Some advice please!

[Hereward]

Thanks a lot for all the replys, very much appreciated.

Wasn't sure if i should make a new thread, but to keep things tidier I will just continue this thread.

Just hit 70 CUL tonight, took a bit of a break from crafting as i run a FC and we are starting raiding so been busy with that.

So now I have.....

Cul 70,
FSH 70,
BTN 66,
MIN 61,

I have some of the others hovering around 10-15, now I fully intend to level these up further, I will get them all to 50, then eventually all to 70 but for now I am running low on funds!

I have bought some gear for CUL, 345 pan, wrist 340, a couple of other decent pieces, the rest from the vendor, sitting on 1360 craftmanship and 1118 control.

What would you do at this stage? I really need to make some GIL before pushing on the other skills, also need to get better gear which is far from cheap.

What rotations are there for JUST CUL? I have had a good google around and can't find anything at all, i do have the specialisation unlocked for CUL as well, any and all advice would be much appreciated! thanks

[Vidu]

If you want to make some gil first, I would advice you to focus on your gatheres first, aswell as on a few things that dont require you to do "real" crafting. For true endgame-crafts (like the most current food, potions and gear) you'll need more crossclassskills and still better gear - currently things like Crimson Cider (the most popular raidfood) are still out of your reach.

So here are a few suggestions to get your crafters up (I recommend to focus on Carpenter, Blacksmith, Armorer and Weaver/Alchemist first - Leatherworker is not that important anymore and while Goldsmith has some really useful crossclassskills if you want to craft the new stuff right at patchday, its less used during everyday crafting) and make some money - I am not sure if you are doing some of this things already, but I'll just list everything that comes to my mind:

Leveling Crafters
1) Do your Ixal-Dailies - focus on one crafter first, to get that to 50, then repeat with the next one
2) Once you hit 50, do the Moogle-Dailies til 60
3) Do Namazu-Dailies from 60-70
All Beasttribes give you the mats for the crafts they require - so its free exp! You even get some gil and a special beasttribe-currency for it, that you can invest in items that may or may not sell well (it depends on your server, I guess)
4) Do your daily GC-turn ins! Specially at lowlevel they're really easy and will help you to level! In addition you get GC-seals that you can spend on mats that are used in airship-building or for furniture and can sell really well (stuff like coke, scheelits and petrified logs come to mind)

Making Gil

1) Take your fisher, turn on Collectable-Gathering (or whatever that skill is called...), go just outside of Tamamizu to The Adventure and start catching Snow Crabs to reduce them to Dawnlight-Aethersand - its used in potions and you can sell it well without investing anything but your time!
2) Start doing Namazu-Dailies on your Cul already to earn Koban to buy Stormsap - I'm not sure how the price for that is on your server currently, but its used for the most recent gathering and crafting gear so it might still sell well (or you can save it for yourself and ask a crafter to make you the new gear once the time comes)
3) Check the price of Creation-Mats on your server and buy and sell those that are in demand!
4) Help the girls! Zhloe, Naago and Kurenai all offer scrips if you do your weekly turn-ins for them. I would advice you to focus on Naago and Kurenai first and do them on your level 70 CUL - you can get exp from them aswell, but if you want to make gil, you're better off with the scrips for now. Use the scrips to buy grade VI materia, mats for the new food or anything that sells well on your server. Do the same with the red scrips you'll be getting - just keep an eye on the market!
5) Check what fish for the fishtanks are selling well - I've made quite a pretty coin from selling fish that are easy enough to catch that way... (for example: you could fish on that big bridge in the Azim-step to get both Everdeep-Aethersand aswell as Guppys!)
6) I see your FC has a house - put up a gardenbed and start growing stuff that sells well! You can either do that by getting into crossbreeding (-> http://www.ffxivgardening.com/ - check this website for that!) or just plant shard-seeds. They grow fast and shards are always in demand!
7) You can also utilse your FC-house to build and send out airships and submarines - they can bring back rare materials that you can sell again!

To level up your botanist and miner I would also advice you to do collectables - that will not only earn you a decent amount of exp, but also red gathering scrips that you can use to either buy the special gathering books or, once you have all of those, stuff to sell on the marketboard.
I would also focus on getting bot and min up asap, so you can gather highlevel-timed nodes and sell the items you get from those!


Bottomline:
- get other crafters up by using dailies
- focus on gathering and earning "free" scrips from weekly turn ins to sell stuff
- utilise your FC-house and garden to make some extra money

The most important part is: Ignore the highlevel crafts for the moment and focus on the easy stuff that you can already do! It might also be worth to look at your marketboard and see if, for example, any housing-items are selling well! They're often lowlevel crafts but require annoying or a lot of mats, but are actually easy to make (and you dont need to worry about HQ) - so if you have the patience to go out and gather all the mats for them, you might be able to make some gil from Valentino-Cakes!

If anything is unclear or if you dont know where to start certain things I suggested, just ask!

