I am not good with raiding and my desire to make statics over and over was never present so i divulged into crafting. To be able to craft i had to mine and garden to keep my gil supply up to lvl all my crafts. after i found a new step which was using my time to craft and now buy mats off the market board to keep the flow of gil in the economy flowing and my crafts profitable because trying to do both crafting and mining is a huge task even before expansion.
I like many went of us who went into the task of multi-melding individual pieces, then artisan came and we had to remeld again. all this time ppl want you to craft for them and pay next to nothing and also asking y do u need all that gil. its funny ppl dont think u can look at history of items and see they spent 500k for items for you to craft yet scoff when u say 100k for the craft. my point here is crafting is not cheap and ppl who gather also request gil for their time and mats just like us.