How Do Goldsmithers Make So Much Gil?

Personally i dont care how ppl make their gil, thats their choice, i lvled ww or 23 so i could make my own bolts for thf and BC to 30 cuz um.. idk i just did.

Crafting as a whole bores me and costs me too much gil, i have better things to do than sit in town playing with crystals and watching my gil shatter before my eyes

uhh I fail to see how farming with thf has ANYTHING to do with goldsmithing profits.. you are farming ingots and coins. that is your profit, not crafting.

Also on Shiva the only beastcoin->ingot synth that is still a profit is mythril, and that gap is closing quickly.

Money loss on NQ for Cerb +1 and Dusk is so high though... =(

Dusk feet are not as bad I guess.

goldsmiths make gil because the items they use are easily framed and more than not their smithing is high level to match their gold smithing....i can craft in silver brass and bronze soon to be in mithral and gold... my smithing is almost silver my goldsmithing is almost mitral...already i can make lvl 7-10 swords lvl5 polearms and lvl 14 arrows itdoesnt seem likemuch but u do 10swords at lvl 7 in ah for 5k thats 50k u do that 5 times a week or as the market can take it theres gil to be made there

Yes, however, youre not even doing synths that cost much. Post 50ish, most crafts start costing an arm and a leg to skill, in addition to, having very very very few synths that are profitable, and those are generally extremely competitive. You have to look at the fact that, a higher level crafter can make several items consistently +1'd of higher levels and make their profit that way rather than lots of very small profits.

The higher level you get, the more ***costs to synth and the less profitable lower level items become to you, because time is money. I do not synth my own lumber anymore. I buy it, cause in the time it takes to me go buy the lumber, synth it and go make my ammo's, i could have already made alot of the ammo i intended to make and be just that much closer to going off and doing whatever else i want to do.

Most of the goldsmithers I know were rich to begin with. They had a lot of gil on hand and wanted to level a craft and the general consensus in crafts is that Goldsmithing should be THE 100 craft. I don't think Goldsmithing necessarily has to be expensive, but those folks that want to get it to 100 and start making the money shell out a lot to get it there quickly. The people that farm the mats typically still spend a lot of money on synths and a ridiculous amount of time farming, and are often forced to synth things (sheets/chains) that people do not want to buy and NPC the items for a loss. Obviously there are plenty of upsides to the craft as it continues to be one of the most popular crafts regardless of the costs.

Leather > all.




Smithing sucks.. everybody and their sisters do smithing.

I half-concur with the theory that the goldsmithers were already rich. Certainly the first ones to reach 100 had the opportunity to make a lot of money back in the day, before all the ra/ex rings and earrings came in to marginalise the core GS recipes.

That being said, it is eminently possible to raise GS without being rich first. It was my first craft, and it's taken me 5 years to get it to 94, but most of the money I've ever made has come directly from GS, I had it 70+ way before I even had my first job at 75. A lot of the money I have now is reinvested remnants from what I made when skilling was profitable during the high inflation period when ToAU came out (supplemented by a recent lucky HQ koenig shield while skilling).

For a GS hitting 100 right now, there are no clear routes to good money, and I can't think how long it would take to make back what you'd sink getting 98-100. I have a friend that does ele beads. It's good money, but a big risk, and he's often left sitting on 40 beads that take weeks to sell. Too many of my old easy profit recipes have been hijacked by game changes (gobbiebags I'm looking at you).

I don't believe the crappy farm stuff for lowbie ingot recipes is what the OP was talking about. Anyone can farm the stuff, and the value-add from high level crafting is reduced because you can't HQ them. Seriously, 10k profit on a silver ingot stack is not really what a veteran crafter wants to look forward to.

As for the guy that mentioned desynthing mythril ingots, I did that a couple of years ago, and was ok profit when the stacks sold for 90-100k. Now that they're around 65k on my server, I don't see it being good. People underestimate how f*cking long it takes to desynth large quantities, and the gil/hr rate can really dwindle if you're on a break streak.

So, I hate to make such a downer of a post, but that's how I see it. I do GS because I enjoy the challenge of a difficult and ultimately futile craft. There is money to be made, but it's trickier and less obvious than other crafts.

I make "Stable" money off a combo of Chocobo Digging and compression of the mats with modestly leveled crafts. Since you can't HQ ingots, Ores are good way for gather types to make gil off basic crafting skills. Of course, since the introduction of that body item that increases chocobo digging endurance, Competition there between the relatively few diggers rose exponentially. So I don't know what will become of that investment in the near future. When it took maybe an hour to cap off dig-for-profit for the day, it now can take up to three with competitors now overlapping time slots.

