 craft.
GSM - buy aurum regis sand and gold ore - quicksynth or maco synth nuggets = profit
BSM/ARM - buy adamantite, titanium ore and make nuggets = profit
Weaver - make lmost any HW thread or cloth and sell = profit
cul - make HQ crafting, gathering, raid food = profit
leather - make amph, dragon, dhalmel, wyvern leather and sell = profit
crp - make birch lumber = profit
alch = make grade 1 dissolvents = profit

I don't think Katlyna's post was about how to make gil efficiently, it's what Red Script trade-in is the cheapest to make and every crafter on the server will probably do the same so the base mats increase in price as well. Here is an example:

I chose Noble Gold to craft for the week, I had to make 13 to cap my Red Scripts, total cost with the current MB price of base mats:

26x Water Cluster - 26000
26x Lightning Cluster - 7800
26x Aurum Regis Nugget - 113,100
26x Hard Silver Ingot - 163,800
13x Chrysolite - 25,350
13x Mormorion - 54,275
13x Enchanted Aurum Regis Ink - 74,100

Total = 464,425 now I didn't spend this gil, I collect most of the materials myself. You might think... why is the Hard Silver Ingot > Aurum Regis Nugget? That's because the Hard Silver Ore is a "Hidden" item and not collectable by Retainers.

So how many quick-synth Aurum Regis Nuggets would I need to sell on Ultros to get 464,425?

Base Mat costs = 4,350
Sells for 7,500
Profit = 3,150

You'd have to sell 148 Aurum Regis Nuggets... that takes days with all the undercutting on Ultros. I would say it's almost now a requirement to be an Effective Gatherer than a Crafter if you want to Craft in 3.0

[Alahra]

On Diabolos, Grade 1 Dissolvents have a rather low profit margin, especially when you factor in how many you need to make to really turn a respectable profit. End-products are always more efficient to make for profit, since you often have a much higher profit margin on them and you don't have to constantly craft to keep the money coming in. I've made almost no money on 50+ synthesis as an ALC. I'm funding my weekly scrips on level 50 starred items so I don't have to spend hours crafting every day.

I'm one of those crafters that has never really gathered either, as I enjoy playing other content more, and crafting during bits of downtime. With the current system, I can't really do that efficiently, and what crafting is available to me doesn't allow me to make significant and efficient profit, especially when you consider the amount of time that would need to be spent gathering.

Yes, you can make money selling component parts for other crafters. But it's horribly inefficient to do so, especially compared to the structure at 50, where low-end/mid-range crafters made components, spending more of their time but not needing as much investment in terms of capital and grinding, and high-end crafters could spend less overall time crafting in favor of selling end-products with higher profit margins.

[Katlyna]

I would say it's almost now a requirement to be an Effective Gatherer than a Crafter if you want to Craft in 3.0

I completely agree on this Jade. In 2.x there were quite a number of dedicated crafters on the Ultros server. This was because we had a large number of dedicated gathers and we all made it work. The problem is when the economy no longer functions like this the system breaks down hard. And right now that is where we are at. Most of our dedicated are having to flip to doing their own. This is causing the red script market to stagnate. Likewise all 1 star and lower goods have prices that have plummeted, profit margins are shrinking, and undercutting is a nightmare. There just isn't enough healthy items.

Se caused this problem themselves through the red scrip mess and the mainquest HQ gear rewards (though this is starting to fade from the economy, but the damage is already done).

[Jade-Nephrite]

I completely agree on this Jade. In 2.x there were quite a number of dedicated crafters on the Ultros server. This was because we had a large number of dedicated gathers and we all made it work. The problem is when the economy no longer functions like this the system breaks down hard. And right now that is where we are at. Most of our dedicated are having to flip to doing their own. This is causing the red script market to stagnate. Likewise all 1 star and lower goods have prices that have plummeted, profit margins are shrinking, and undercutting is a nightmare. There just isn't enough healthy items.

Se caused this problem themselves through the red scrip mess and the mainquest HQ gear rewards (though this is starting to fade from the economy, but the damage is already done).

Almost every new material market is being heavily undercut because players are trying to make gil for their Red Script Tokens. It also doesn't help that their materials are Treasure Map rewards. Currently there are not enough Gatherers, so anything "hidden" sells for 4x as much, and I think quite frankly players DO NOT want to gather those items in addition to the 11 hours for Favor mat farming. I also believe that rare Favor Mats like "Roundstones" should be a 1x trade in. Since you can reduce the quality they could have done a system like this:

10x NQ Blue Ooid + 10x Bladeleaf + 1 Token = 5 Odorless Animal Fat
5x HQ Blue Ooid + 5x HQ Bladeleaf + 1 Token = 5 Odorless Animal Fat
3x NQ Blue Roundstone + 3x NQ Swordleaf + 1 Token = 5 HQ Odorless Animal Fat
1x HQ Blue Roundstone + 1x HQ Swordleaf + 1 Token = 5 HQ Odorless Animal Fat

Right now there is no purpose to HQ Favor mats.