Hardcore crafters, SE has rewarded you big-time in this patch.

[reefer69]

In the first 24 hours, my i220 Jewerly was selling at a flat 3.2 million each, I was the only seller on the market, so that racked up 200 million easily in 24 hours. Combine that with the astral oil boom, which accounted for a significant portion. The server competition didnt enter the market till about a good 36 hours after patch 3.2. By that time I amassed close to 400m. Since then its slowed down, but I've lowered prices and still manage to clear 15-20mil a day. I expect buisiness to stall soon though.

neeed a suga mama

[Mature]

I have made so much money at the right time that now prices are going down fast as the mats are cheap and easy to get

[Jade-Nephrite]

Being a CRP Specialist gave a HUGE boost to my gil-reserves, the prices sure are going down on Ultros, it's funny how the MB surges at the start of a patch then drops FAST! Soon the ESO-mats will drop below 10K each, what other purpose does Eso-tomes have?

[giantslayer]

gl to you all before it crashes

The big money is on its way out, but there will be a steady market for these for quite some time because mats are readily available and the gear is useful.

In the last patch before Heavensward, I was still selling i90 crafted gear for 400k a pop. By the time the prices get to around half a million Gil, we'll start seeing the frenzy of supply diminish, but there will still be steady demand.

[Lobotomite]

Emphasis on the phrase "hardcore crafters." But the problem with 3.x crafting was never a hardcore crafting problem. If anything, the specialist system and crazy-high crafts/control requirements have made everything more lucrative for them since 3.05 because no one else in their right mind was bothering.

Where's the beef for those of us who don't have our own FC ships to farm oodles of materia IVs so that we have a chance to hit the 3* requirements? I don't have the gil to be paying 400k per Control IV materia, and I don't have the time to be endlessly farming Diadem.

How do we get over the Great Gear Wall of China when we still have to farm all of our own Favor mats or pay gil to gatherer mules to get them for us?

Staying current required about 45 minutes of Ixal dailies in 2.4 if you wanted to take the self-sufficient route. What does it require now? An order of magnitude more?

I'm still not feeling the positive vibes. I guess it's a great system if you already have tons of gil and all you care about's making more. But I don't.

[Caeles]

Emphasis on the phrase "hardcore crafters." But the problem with 3.x crafting was never a hardcore crafting problem. If anything, the specialist system and crazy-high crafts/control requirements have made everything more lucrative for them since 3.05 because no one else in their right mind was bothering.

Where's the beef for those of us who don't have our own FC ships to farm oodles of materia IVs so that we have a chance to hit the 3* requirements?

How do we get over the Great Gear Wall of China when we still have to farm all of our own Favor mats or pay gil to gatherer mules to get them for us?

Maybe that just means end-game crafting isn't for you just as savage raids aren't foe everyone. I started playing this game around 4 months ago and can already craft 2*s on almost everything, 3* on WAV and have gil reserves to buy my FC a large plot when new wards will arrive...

[Lobotomite]

Maybe that just means end-game crafting isn't for you just as savage raids aren't foe everyone. I started playing this game around 4 months ago and can already craft 2*s on almost everything, 3* on WAV and have gil reserves to buy my FC a large plot when new wards will arrive...

Here's the thing. Endgame crafting was totally for me in 2.x. Why isn't it now? Why have so many others given up, as well?

[Pentt]

Went from 50m to 220m in 3 weeks before camphorwood finally went below 1m. My FC mates called me nuts for doing favors and crafting 170, but who's laughing now suckahs.

[Sollux]

Here's the thing. Endgame crafting was totally for me in 2.x. Why isn't it now? Why have so many others given up, as well?

Because 2.x Crafting didn't have any kind of gating aside from some Master books the speed that you could reach Endgame Crafting was almost entirely built around how much gil you could throw at it. 3.x Crafting has a gating system and an actual Endgame now, where if you want to do top-tier Crafting you have to put in the time as well as the gil. Those who made sure to cap Red Scrips each week for the i180 gear, or farmed/bought the mats for the i170 gear are reaping massive rewards this patch.

Softcore/Midcore Crafters are suffering right now primarily for 2 reasons:

1. For the longest time there was absolutely no reason to gear a Crafter past the white gear. Even 2* were easily Craftable with the right melds.

2. The i180 and i170 gear required a significant amount of time and/or gil to obtain with little to no benefit in sight.

For both of these reasons many Crafters chose not to bother with the new Red Scrip system at all, and now that the i180/i170 gear is neccessary those Crafters have fallen behind. This problem is also compounded by the fact that many players are trying to get back into Crafting at the same time which has made the prices on Red Scrip mats (Both for turn-ins and 2*), i170 gear/mats, and Crafting materia rise extremely quickly.

Tl;dr, Non-HC Crafters fell behind due to lack of incentive to Craft pre-3.2 and are being kept behind by a gating system they didn't want to invest in and massive price jumps due to the drastically increased popularity to Craft in 3.2.

[giantslayer]

Because 2.x Crafting didn't have any kind of gating aside from some Master books the speed that you could reach Endgame Crafting was almost entirely built around how much gil you could throw at it.

I miss the skill-based gating from 2.x. Artisan tools required 50 difficult HQ turn-ins (although 50 was a bit much to be honest), Master II book required 3 super-hard turn-ins. Lucis required a bunch of also difficult turn-ins, and you got the materials from leve quests so it wasn't expensive. By contrast, the new master books are a joke to obtain. Red scrips require no skill.

I would really love to see high skill crafting become a part of future gating. I would also like to see something like the Lucis system where materials can be obtained with little Gil.

The thing that bothered me about 3.1 is that crafting gear was gated behind an f-ton of gathering. I would much rather have a crafting grind than a gathering grind.

Now everything is gated behind a ridiculous amount of Gil. Keep in mind that Red Scrips are not just a time gate. When I price it out, it usually comes to close to a million Gil worth of materials to reach cap. They are both a time and money gate, and it is not necessarily that much cheaper to do those than to buy the materials.

Back to my original post, SE didn't nerf the gear progression in the least bit, which rewards those who stuck it out through 3.1 by preventing others from entering the 3-star market until a later patch. While it stinks for those on the outside, those on the inside spent an unfathomable amount of time and Gil to get there with basically no reward or payout, and it is not fair to them to wipe it all out with an immediate nerf. For those who are frustrated, they will eventually nerf it and 220 gear will have a long shelf life.