A brief introduction to Crafting
FFXI has a very extensive crafting system with a variety of types on offer to you. For the record, Fishing technically counts as a craft as it has a skill level to rise, but does not work in the same way as the rest you can chose from. Many people will tell you to get rich you have to take up a craft, this is half true. You will get rich, once you reach Lv100 with a craft and can make HQ versions of high selling items (more about those points in a moment). You do not make money levelling up a craft. More often than not you will make a loss. Keep that in mind when taking up a craft as, even if you farm most of your ingredients, this will cost you money.
I am not trying to put you off taking up a craft, but am making sure you consider how much time and money must be invested to get rich out of it. Even though you can craft from the second you start the game I do not recommend trying it until you already have quite a nice fund of Gil. Many crafts would not reach Lv100 even if you invest 1,000,000 Gil, so keep that in mind too.
What you need to know
High skill level crafting players are often sought after by Linkshells to make items from God monster drops and so on. So, if you get a craft very high, your services would be in high demand from all the End Game players. And here are the things you should always remember.
How Crafting works
You gain skill up points (which range from 0.1, 0.3 etc) for successfully crafting of items fit for your current total level. Every time the total reaches 1.0 you gain one level of skill.
To craft you require a crystal and ingredients.
There is a chance to fail to craft. If you fail you will always lose the crystal you tried and possible one, all, or none, of the other ingredients.
As you level up a craft the ingredients you require will become rarer and more expensive – it helps if you can farm for what you need, so use the farming tips in this guide to minimise loss.
At Lv8 with a craft you must take a test given by an NPC from the appropriate Guild for your craft. Then after that another test must be taken every ten levels or you cannot progress any further.
You can only have one craft at Lv100, the rest can cap at Lv60. If you try to get another craft over sixty while having one at one hundred it will start to lose skill points.
HQ means High Quality and is a term given if you get a better-than-normal result from crafting (you will know you have done an HQ as you will receive a different quantity or a slightly different name of the item you made and the animation will be different). The higher level your craft skill is above the cap of an item the more chance you have of doing an HQ.
There are literally hundreds of recipes for each craft so I cannot list them all here. Inside the Guild of your chosen craft are three NPC’s which can give you Image Support (which improves your results) and also tell you what you should be crafting to raise your skill.
To improve your results and stop having as many failures after a certain rank of a craft you can start handing in things you make to an NPC for Guild Points. If you amass a certain amount of these you can buy pieces of equipment with them which makes your results better. The downside of earning these points is that you make a 100% loss doing it. Also, you can only earn a certain number of Guild Points per Earth day.
What crafts are available?
As I said, you have a nice variety of crafts to choose from when looking for what suits you. Crafts depend on each other for some recipes so if you are taking one craft all the way you will also need to raise at least one more half way so you can make everything on offer to you. Here are the crafts that you can take up in FFXI:
Smithing
Goldsmithing
Leathercraft
Bonecraft
Fishing
Woodworking
Clothcraft
Cooking
Alchemy
Which crafts make the most money?
In theory, every craft can make you rich – as long as you put in the time and money needed to level it all the way to Lv100. The key thing to remember about crafting is that the most amount of money is made from HQ results of high level items. Each has its own best seller items that people use to make Gil after working so hard.
If I had to categorise what makes the most (in terms of one time large sums of money) I would say the most popular is; Goldsmithing, then Smithing, then Bonecraft. Goldsmithing is especially expensive to level up, but is also the most rewarding once you take it all the way. These would give you payouts of profits around 1,000,000 on certain things (after deducting ingredient costs) and would definitely make you rich. There are other crafts which provide you money over time and in no large sum amounts. You must decide yourself which kind of income you prefer, and take into consideration the cost of trying to level up a craft which high payouts at Lv100 skill.
Craft Information
The Guild for each craft (there are two in each of the three Kingdoms) sell you some basic items needed for crafting things, but not crystals. The Guild shop is re-supplied every game day as it opens so if you want to get supplies you might need to camp them as other players will be after the cheap ingredients as well.
Here is a run down of what I think of each crafting type, what sub-crafts it requires, and what makes the most money from it. Also, I will suggest the key types of items it requires and also the element of crystal most used for it. The links below each craft lead to a run down of what items you can make at what levels to raise your skill level (for others, consult NPCs in your crafts Guild).
Smithing
The craft is centred on areas of Bastok, which is great because of the close proximity to so many mines which supply the ingredients it needs. It uses a lot of Fire Crystals for its recipes which instantly means a high cost to level. This craft requires a huge amount of Ore found in Mines all around Vana’diel. See the Mining section of this guide if you want to know specific details about where to find what Ore. Keep in mind that the Guild for Smithing can supply Copper and Tin cheaply.
This craft also has some need for skill in Goldsmithing and small amounts of Leathercraft and Woodworking. You will mostly make tools for the higher level crafters at the low levels, and then later create many different types of weapons. At high levels you can make Adaman armour.
Goldsmithing
Another of the crafters centred in Bastok, this craft is one many people have as their main goal for loads of money at End Game. Its ingredients are very expensive so put serious thought into this craft before taking it up and check your server’s economy to see what you would need to farm to save money. This can also be made less expensive by Mining for ingredients, see the relative section.
Some recipes require small amounts of Woodworking, Smithing and Alchemy. At higher levels you can make elemental rings, ingots of all kinds and some specific kinds of weapons.
