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

[solracht]

Just play the game a long time. Do everything the game has to offer. You end up rich with nothing to spend gil on anyway.

Yeah this is my experience as well.

My specifics:
-Daily ventures, focus on a different item every couple weeks until it crashes
-Sell mats off new content (maps, POTD, HOH, EX trials, etc)
-Sell excess gathering mats
-Sell excess potions/food
-Weekly yellow scrips on two characters

As a general rule, never keep/use new items, no matter how much you want them. The value of almost everything in this game goes down the longer it's been the game so you're better off selling that cute minion, cool mount or orchestrion roll when they're new and simply buying them back later. Timing is really important: your earning potential at the beginning of every patch release is crazy and it quickly goes down over time.

[Rhus]

Got my first million in in game (from the 30 day reward thing but my first million of my own work was) from buying steel sallets, toadskin armguards, linen tights, linen bliauds, mythril sallets etc all from NPC for 1-3k Gil and selling on mb for 30-40k occasionally for some reason linen gaskins of gahering would sell for 100k (not sure why but people were paying it) over time I made my money.

Not sure it would work now though as at the time louisoix was new and had lots of new players and so all that low item stuff was in demand. Now some of those gems are selling for only a few hundred gil so not as profitable.

Retainer quick ventures can occasionally bring you back a gem between the mountain of fish they collect too.

[ShadowHunterrX]

I have around the 50 mil gil and I just play normal. But I get money with easy stuff and not buying overpriced stuff day 1.

My list :
- Daily retainer moneybags
- 5-10k from squadron sometimes
- Daily hunts
- Daily roulettes
- Daily Treasure map sell or use depends on price
- Selling items bought with Company seals
- Selling mats I will never use
- Keeping mats/materia/minions for future sale/craft/meld

[Super_Bee_Brian]

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.

I love your answer. Thanks for posting here!

[Kazgrel]

In no particular order:

- Retainer ventures; the general purpose dues and some of the furniture they bring back sell for nice amounts. Granted, the retainers take time to level up, but worth it even if you don’t craft and simply have a couple of DoW/M retainers.

- Buy mats low, sell finished product high; been able to do this as of late with the glamour gear from Pagos (the Boulvedaire gear or whatever its called)

- Roulettes, especially if you’re a tank or healer. This leads to the next item:

- Tomestone mats; I’m still selling stacks of those creation mats for six digits here. Poetics can buy gardening topsoil, which isn’t a high seller, it’s better than sitting on capped poetics.

- Patches; if you can stave off the desire to have all the things for yourself ASAP, you can sell like crazy for mad amounts of gil.

[Aana]

Retainers mostly. They more than cover weekly raid meds/food which is the only thing to spend money on a day to day basis anyway.

Start of a patch I blow millions on the new tank accessories+pentamelds, though sometimes i get them at cost from FC people. Sometimes not. Then for the remainder of that ilvl patch/raid cycle i just send out two combat, two botanists, two miner retainers on the long venture once a day or every few days. Sell whatever they bring back. By the end of the raid cycle I recouped anything i lost on pentamelds and then some. Repeat.

In 2.x I actively crafted consumables (food and pots) to sell and gathered ores/clusters/etc to fund my pentameld tank gear. But materia was horrendously expensive at the time so I worked harder then. Now, retainers easily cover it and hunt clusters have made pentamelds virtually free as I have a few hundred clusters sitting around. Retainers alone now leave me sitting on my pile of millions.

[Lubu_Mykono]

Understanding supply, demand, cost and competition. I'll never be mad rich but I made a tidy amount of gil working on the less common stuff that sells reasonably.
Also signing in the new housing came in, I made more that day from mats than I did in a month.

[Andu]

I managed to farm up some 60M for Shirogane housing without even trying. The only real farming I did was a few hours of fishing for Aethersand (went for 100k each at the time), and a couple of Morphos, one of which I used for myself. I also had my retainers out on quick ventures for black/white dyes and other stuff that may or may not be valuable.

Old, dead content can also be lucrative, when it's the only source of an item. I remember things like music scrolls from Aquapolis going for 10M each simply because no-one was running it anymore.

Tl;dr: research which activities have the best gil per hour ratio, and abuse flavour of the month items!

[Truefaith87]

Plain and simple, I just don't find things worth spending my money on 99% of the time. Nothing is really worth it. It just builds up over time.

[Moogly]

My most preferred trick : some housing items that are ridiculously cheap to craft but sell for hundreds of thousand.
One example among many : the Mounted Box Shelf