To all you rich players... How did you do it?

[Anarnee]

I have eight characters on my main server and 5 of them are at the end of the story. Three of of them have max level retainers (and I pay for one extra retainer)

I did have a point where I was spending more than I was earning, and that was when I first leveled my crafters, but this expansion I've barely spent any gil on my crafters, I don't really make a lot of gil from them either. I just level with beast tribes now.

So I mainly make gil from retainers and roulettes.

[ElazulHP]

Look at the market board often and study it for trends. If you see a "gap" in something with high demand fill the need and reap higher rewards than normal. Accessories make a ton of money for limited crafting time, but not so much right now since its right before a big patch. Raid food and Pots always make good steady money. If you see something that turns over quickly and it is really devalued sink a bunch of money into it and sell it in bulk with a major markup. This works really well with Raid Food and Potions since by the time people make more you've likely sold your entire stock and even if not you listed for higher so you'll still make a bunch of money by the time everything sells. What else... glam gear can sell for a lot of money, but often sell infrequently. Make only one at a time as someone may come along and devalue the hell out of it. All I can think of atm.

EDIT: Oh and I also do most gathering for myself(all 70 gatherers). Except for Aethersands as those take up way to much time and they're usually pretty cheap in comparison to what you're going to make back. Also, undercut by 1 gil when possible. Not much is more annoying as someone tanking the price of something causing everyone to lose money. Though this can also be a good tactic if done right. If someone is active in undercutting you, then you can severely devalue it to the point where you can just buy up their entire stock and relist for a higher amount. This does contain some risk though as if the item is not in high demand and selling often someone may come along and list more before yours sell causing another listing war losing you money. Final tip is diversify. Don't focus all on one item or market. Make sure your spread out so if one market is slow you can expand in another.

[JackHatchet]

Hey, a question I know how to answer!

The first major thing that influences money making is passion. A lot of people (like myself) could spend 8 hours straight crafting things. Checking market trends, and socializing in novice network while doing it. To some--it's tedious as heck, but to others it's 'what' they do to enjoy the game. If you don't have a passion for crafting--you'll never compete with someone who actually enjoys it.

The second major factor are retainers. You could almost argue that they're pay to win! You see, for each retainer you have means +20 auction slots per character. Given that managing up to 10 retainers can take a lot of time, but remember--this goes alongside the passion thing. Some people ENJOY that kind of work. It's like playing the Sims or Farmville. There's some enjoyment in tedious micro-management.

A lot of it still resorts back to the passion thing. A lot of people try to 'get rich quick,' but there's no fast way of doing it. Heck, even my methods are more like an assembly-line. I'll invest 50 mil early on, and won't see a return on my investment until several weeks down the road. But playing the market board is all about being smart. Buy low/sell high type things. Sometimes it takes time to take advantage of those trends. Sometimes you can scope out 10,000 moly ingots for 900 gil each. How long will it take to flip them or convert them into yellow scrips? Who knows, but the sooner you get started--the sooner you'll start seeing returns. It's not a 'quick' thing. Getting rich is a well-tuned machine of many-many small decisions that all lead up to massive gil intake over time. And if maintained--can keep you rich for a long time to follow.

I guess I got overzealous, but the bottom line is--you need to be passionate about it. It's like asking how you farm mendacity. There's no easy way. You just need to really want to do the type of content that rewards it.

[JackHatchet]

The best 'make money quick' methods I've ever seen were to take advantage of patch/expansion cycles. When housing wards opened up. I had 8 retainers all selling furniture. I made over 200million gil the first 2 weeks of 4.1 and 4.2 (whatever the two housing patches were). The same tactics can work on other areas too. New crafting/gathering set coming out? You bet your balls that crafting/gathering materia will triple in price! I probably bought 100m~ worth of crafting materia grade 5s at 20-25k each. Then when the last patch came out. Most of them sold for 150k+!!!

I quit to play Warcraft, but I'm still passionate about the FFXIV market (something WoW doesn't have). If I was more invested in FFXIV, I would recommend looking at material prices. Maps have caused some items to plumit. Consider buying cheap and selling high during a patch cycle. Find out what materials are valuable--invest 100-200m into them when they're cheap. Then resell for double at a later date. It helps to make money if you actually have money to invest. I tend to enforce a min gil amount. Say like "never go below 50m," because you never know when someone will flood the market with super cheap materials--and whoever buys it all up--wins a free pay day later.

