Everyone being everything means no market at all

[RamzaBehoulve]

Some people don't seem familiar with the concept of item market value.

It does not matter if you buy or gather the item yourself. Its market value is what's currently on market (unless it is available from a NPC). If you buy it, you lose X gils, but if you gather it and use it, you also "lose" the same potential X gils because you did not sell it.

Any crafter worth his salt will never go gather anything and simply buy on the market UNLESS there is, for some reason, almost nothing available at the normal market price. But then, if market average rose very high for a few, it would be best to sell those gathered items to make a profit then buy them when the price is back to the normal average. Or what I do is switch to crafting something else for a while.

Also remember : the base worth of a crafted item is the sum of of the market price (or NPC) of all its parts. If it costs 500 gils to craft an item buying all parts from market (or NPC), then that is the minimum price you must sell as not to lose potential money... EVEN IF YOU GATHERED EVERYTHING YOURSELF! (which includes the crystals)

In fact, some people are completely unaware of this and sell a lot of things at a loss for them, but the idiocy of some can make you rich. Simply buy the cheap crafted materials like ingots, rivets from the fools and use those to make a HQ version of something.

TLDR : you are wasting your time if you are leveling gathering professions to fuel your crafting ones. Instead, use the market to your benefit.

[Hawklaser]

Also remember : the base worth of a crafted item is the sum of of the market price (or NPC) of all its parts. If it costs 500 gils to craft an item buying all parts from market (or NPC), then that is the minimum price you must sell as not to lose potential money... EVEN IF YOU GATHERED EVERYTHING YOURSELF! (which includes the crystals)

There is another cost you have to keep in mind when say things like this, and that is time. Just because X item costs 500 gil to make, that does not take into account the difference in time to earn the gil, or get the item yourself. (500 gil is very bad number to use as an example though, consider something more along the lines of 10,000 to get a better picture.)