Leathercraft
This craft is centred on San d’Oria. Farming for ingredients of this craft can help bring down the cost of levelling it a lot. It requires Dark Crystals which is particularly expensive, but you can farm some. This is a craft which many others depend on, so even if you are not planning on taking this all the way, you will probably have to at least level it a bit sooner or later.
Bonecraft
Everything you need for this craft could easily be farmed for and is in close proximity to its Guild (which is in Windurst). A lot of people take up Bonecraft because you can craft a Scorpion Harness, when you get it higher – plus it has some nice looking glasses that you can buy with Guild Points. Wind Crystals and Earth Crystals are the most used element for this craft and are easy to farm for.
A lot of things you need to make to level up this craft depend on Leathercraft and Woodworking to a certain degree.
Fishing
See the fishing section for information on this and other aspects of taking this craft up. It is not a high earner in comparison to the others as it does not work quite the same way at all.
Woodworking
If you are either a Ranger or a Ninja, you might want to seriously consider taking up this craft as it provides things you require constantly. Keep in mind to actually save money making the items yourself if you are either of those classes, you may need to get it high level so you can get HQ results. You will make tons of different kinds of arrows in this craft, so that is the reason a lot of Rangers take this up. Ninja’s will be interested to know that this craft also makes Shihei (quite possibly your most wanted tool). As with the arrows, to actually lower your costs from buying things straight from the Auction House farm for your items or get the craft high enough to consistently get HQ results. This would vary from server to server.
Depending on arrow type, this craft might require some skill in Bonecraft and Smithing (its down to what type of arrow head they need).
Clothcraft
This craft’s Guild is in Windurst (a very short distance from the Bonecraft Guild). This craft is very like cooking in its net gain as you slowly raise levels in it. I would say that it is a consistent earner at higher levels like Woodworking or Leathercraft as well. This craft makes many armours and accessories for Mage type jobs in particular and does not deal in heavy armour. At the highest levels of this craft you can make the Errant Gear and un-curse some Cursed objects which are highly valued by Linkshells.
This craft primarily uses Earth, Lightning and Wind Crystals.
Cooking
Many people describe this craft as a job because there is no massive payout regardless of level you get it to. This craft is more a constant earner, a slow and steady income like a job rather than lump sums of millions. With the current changes to food in FFXI I understand that some value has been lost, but more variety of things to create has opened up. Prior to changes you were left with making only specific types of pie and kabob to make money, now you can do a lot more based on the economy of your server. Keep an eye on it to see what is in high demand. Consider the new fish dishes and also other Mage based foods. This craft requires a heavy intake of Fire Crystals.
Alchemy
On my server the price of alchemy based items has sky rocketed. Sneak Oils and Prism Powders in particular have more than doubled in value – meaning it’s a good time to be an alchemist, especially a high skill level one. This is also a reasonably cheap craft to level up and requires Ice crystals, which are the cheapest to buy and easy to farm without competition.
A crafting alternative; supplying the crafters
This is something to consider if you just do not have the time or cash to put into levelling up a craft. The farming part of this guide is especially helpful if you chose to do this method.
Each server is different, and each server will have a specific craft which many people have taken up. This tip requires you to look at your server’s economy and see a pattern. See what is in the highest demand in what cities and how available they are.
You might notice, for example, that since the Bonecraft Guild is in Windurst that Wind Crystals, Bone Chips, Scorpion Claws and Beetle Shells sell the best and fastest there. You would then search the farming guide for the nearest area to it that drops those items and go farm them. You are supplying the players to lazy to farm items for their craft and making a profit doing it for them at no cost to yourself. It helps if you watch the market around where you spend most of your time. Also shop around and see where the best place to sell is (also, take into consideration the tax you must pay).
You might also notice through Mining or another earner you can try that if you sell in a specific place things will sell faster because of crafter demand. I made quite a large customer base that also comes to me when I sell my Mining results in Bastok Markets, for example.
Obviously this is not going to get you a massive 1,000,000 payout or anything like that, but it is a good source of income for someone not wishing to try levelling a craft.
Earning Commission
If you get a craft to Lv100 (congratulations on that!) you must now look at other ways to make money. Of course you can farm and sell HQ results of lower level things, but there are other methods available to you now. As I hinted at above, Linkshells will often look for high skill level crafters to make things for them from God drops and so on. This is a chance for you to make money. If you hang around in Lower Jeuno you might see people doing shouts which are asking for help to make an item. Basically they provide the crystal and ingredients. All you need to do is try and craft what they ask for. However, why should you do this for free? Charge people for the trouble of what you are doing for them. Base this fee on what the item is that you are making for them.
As an example (it would vary from person to person), I know someone who wanted a Scorpion Harness made for him and he paid the crafter who did it 200,000 Gil commission. Set your own prices and what you are happy with.
Summary
Assuming you have a crafting skill level either double that of an item you are trying to craft (thus making the chance of HQ much better) or near enough maxed out you can make double the usual Auction House value per successful craft. If you manage to get an HQ version of an extremely good piece of equipment like Scorpion Harness you will make a one time profit of a few million Gil. The amount of investment any craft requires is purely based on how many of the ingredients you are willing to farm for yourself. If you farm for all the ingredients and even the crystals you require levelling a craft will technically cost nothing (with the exception of completing the level tests).