I agree, I see rich goldsmithers and have no idea how they do it. (And likely they were always rich, with all the implications that has with it). Goldsmithing was okay until 1 dude powerleveling it from 0 to 100 in a week annihilated the goldsmithing economy of Odin Server. Luckily I stopped at 60, so if nothing else, I have one of the hardest subcrafts leveled already.

If I had to suggest a "Money from jack ***" craft, it'd probably be fishing. Since you spend 90% of game time with your thumb in your *** anyway, with fishing you get paid for it.

I think the lesson is, aside from *** a leprechaun or IGE.com, there is no "GET RICH FAST" in FFXI anymore. If you don't want to keep hoping you get lucky, just have to deal with marginal profits over a long period of time as a source of income.

There is 3 reasons people have money in FFXI.

1. Been doing EG for a long time and they have run out of things to buy and so the payouts just pile up until they have a large amount of money.

2. They were clever with their money when there was money to be made (3+ years ago) otherwise know as 'old money'. This may include crafting back then, but could also just mean trading in goods (buy low sell high) or selling in high demand (Ancient Beast coins when limbus was released)

3. Lotto or Gill buying.

Back when crafting was profitable, goldsmithing was one of the best, but that's a long time ago, some people came out of the inflation period with stupid amounts of gil and they havent managed to speed it all.

Guide how to make money:

1) Research valueable stuff
2) brain
3) ???
4) profit


I mean cmon thats why god blessed us with ffxiah. It just takes like 20 mins browsing around what items are currently worthwhile to farm or to craft, just put it in contrast with the effort you need to get the item and it's done.

You can even math out how much money you get from a single mob. Time, droprates, average killtime, competition, prices etc. ... it is not that hard and easier than worrying how to make money in the first place. I think i once did some math on the forums of my old LS and estimated that one elder gobbuue in boyahada tree is worth around 1900 gil at that time(leaving out time and competition and whatnot). Pretty much one of the better mobs for average farming - of course this never was a mystery at all.

The same applies to crafting.. materials you need, demand, average selling time, price, cost... you can all figure it out by just do some very simple math and be at least on a >safer< side. Even if most ppl complain there are still a LOT ways to make money.

Clever ppl make money, dumb ppl only get rich when they stumble over it (not meant in any offense).

new *** can't triforce

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but i can

You're right, just the research on your craft. Look in Wiki on your craft, try foreseeing 20-30 levels head. Some of the crafts you will do at certain will be used again later, so hold on to them. You won't have to buy them when that certain item comes back again.I'm currently leveling multiple crafts at the same time on different mules. The reason I'm doing them at the same time is because many crafts compliment each other. Right now I put Goldsmithing on hold at 64. My next synth of GS is Hydro Patas to bring it up to 67. I plan doing 3 levels on them. The reason is because I need Bone Patas to make them. Bone Patas are a level 68 synth in Bonecraft. They are easy to make and since my Bonecraft on another mule was around 55, this would be a good way to get skill ups on a item I can use again. So my plan now is to skill up the final levels of Bonecraft to 68, doing Bone Patas, which cost virtually nothing to do if you farm the materials(which are easy to get). Then use the Bone Patas for my Goldsmithing on the other mule.

The best way to make money doing crafts...
1. Don't be lazy, farm your own materials.(Giant Femurs, Ram Horns, Skins, items that can be desynth)
2. Don't be lazy, craft your own low level materials(copper ingots, silver ingots, sheep leather, ram leather, dhalmel leather)
3. Dont' be lazy, research your craft or crafts.(Find the best route to get to your goal. Remember different crafts compliments each other)

Then you're making money off the farming not the craft. Not that this is a bad thing, but this is not "The best way to make money doing crafts".

It's not just one, it's a combination of both. You wouldn't have made much from just the farming, but when you put the materials through crafting, the profit jumps. You really can't be so blind as to not see that.

I gotta say goldsmithing doesn't make a ton amount of gil as they used to. Even when they did it's still hard to believe they'd rake in the mils. Alot of gold smithers I knew on my server turned out to be buying gil, and now a lot of them are banned... for various other reasons of course.

All in all, if you want to make money crafting I think the best ones to level are ones that use consumables

I don't know about now, but sha'ir manteel, elemental beads for staves, elemental rings (until salvage messed up orichalcum ingots), koenig shield, koenig schaller, koenig breastplate were all decent synths. (any synth that is break even or more at NQ and lots of profit on HQ is a godsend in crafting, most stuff are loss on NQ, profit on HQ though).