[Frizze]

I dont think i have a Vidu length answer in me this morning, but theres one good tip they missed. You have BTN at 66 and FSH at 70. That means you can gather the good treasure maps. The easiest spot(to me anyway) would probly be the twincoon nodes northeast of Ala Ghiri in the peaks. Start digging(or fishing) up one gazelle map every day. If any of the other FC members can do the same and dont mind contributing, get them to as well. If you havent done the quest for treasure hunting yet, its in east la nosca(Treasures and Tribulations). Without jumping through many hoops you can store 5(+) of the same map - one open in key items screen, one in inventory, one in saddlebag, one on each retainer. Every couple days when youve got a few of the maps, get a group together from your FC to run them. The initial map fight is easy enough for 2 or 3 people to handle(if not quite soloable), and any map could dump all sorts of rewards on you from a stack of gil to some furnishings to rare(ish) crafting mats. Thats all well and good, but what youre looking for is a portal. When the portal opens you have roughly 10 mins to enter and at this point you can recruit more people to join the team for a quick dungeon clear(if needed). The more the easier, but i would say 4+ is a good baseline. The dungeon can be a little chaotic. Every floor has a giant chest and a set of enemies that come out to protect it. Win the fight, claim your reward, then test your luck - you get to pick which door you try to open to see how much deeper you can go in the dungeon. There are side-bosses that sometimes spawn to make the fights more hectic, there are hidden enemies that appear for a little while then run away - and any of them defeated will drop extra treasure. The deeper you go, the more you get - right up to the boss fight on the bottem(7th) floor. A full clear guarantees you another map that goes to an even deeper dungeon(these ones always have portals). A single clear of the whole thing is worth like a million+ gil - for each party member, and some of the rewards sell for several times that. A full clear takes a lot of luck, but an hour or two of running just maps and the top few floors of each dungeon before getting kicked out can easily net you several hundred thousand each, and with luck some of the rarer stuff to sell(minis, music, furnishings and crafting mats that cant be found anywhere else).

[Vidu]

Treasure maps

Good point! It actually came to my mind 15 minutes later during my little afternoon-walk...

Aswell as:

- Desynth - as CUL you can level that easy enough by taking all the useless fish you catch apart. Most wont yield anything intresting, but there are some fish that swallod glamour-gear (bikinis, obviously), materia, allagan pieces or even a pet - some of that might sell for a bit! (There might be more useful classes to invest your desynth skill into later - but leveling cul up is cheap, thanks to the fish and you can craft books to reset your desynth-skill. They use mats that you buy with the Ixal-currency though but you'll have lots of that anyways, right? )
- Growing flowers in flower pots in your FC-house/FC-chamber/apartment - they're crafted into glamour-pieces (mostly hair-pins) aswell and specially the "rare" colours (black, white, mixed, special colour) might sell well! I made quite a bit of gil from selling white and pink cherryblossoms!
- Roll on every piece of gear you can in a dungeon! Turn them in for seals, buy seal-mats (or retainer-venture coins), sell!
- Send out your retainers! Either gamble during quick ventures, send them out on 18h ones that can bring back pets or let them get specific mats that might sell well (consulte your local marketboard for that!)
- Exploit lazy/uneducated people! A lot of furniture can be bought cheaply from the vendor in the housing area (or even from one that you can put up in your house). However a lot of people dont seem to know that and are paying 5 times the price on the marketboard! I recently redecorated some houses and had some stuff leftover - I had paid 5k gil for a Hingan sideboard, ended up not using it, put it up on the marketboard and someone bought it for... 30k. You might feel a little dirty, but hey...
- EX-primal drops - this wouldnt be my first recommendation, but if you and some people from your FC are more into fighting than crafting (and maybe even still need mounts from certain EX-primals) you can try and farm for their special drops. Those are often crafted into housing-items, (glamour)-weapons, chocobo-bardings or pets. Depending on the primal they're more or less valuable - I dont think you'd get to much for any ARR-one, but drops from Nidhogg, Sephirot, Bismarck, Sophia and Ravana might be worth a bit! Aswell as the drops from Shinryu, Byakko and the newest primal - those drops are depending on luck though, obviously. (And on your ability to actually farm those primals)
Same goes for the music scrolls though - might sell well!

There are, infact, a lot of ways to make some gil! Not the millions (by selling one piece) you can make as a fully geared master-crafter, but actually quite decent ways when you know what to look for, are willing to invest a bit of time and legwork and are okay with some of the things (specially pets and furniture) selling slower than raid-food and potions would.

[Hereward]

Absolutely brilliant replies, thank you so much!

Actually got my Carpentry into the 30s today, and also sold a bunch of sap which made me a few million!

I did used to fish the sand at the azim step but for some reason people have undercut the hell out of it now and it only just breaks even with the price of the bait

Thanks so much for all the advice very much appreciated!

[Shadygrove]

Money fishing really requires CUL desynthssis. I have a fisher alt who makes her living off fishing and desynthssis in way fewer play hours than I, an omnicrafter. But if you do not have that do reducible fish.

Use the namazu quests to level your other gatherers. Do not blow off such easy EXPs by doing them on your L 70 FSH.

Quickest and easiest gil from flowerpots and gardens is simply krakka roots in potting soil, both from the material supplier in the housing market. Mind you I am a master gardener, and love the crossbreeding parts, but this is no thought, just tend twice a day gardening.

And please everything to 15 for the cross class skills.

I have no idea if you can yet HQ Tempura Platters but they sell well. I know you can catch the fish for them.