Quote Originally Posted by neizero View Post
Are you offering a reward? You may even want to quote how much you're offering, people want to know if it's worth their time helping you. I have often helped out "random shouts" for crafting, only to find out they not only not give any tip, but they expect me to use my own crystals.

And as for repairs, DON'T offer a dark matter (waste of time for the crafter). Offer gil that's a bit more than the cost of the matter and you will get repaired fast.
If you had read through the thread you'd see I answered that, I always do offer tips/rewards for doing the task I need done. I've made efforts to gather up the materials myself, review the recipe including shards/crystals needed. Generally they don't want the shards, so I try to offer something else to cover it like gil. For example... To make the cobalt arrows I needed I offered the following:

All materials
All shards
10,000G

All the worker had to do was accept the items from me, craft it all and they'd earn themselves an easy 10K. There was no need to use their own materials, their own shards or anything. I did find a crafter through a friend who did it all for free using just my materials and shards, and the end result too is he's offered to craft anything if I need it now. Like I said I know a few crafters, and normally this is because I always try to tip/offer reward. Even if they don't request anything I try to be generous and give a large sum of shards (Up to 200-300 shards sometimes, or 50 crystals of whatever would most benefit that class, no useless crap like water shards/crystals but earth, wind, lightning.) as reward.

Now, repairs aren't really an issue, I put up an item, base my gil reward on what the dark matter typically goes for (1K for Grade 1, 1.5K for Grade 2, all the way up to about 3-3.5K for Grade 5.) and it gets repaired by morning, no sweat. The overall problem is the lack of willingness to take time aside to help people. I know I may seem impatient perhaps, but as I've stated before there's a great deal less crafters around than there used to be and it's starting to hurt the community. What if a new player, fresh out of the game, starts leveling and eventually gets to a point where they need new gear not found on the wards? Naturally if they've done research they can find it's possible to gather up the materials and have it made for you. Now as long as they're polite, respectful, and are willing to tip/pay a reasonable fee then it shouldn't be an issue.

If someone has to take a bit of their time to do something for you by all means they should see some form of compensation for it, it's common courtesy. However it's all for nothing if they're completely ignored or can't find a crafter because there aren't any around. Looking back I realize maybe more of this was just a personal rant but it doesn't make my point any less valid. Right now the community has some serious issues with helping one another these days and going into the future months it could get worse I fear.