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

[Hanmerreborn]

The entire system seems to be catered to more casual crafters who cap their scrips each week and then exchange for the i180 red scrip gear. This allows them to meet the 3* requirements without all of those super expensive melds while anyone who wants to catch up using i170 gear or quickly gear all eight classes has to pay a very expensive price. Making tens of millions of gil from crafting has never been easier as long as you keep up with your scrips. However, if you don't keep up, it'll cost tens of millions of gil per class you want to catch up on.

Take a look at the requirements for the recipes and the difficulty of the crafts in general. The master recipe books are basically freebies requiring 8-10 leveling crafts (collectibles) for you to turn in. 3* crafts also use readily available materials and are a complete breeze in terms of challenge. Capped CP, for example, helps when it comes to crafting recipes from all NQ materials, but anyone who isn't as well geared simply can use more HQ materials. I've done a few tests and at 2000 starting quality, a byregot's blessing buffed with GS and Innovation gives me around 85% at a mere 9 stacks of IQ.

Once you're CP capped, it's a waste of time to HQ any of the 3* mats or even the non-star mats generally. With my stats, 11 stacks of IQ gives me around 86% (byregot's buffed with GS only), so I need at least an additional touch on top of that to craft from 0-100%. I've completed over 100 final crafts mostly from all NQ materials and have noticed that I get 100% the majority of the time and that I'll get 11 stacks of IQ 6/7 times for 86%+. For the 1/7 times when my IQ stacks fall below 11, it's usually 10 stacks of IQ, which is enough for 65%+. In those cases, I usually just reclaim for a 90% chance of getting my materials back.

There's absolutely no need to HQ any of the intermediate materials unless you have extra time and want to HQ a few non-star mats to guarantee 100% at 11 stacks of IQ (this, however, only applies if you're not using innovation or ingenuity 2).

Except you can't hit 3* with just scrips, that has been shown already.

Furthermore, the "you can make millions" is a circular argument. All prices are due to supply/cost & demand. Right now, the material supply is a joke (small amounts of esoterics and relatively easy to gather nodes). Demand is high, but the overall cost is still HUGE due to the giant massive gate that not only 2* (through scrips and favor gathering) was, but also the giant materia gil sink and time sinks are why people are putting them up for millions in the first place.

If I could make 3 star it would cost me barely anything to make the items. But my 4 airships sent every day to sector 17 have yet to return control materia since 3.2 hit, and rank 4 is running for nearly a million a piece, so I'm effectively locked out.

Its interesting about the control materia costs. If I was able to 3* craft on day one like some people, I would buy all the materia and set it at an absurd amount like that. It locks the opposition out of the crafting game completely.