most profitable crafting job

[Wyntermistress]

what is the best crafting job to make a lot of gil i cant seem to figure it out if someone can help and provide intel on how to do that it would be greatly appreciated ty in advance

[Bearded]

My understanding is to bring in the large numbers you need to be crafting or gathering the "must have" new items. This I think means you have to be content with modest profits until such time as you have levelled DoH and DoL jobs so that you can produce such items.

I also suspect those who have done that and are raking in mountains of gil will not be all that willing to divulge exactly what it is you need to do to steal a bit of their market and profit.

[HyoMinPark]

Depending on server, crafted gear tends to stagnate eventually, but consumables can be profitable if your server has a healthy community of players that target Raids (where such consumables are needed).

[Frizze]

So there isnt a "best" crafting job when it comes to making money. This is true for 2 main reasons. The first is that every class has some really nice things they can make that other people will want. The second is that every major patch changes what the "top end" stuff IS and therefore who makes it all. In the past certain classes have been effectively "useless" for a patch or two only to suddenly be the most important the day of the next patch(lookin at you ALC circa luminous fiber). You can in broad strokes know some of what to expect in future content(blacksmiths make most weapons and tools, armorsmiths make most heavy armor, etc), but every individual patch will have its idiosyncrasies that dont fit the pattern(carpenters make hats? apparently sometimes they do).

So the people who end up making the most money are the ones that get to market first when the demand is the highest and competition is the lowest. The morning of the latest gear patch(4.4) there were crafters on every server selling the new higher level gear within an hour of the servers coming up. Some of these individual items were selling for 5+ million gil - items everyone knew you would be able to buy a week later for half that, and a month later for 1/10th that(or less). But at that exact moment the demand was intense(from many people wanting an advantage when tackling the new harder raids and such), and the competition was non-existent. Today(5ish months later) these same items sell in the 100-200k price range on most servers, and there are dozens of crafters capable of making them(most of the items will only have a handful for sale at any given time because demand is now much lower - most of the people who need them have bought them already).

So can you be a first-to-market crafter? Only you know that. The next market to open up will be 5.0 items at the end of june. And trust me, there will be people who finish the entire expansions worth of story during early access and power level all their crafting and gathering classes to 80 so they can be first to market. If that isnt the playstyle/lifestyle you want to indulge, you can still make a lot of money crafting. If you arent one of those people then you change your tactics. The first thing to do is get to know your servers economy. Some servers have more demand then normal for leveling gear, others need more high end potions and foods, others have a robust furniture market. So the idea is to look at what you can craft, and check your specific market board to see how often it sells and for how much profit(these are the key facts along with how annoying any "special" ingredients are to get). Identify a handful of items you can make money on and go to work. And you dont need to focus at all on high end items(or even finished items). Would you rather compete with 5 other crafters to sell a 2 million gil minion(with over a million gil worth of material cost) or be one of several people who sell a full stack(99) of some crafting material(that cost 1k to make) for 15k each? I always tell new crafters to focus more on turnover then pure profit - the thing that sells for 10k profit a hundred times a day is better to chase then the thing that sells for a million profit once a week(with several people competing for that million). This could be something as simple as the crafted dyes or glamour prisms, it could be mid-stage crafting materials(some people would rather buy a stack or nuggets/ingots rather then spend the time to refine the ore themselves - same goes for lumber, leather, cloth, or whatever else), or any number of other things. If the market slows you can do another research phase to find new avenues to explore.

Then finally, theres a level of guessing you can get into. For example, if you think the next patch is going to open up new housing areas its a good idea to get some furniture for sale before the patch goes live. New houses typically want summoning bells, orchestrions, armoires, mailboxes and a number of other "essential" items. But new housing can also mean more people making their own furniture so you could sell a ton of wax, varnish, and other materials used to make the good stuff. It could mean more people wanting housing skins, so the materials to make those will go way up for a while(a single set of otter mansion walls uses 1440 completed crafting materials - from 45 beetle glue to 225 twinthread). If you think the next patch is going to bring in an influx of new/returning players you can reasonably expect "catch-up" gear to sell well. If something new will attract people to a new role then the gear for that role should go up for awhile(like when samurai was added in and suddenly the monk gear it shared was super popular as a ton of people tried it).

As for general advice, thats probly the best i can give. If you have more specific questions feel free to ask. And best of luck!

Edit: Am i qualified to give this advice? Ive spent about 100 mil on my house(and probly between 10 and 25 mil on mounts and minis and other such nonsense) and ive got another 100 mil in reserve. I made that money crafting and gathering, but these days im not an active trader. Once i decided I had "enough" money i semi-retired, so now i mostly make things for friends in need/myself(though i still answer people who put up PF listings for crafter needs). I did follow my own advice(i started playing after HW launched, so i certainly had some catching up to do), and ive never tried to compete with the first-to-market crowd(though i do know some of them on my server and consider a few of them friends). In the end ill let you decide.

[EaMett]

There’s a lot of information here but to keep it short.
Because the items that sell for a lot of Gil are hard to make they require cross class skills. Thus, mostly people with all crafters fully leveled and best gear with melds make te big Gil. Everyone else make moderate to good amounts with varying degrees of success depending on how many crafters they have at max level and geared.

If you can only level one i would say maybe goldsmith since accessories are pretty hard to come by while leveling. DoH and DoL always sell pretty well.
But honestly it could be anybodies guess

[Niwashi]

Everyone else make moderate to good amounts with varying degrees of success depending on how many crafters they have at max level and geared.

If you keep your costs down by gathering most of your materials yourself, then you can make pretty good gil well before reaching max level. I was making a profit the whole while I was leveling up. (It does take longer that way, though, so some people prefer to spend gil to level faster, and wait until reaching max level before trying to make back that gil.)

[purgatori]

It's a bit of a moot point, really, as levelling all crafters to cap makes the most sense.