Problem: Items are Worthless

[Peregrine]

This is a lushang quest in disguise. No thanks.

Tighten up the quality to HQ rate conversions. The economy will recoil in horror after its time in excess and deflated prices, but it'll be better for it. Let the crafters pay quality to get quality to make quality instead of lingering on in this culture of trying to make greatness from a mountain of crap.

Ten thousand value meals mashed together don't make a gourmet meal.

[Solipse]

OP: Interesting idea, but not sure how practical it is. The biggest problem for crafters is a severe lack of consumers.

The same way people go for +2/+3 now and undercut the NQ's people would be going for the 'Ancient' weapons and severely undercut anything they got that wasn't.

'Ancient' weapons just become the +3... but your idea to use 8 NQ's to even attempt would help some of the flooding~

The point of this isn't to establish a "new +3", though. You're right in that this is what the endgame would resort to, but you're somewhat missing the dynamics of how this would work in action.

This would completely eliminate NQ and +1 items from being sold too cheaply. Any time they fell below a threshhold, crafters would scoop them up for an easy chance at an HQ item combine. This virtually guarantees a near eternal market for any NQ and +1 items. SOMEONE will buy your item if it's cheap enough to try and make a quick HQ without having to farm individual mats.

The entire thing revolves around the need to remove extraneous noise from the economy. This noise cumulatively drops the bottom out of every single commodity (material/weapon/armor).

That's the basic concept that needs to be addressed. HQ rates can be tweaked to heck and back, but if we're still seeing an excessive influx of items into the economy, the economy will always be flawed and broken. WoW gets around this by allowing items to be disenchanted. FFXIV has no such mechanism.

I wouldn't think so. Gathering classes start handing out end game mats right around 30-35. Solipse probably has Botany, Mining and Fishing to a decent level. Even if he/she doesn't you can find most of what you need for cheap as mats at the wards so you can easily work the wards by buy/craft/sell method. The rest is just looking up difficult synths (4-7 levels higher) with low material needs and crafting for skill ups. Get some decent crafting gear and 4-5 hours a day crafting on your own and you will get there without worry. Time consumption and availability are the main concerns. If you have the time you can easily put a big dent in any craft. All of my craft and gathering classes are 25+ with two at 33+ and I only sit and craft on my own 1-2 days a week.

I actually don't have any gathering professions over 20. I made a ton of gear while the market was still healthy and built up a huge nest egg and bought up HQ and NQ materials.

Really, you don't even need to do that, anymore. There's literally no reason now to do gathering. Materials are so cheap (when I was leveling carpenter, yew logs were 10k a pop - they're under 3k most of the time, now, sometimes under 2k). Once you get your first crafting job to 50, you can literally just make one +3 item every 2 weeks and ride the money from that sale out to buy enough +2/+3 materials to guarantee another +3 item and use the left over to buy more NQ mats to level other jobs. It's very easy to get materials.