Maximizing your gear! Is it worth it? ilvl 70 sets > DL!

[Bossmoney]

I mean the rings/chocker alone is 1mil a pop, with no materia.

And those are horribly overpriced and no one with a brain ever buys those. I've leveled up a few crafting classes to 50, wanna know how much it costs me to make those pieces? Almost nothing in terms of gil. Literally. What it cost me is TIME. Time to have leveled up the crafting classes and time to get Philosophy stones from speed runs to make the pieces. But as far as in game gil costs? Usually the items aside from the Philo items needed are cheap throwaway items, maybe a couple thousand gil at most. And even if you don't have any crafting classes leveled, there's an abundance of crafters in towns that are willing to make it for you for a small tipping price which you can haggle if you need to save money. So it's totally possible to have 300k in the bank and start melding your crafted items.

[Adamar]

And those are horribly overpriced and no one with a brain ever buys those. I've leveled up a few crafting classes to 50, wanna know how much it costs me to make those pieces? Almost nothing in terms of gil. Literally. What it cost me is TIME. Time to have leveled up the crafting classes and time to get Philosophy stones from speed runs to make the pieces. But as far as in game gil costs? Usually the items aside from the Philo items needed are cheap throwaway items, maybe a couple thousand gil at most. And even if you don't have any crafting classes leveled, there's an abundance of crafters in towns that are willing to make it for you for a small tipping price which you can haggle if you need to save money. So it's totally possible to have 300k in the bank and start melding your crafted items.

Time is money, though. On my server 18 tome items are about 540k, although it's obviously it's going to vary from server to server.

That said, the profit margin on 2 star crafts is TINY compared to pretty much every other item in the game. Disregarding everything else selling an 18 tome item for 1 mil is less than 200% of the material cost, most everything else goes for 500-1000% if you HQ it.

The time required to level multiple crafts to 50, money required to meld the gear up, food, and time to HQ the side mats (if you're not confident to 100% HQ from NQ for two stars, which is reasonable) all add up. Unless you're making two stars regularly, the cost to fully meld up crafting gear to hit the tiers without food is not a negligible expensive in the slightest - we're talking hundreds of thousands of gil.

[Bossmoney]

Time is money, though. On my server 18 tome items are about 540k, although it's obviously it's going to vary from server to server.

No, time is time. Time is fake game money if you're too impatient to get the philosophy yourself and are buying items off the auction house. In my experience, 18 tome items is 0 gil as I've never spent a single gil to buy philo items.

The time required to level multiple crafts to 50, money required to meld the gear up, food, and time to HQ the side mats (if you're not confident to 100% HQ from NQ for two stars, which is reasonable) all add up.

Yeah, sure does cost a bit of money and will take a bit of time. That's why it would be dumb to do it for the sole reason of making 2 star items for yourself and I wouldn't advise it. You don't start up a factory to create a pair of jeans for yourself. But you do open up a factor to create a bunch of items en masses to sell to make gil. So if he's leveled up a crafting class anyway, then it'd be nearly free in terms of gil to make those items. And if he hasn't, then he can contact a crafter shouting in the cities to do the job for him, I don't know what going rate for tip is for 2 star items on your server but it shouldn't be more than 50k tops if you're supplying all the materials.

My point was to just illustrate how little money it actually takes to make these two star items and how a million for a piece is a ludicrous price that anyone who knows anything about crafting would never pay. Also btw to your other comments, I can reliably 100% HQ 2 star items and not use any food (which btw even if you needed is ridiculously cheap since Cawl Cennin NQs are perfectly fine and they sell for almost nothing) and can start with all base mats. Even when the recipe asks for another item that I can craft as an additional item, I usually don't even bother HQing those even though they're easy to do so because I'm lazy and I don't need to bother.