Demimateria? Desynthesis?? ARGHH!

[Vidu]

Been playing since January, have a bit over 21M. But, I'm cheap. I still port home to Limsa and take the airship if I need to get to another city, and use teleport tickets for anything over 250 gil.

I'm currently stuck on the Sample Chronometer GSM quest at level 68 because my crafting level is too low. I won't buy new gear though. I'll just wait til I can use the 70 set I already have, then finish the quest

Sometimes you have to spend money to make money.
Reading all your questions and complains about crafting over the past months almost makes me want to tell you to drop crafting alltogether because you obviously dont understand this very basic principle that is infact important when it comes to crafting.

Its not that I dont understand your position, I'm trying to do as much as possible myself instead of just buying everything from the marketboard, but I will do so on occassion if I consider spending gil being the actual cheaper option in the long run.

Looking at your example here:
The demimateria you need requires that you desynth glamour or crafter gear - DoW/DoM wont yield fieldcraft materia. In order to get those you'll either have to
(1) buy them from a vendor, potentially for more than 8k
or
(2) craft them, using materials and your time, that if added up at marketvalue and factoring in the RNG might end up costing you more than 8k aswell.

Not only is it probably more expensive to get this demimateria from deynth, even if they change it up with 5.1 so that you wont need to level it anymore - RNG is still gonna be involved, so you might end up having to purchase (direct waste of gil) or craft (indirect waste of gil by wasting materials and time) multiple items instead of just getting the demimateria you need.
In addition to that its also hindering your progress right now, correct? Potentially losing you money indirectly again because you're being stuck at this part.

Being cheap is okay - but you should try to be smart about it, too. Blindly refusing to buy things might cost you more in the end...

To give you an example here:
I'm making my money by crafting endgame-items - gear, food, potions, that stuff. My time equals money here, so I'll look at the marketboard to figure out wether its worth my time - that I could spend crafting - to go out and gather the materials myself. If I have an hour at my hand to spend with "making money" I'll consider how to spend that time best. If the materials are fairly cheap on the market, I'll make more money in that hour if I invest some of my gil instead of my time and just craft the full hour. If materials are extremly expensive, I'll go and grab them myself.

Serious advcie here: Stop being cheap by default. That will only cost you.

[SamSmoot]

Not only is it probably more expensive to get this demimateria from deynth, even if they change it up with 5.1 so that you wont need to level it anymore - RNG is still gonna be involved, so you might end up having to purchase (direct waste of gil) or craft (indirect waste of gil by wasting materials and time) multiple items instead of just getting the demimateria you need.

Agreed. Given the slow desynth leveling rate, I'm not going to pursue it. I'll still desynth my obsolete dear, but I won't be buying any stuff just to destroy it. I'll just avoid making things that require demimateria if possible, and buy it only when it's absolutely necessary to complete a quest. (Hoping there are profitable recipes at higher levels that don't need it. )

Also, I'm leery about buying materials to craft items to sell. My past experience in WoW has been that the raw materials almost always sold for more than the things made from them. There, I'd gather the mats, sell them, buy the crafted stuff, and come out ahead. I haven't taken the time to analyze the potential profits here yet

So far, the only crafted items I've sold were made from excess materials gathered to make quest items. If I got lucky on the HQ synth, I used the remaining materials to make more for the XP, and sold them.

[Jojoya]

Agreed. Given the slow desynth leveling rate, I'm not going to pursue it. I'll still desynth my obsolete dear, but I won't be buying any stuff just to destroy it. I'll just avoid making things that require demimateria if possible, and buy it only when it's absolutely necessary to complete a quest. (Hoping there are profitable recipes at higher levels that don't need it. )

Also, I'm leery about buying materials to craft items to sell. My past experience in WoW has been that the raw materials almost always sold for more than the things made from them. There, I'd gather the mats, sell them, buy the crafted stuff, and come out ahead. I haven't taken the time to analyze the potential profits here yet

So far, the only crafted items I've sold were made from excess materials gathered to make quest items. If I got lucky on the HQ synth, I used the remaining materials to make more for the XP, and sold them.

It's not nearly as bad here as it was (probably still is) in WoW. Crafted items here are far more useful (gearing alt jobs, housing items, etc.). You still want to check the market before crafting for sale. Make sure to check sale history to see how frequently the item is being purchased and the most recent prices. Sometimes I come across items being listed for half a million gil but the recent sale history shows the purchased items were sold for under 150k.

Also don't forget to make use of vendors to buy lower level materials as needed. You'll usually save a lot of gil over MB prices not to mention inventory space since you can buy what you need when you need it. Just look for the Shop Sell price on the item tooltip. If it says a price followed by Restricted, the item is likely sold by a beast tribe vendor that requires a reputation level (generally the second or third rep rank so not too bad to get).

[Vidu]

Agreed. Given the slow desynth leveling rate, I'm not going to pursue it. I'll still desynth my obsolete dear, but I won't be buying any stuff just to destroy it. I'll just avoid making things that require demimateria if possible, and buy it only when it's absolutely necessary to complete a quest. (Hoping there are profitable recipes at higher levels that don't need it. )

Also, I'm leery about buying materials to craft items to sell. My past experience in WoW has been that the raw materials almost always sold for more than the things made from them. There, I'd gather the mats, sell them, buy the crafted stuff, and come out ahead. I haven't taken the time to analyze the potential profits here yet

So far, the only crafted items I've sold were made from excess materials gathered to make quest items. If I got lucky on the HQ synth, I used the remaining materials to make more for the XP, and sold them.

Demimaterias are only used in furniture and glamour-items - and even there only in recipes from ARR and HW, I believe. They noticed that it wasnt such a great idea after all...

In regards to raw materials vs. finished products it can really depends - for certain, easy to gather materials that are used in a lot of recipes thats certainly true. For endgame-items... maybe not so much. You also need to keep in mind your target-market - selling materials (specially the ones used for endgame-crafts) is only targeting endgame-crafters who'll make sure that by buying mats (instead of gathering them themself) they'll still make a profit. Selling the finished goods - food, potions, gear - opens the market to a lot of people who have no choice but to buy from the marketboard.

[aesteval]

My past experience in WoW has been that the raw materials almost always sold for more than the things made from them.

While that does happen over here at times and it's good to be aware of, it's not as consistent of an occurrence over here. WoW crafting requires massive quantities of mats to make many items, which helps keep the prices of the source mats high. Since the entire crafting system amounts to what FFXIV has in quick synthesis, the entire focus of the WoW crafting system is on acquiring mats in the first place. FFXIV uses fewer mats to craft and the focus of crafting is actually on the crafting process / minigame.

[Duskane]

if you have loads of Eureka lock boxes there's plenty of demimateria there

[Hasrat]

if you have loads of Eureka lock boxes there's plenty of demimateria there

Clear demimateria is only for selling. Crafting requires fieldcraft or battlecraft demimateria.