Good Question To Pros And Veterans Out There~

For the life of me I can't find a good synth for that jump from 54-56 in goldsmithing. I have my track all set up after that, but any bridge synths cost me no less than 5k excluding breaks. Any advice, oh noble crafters?

If you're looking at no less than 5k for goldsmithing, I'm sorry to say but I'd chose another craft. If you do want to main GS however, there are a few options.
Continue making the lvl 36 rings which will sell decently or Synth/Desynth Hyrdo Claws. You could try Gold Hairpins but you're most likely looking at a loss even if these sell on the AH.

I'm not a pro or a veteran, but my Goldsmithing is currently 50. I'm on gold ingots from ore until 53^^

I would recommend mining in Movopolous, and desynth moblin mail for gold ingots. Lightning elements spawn there, so your supply of crystals to desynth them with is virtually endless. I guess the real question then is, do you want to spend the time mining? I guess any crafter, unless they buy gil, spends some time or another farming for their materials.

Once you get enough gold ingots, I would synth gold earrings to 57, then rings to 58, desynthing them back to gold ingots, since you can skill up, although not as frequently, when desynthing, if you're under the cap. The beauty of it all is you're only spending money for pickaxes, and possibly a stack of fire/wind crystals here and there. Hope this helps!

Oh, also, I would recommend synthesis support. I started crafting darksteel ingots at 40 (cap 52) from ore I mined myself. Didn't cost me a thing when I broke, but I did 'force' .4 and .3 skill ups with advanced support. Got a stack of darksteel ingots, and my smithing is now 42^^ Good luck!

GS 64 here. I made Hydro Claws between 54-59. Why? because it's the cheapest thing you can do, also good skill ups. You will have to npc all the Hydro Claws because they dont sell. You will lose way less gil from this synth trust me. Even though your losing gil from this it's way less compared to other synth breaks. This is what I had to do to get passed them lvls. I took smithing to lvl 40 only need it to 32 for what im about to tell you but anyway. After 32 smithing take bone to lvl 8. This insured that i would have the claws needed to produce the Hydro Claws, you will hardly find them on AH. If you do get ahold of that crafter asap because it cost less to buy from them then it is to make them. But while claws where not up on AH i would make them myself. This insured that i would have no down time because I like to power craft dont like to wait. This will cap you at 59 GS then the Plt. Ingot stage starts and life sucks again. Good luck hope you take this advice.. Side note you will need smithing as a sub anyway might as well lvl it now>.> Sure you can desynth the Hydro Claws but i didn't, why? Because think of it as 10k, you go to desyth...bam no skill up your crystal gone and your hydro claw.. sell to npc for like 4k so lose 10k or 6k? I leave that choice to you.

After you hit lvl 60 your skill ups slow say goodbye to .2 it's all .1 and takes like 2-7 synths for .1. During that time you will break, so yea take your gil, and have a blm cast flare on you. This is where it makes you or breaks you.

while I can't exactly speak for GS, always look for something to skill up on you can use later on. i.e. ores > ingots > sheets > armor > sell or desynth.

Gold in general is fairly expensive and some level ranges can cost millions, especially higher up. Just don't play on doing it all at once -- take your time, find another method to make gil in the mean time though. Like gardening or mining. Skilling up GS won't exactly profit you like some other crafts -- most its profit is at the end when you can HQ tier 1 items and make some insane profits, if you can sell the item ;-)

I remember early/mid 50's goldsmithing being pretty annoying. If you're @54, it wouldn't be a bad idea to just grind out platinum ingot recipes all the way to 60+ whenever possible. Breaks hurt but you're not left with a whole lot of options, and at least the synth results aren't a monetary loss.

If you garden, or have several gardening mules, I can say from experience that gardening up platinum nuggets for this purpose is a great help.

there's a link to my LJ on my profile... where I've written a Goldsmithing guide to show players how I leveled the craft. I'm currently 93+2 in Gold with Smithng and Alchemy capped at 60.

The Goldsmithing guide only goes up to 70-ish, I havent had a chance to update the guide in a while. Been pretty busy doing linkshell events, gathering all my gear and whatnot, as the LJ clearly shows lol. Gonna try to post 70-90 here on my LJ pretty soon.

Hope the guide helps

What I did that I'm suprised hasn't gotten more popular is synth, de-synth, and re-synth Gold Hairpins even with strong earth MH energy I had a high success rate and on break rarely lost mats

http://img110.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dfsfgtj4.png

Did that from 54 up to 57

Thank you all for the input. After looking everything over, I believe I'll be searching for a crafter to help me make some claws :3

If I get lucky with that, it'll all be a snap!

Thanks again everyone!