[Bacent]

I only really desynth items I get from dungeons and sell them, with the occasional HoH run (got the dodo kept for myself). Ltw/Gsm/Wvr are some of the more popular ones to desynth (I only do ltw/gsm) and I'm sitting on about 130m gil right now, in which I haven't bothered selling stuff for a long while now, so I've been occasionally splurging on random things, but I could make it back when I felt it.

[RiddleyKipps]

I actually make the most money from random stuff my retainers bring me. Crafting for me has been a sink hole but I'm a very casual crafter so that might be why. Dungeons and maps also help out.

[TinyRedLeaf]

I would add that players should take some of the prices and profits quoted on this thread in perspective. Prices in many NA servers are hugely inflated, mostly as a result of burgeoning money supply, generated either by relatively larger populations or by rampant gil-selling. Prices of comparable items in JP servers are generally several times lower.

So, any meaningful discussion on profits should focus, ideally, on margins in percentage terms, otherwise it's difficult to know how well one is actually doing in comparison to players in other servers. Personally, what I do is to use a spreadsheet to keep track of costs and selling prices, usually on a weekly basis, and adjust my crafting, gathering and sales strategies accordingly.

To give you an idea: Early in Patch 4.3, soon after the launch of the namazu beast tribe quests, my full cost of crafting one pinch of hawk's eye sand is about 14,000 to 15,000 gil. They used to sell for as much as 30,000 gil each, which meant a profit margin of nearly 100%. Prices have crashed since on my server, and they're no longer as worthwhile to make. For the same amount of time it takes me to craft the sand, I could make much more from gathering aethersand.

[Rowde]

The bulk of my gil was made from desynthesis and gathering.

I also don't spend much gil because I craft all my own gear (for the most part, either my sister or I make gears for our characters depending on who has more free time) and do my own gathering. It's not a get rich quick method, but my gil pretty much only increases over time.

I typically "over-gather" when I do go out to get materials for crafting too. One, so I can have extra mats in case I screw something up (I do manual crafting) and two, so I have extra materials to sell after I'm done making my gear. I rarely go out just to gather materials for the purpose of selling, I simply sell off my leftovers.

I also send my retainers out on quick ventures and they find some surprisingly expensive things from time to time.

I typically do the "grindy" content when it's realeased. For example, Palace of the Dead, Heaven on High, Diadem, Eureka, etc. The drops from these places can sell for quite a bit the first week too, before the markets get saturated. I also did this with Rathalos actually... I cleared EX Rathalos around 80 times... so I ended up with a ton of normal scales leftover. In the ballpark of 280. Too goof off, I bought 10 well-done steak indoor furnishings and dropped them in my friends house... which still left me with 180 normal scales. So I bought 9 of each of the Orchestrion Scrolls and sold those off on the MB. I severely slashed the price because I wanted to move them... but sold them all in 2 days and made about 2mil from it. IMO, even my slashed price was overpriced considering how easy it is to get normal scales... but that's why I wanted to move them quickly before the masses figured that out.

Lastly, I try to keep my desynthesis capped... and since I don't like spending money that means the lazy way is to desynth gear from current tomes and dungeon drops. Which usually drop current crafting materials when taken apart. If I don't have a specific use for the material myself, then that's another thing to sell... but on my server sometimes the mats can be selling between 50k-100k each, so it's free gil for me.

[KageTokage]

Beating up SB A/S ranks for cracked clusters is a good way to make some relatively passive income, assuming you have a good linkshell to hunt with (Or just leech off of like most "hunters" do).

It's also nice because materia prices tend to remain relatively consistent due to them not being easily farmed by bots (Who tend to exert a rather significant influence on gathered/crafted item prices on an average server).

[CrystalRainbow]

My wife has 50m gil and I have about 30m Gil.
We both own a house.
We both have appartments.
There is nothing to spend gil on in this game.


She keeps 50m gil on her because she wants a large house if they ever add more...
Anyways so every now and again she goes out to make gil and bring in 500k a hour isn't hard from gathering. But I see her gathering in ARR zoning to make 500k an hour.