Smithing can make a fair amount of money, but its rather difficult though. Imperial wootz ingots for example, its not easy as it looks, the ores are HIGHLY camped on AH, and unless you're willing to check every few mins every day all the time, you won't get them (personally, *** that). Also, they do eventually break, so you have to make sure to sell at appropriately profitable prices to offset that massive loss from the occasional break. Haubergeon and Hauberk are highly dependent on luck and how you play the AH price wars (since its always a big loss on NQ).

You miss the point.

Care to enlighten me then, oh wise one who knows all?

I'm pretty sure I missed nothing.

^

Sarcasm! I love it!

Here is a good money synth at "higher" GS levels

Jagdplaute

That's if you can get them to sell. LOL mostly used for the Wing Sword synth though

Simple. You didn't actually "profit" more from the crafting then if you had just bought it. In fact alot of stuff isn't really worth the time it takes to farm as you could've farmed higher value stuff fast enough to have bought more materials in an equal amount of time. Now some materials don't show up as much for sale and some sell for much higher value then the time it took to get them for various reasons like slow sell rate so are worth doing. Avatar blood is a good example of that

4. People with patience. I funded Novio off of fishing and crafting the fish and npcing the results alone.

Hey hey now, don't put words in their mouth.

That was always my question - how do goldsmithers make all that gil? I've always wondered when I first started playing years ago. I was told since it's (one of) the most expensive crafts the profit reflects the expenses.

I've read what most people have to say on this topic in this forum and I do pretty much most of it. While I'm not 100 yet, I'm over 60, but I also have other crafts that support goldsmithing, which allows me to make items that aren't so common, and sometimes can turn around for a nice profit. One item cost me almost nothing for materials and I was selling it for 75k ea, but it required alchemy and goldsmithing.

Goldsmithing is slow and definitely not something you can say "I'll put 3 mil to this craft" and expect to hit 100. I've been gs'ing for about a year now, and while I've made decent gil it's not what I expected. I've already spent at least 4-5 mil to get to where I'm at now, but for the record, I'm glad I did it, and goldsmithing will be my main craft.

I've found that you can't really depend on income from low level goldsmithing, but there are a few things that can turn a few bucks really fast.

If you get gold purification you can make reraise earrings from scratch (as opposed to dropping 12-15k for a vivified mythril ingot and losing that profit). Since we're on the same server I can tell you that they average around 20-25k in jeuno and 30k in the other cities - each. If you farm your own ingredients for the earrings you can turn a nice profit in a short amount of time, and they sell crazy fast, however, if you don't have the gil to invest in stacks of animas, you might have a hard time finding single animas, so this could put a stop to that really quick.

A lot of thought is also needed in deciding what to synth. Check the price(s) of materials if you buy them, and weigh against what your profit would be. Lower level hq'd rings can turn an ok profit for lower level goldsmithing, however, you should be at LEAST lv40 to expect any sort of hq's to start to happen.

Where it stands now, if I really try, I can pull a few 100k a day from synths, tho the sell time for those items varies. In any case, the best way to make a profit off gs, or any other craft, is to be smart about your approach and check to see what the demand for that item is, and weigh that against your cost.

Ultimately, that's what has made me the most gil, being smart about my approach. Make cheap synths (for what its worth lol) and either npc or ah the synths (I usually npc them unless there is a decent profit that can be made, which is kind of rare for the level I am at now).

Hope this helps, but if you have any questions feel free to ask if you see me on game

Oh yea - don't forget you can also desynth items which can sometimes turn a profit, like gold hairpin is 10-12k but desynthed is a gold ingot, which sells for 19-20k.

If you /thf you can also steal coins from mobs and forge them into ingots, tho unless you plan on making silver bullets or something that needs silver in it, I would reccommend going after mythril. Mythril ingots sell about 60-70k a stack, but require some time if you farm the coins.

Those are some of the things I did at lower levels.

-Drok-

If you farm the mats, you might as well just do that...sell the mats, and forget crafting. I never farm mats unless i have to cuz none are available. Then in my spare time, farm garbage and AH it. Time is money, and you're wasting a lot of time farming smaller gil items to craft than if you were farming strictly for gil. Just my .02.

Couldn't of said it better myself. And a side note, if i HELM'd for as much time as i spent leveling my craft + crafting i would have atleast 10x more gil made, if not much more.

Crafting compared to farming/helm is dead for gil making. Only reason to craft is to have a craft. I personally craft for the fun of it (i know) and the thrill of getting those rare Hq's.