Critical Break: 0-60 Series: Woodworking

This originally appeared as an article/guide written by me on Ringthree's blog.

Critical Break is our crafting and economics column written by Qtipus. Q is an experienced crafter and also well versed in using the Auction House to turn a decent profit. Enough so that he was able to fund his own relic, Gungnir. Every Tuesday you will find Q's rants, raves and good crafting practices here. This week, Q continues his 0-60 series with part three covering Woodworking.

Woodworking I found to be a lot of fun, but a gargantuan pain on my inventory space. I also found it to be fun because this is one of those crafts that most people can actually relate to in the real world.

Well maybe not most people, but I could given that a number of my relatives are carpenters to some degree. Some made entire careers out of it while others, like my pops, just builds a piece of furniture from time to time for special occasions and whatnot.

In the previous two editions of the 0-60 series, I relied a lot on farming up your materials to at least break even or make money while you made your way to 60. Woodworking isn't really something you can go out and farm up mats for in a reasonable amount of time. So the approach here is to find items you can buy from the guild or the AH, then resell or use later to make your money back or even profit quite a bit from it.

I know, I know...THANK GOD NOT MUCH FARMING IN THIS ONE!

Don't get too excited...


Phase 1: Learning to Work Your Wood

This is a pretty standard opener for any guide that's written. Buy your lumber from the guild. It's super cheap and in very large supply. You can also log this up pretty easily in Ghelsba Outpost.

Recipe: Wind Crystal, 1x Arrowwood Log
Cap: Level 2

Another pretty standard second step through various guides. Again, buy your logs from the guild, make a couple Canadian jokes and synth away. Save your lumber for the next synth.

Recipe: Wind Crystal, 1x Maple Log
Cap: Level 5

You can skip this if you want, but I listed it here simply for the fact that you're not going to have any more use for your maple lumber aside from a couple guild rank items. You can synth this up and recover what little gil you lost buying straight from the guild. Pick up the super-cheap chocobo feathers from an NPC for < 10 gil ea., AH the results in starter cities, and you're in business.

Recipe: Wind Crystal, 1x Chocobo Feather, 1x Maple Lumber
Cap: Level 6

More lumber. Get used to it. It is Woodworking after all. Buy Ash logs from AH or Guild. Another dirt cheap log to work with. Save your results for a later synth. Buy a workbench off the AH since they're usually below cost due to people skilling up on them and turn it in to go to the next rank.

Recipe: Wind Crystal, 1x Ash Log
Cap: Level 8

Yet again, buy off AH (usually cheaper) or guild, synth away. This can be skipped entirely for the next synth if you're comfortable with a bit more of a level gap.

Recipe: Wind Crystal, 1x Holly Log
Cap: Level 12

The logs for these are usually cheaper on the AH than they are from the guild, but check both spots anyway to be sure. The resale value on these sucks, so you'll lose a little money here unless you farm a few up.

Recipe: Wind Crystal, 1x Willow Log
Cap: Level 13

Phase 2: Sugar and Bolts and Everything Nice

You're not going to make a huge amount of money on this, but you will make money nonetheless. Hit up a buddy with alchemy leveled to 81 or higher and have them make you a half stack or so of bloody bolt heads. Farm up the beastmen blood from leeches in Pashhow Marshlands to turn this loss into a profit.

The reason I picked these instead of something easier like Bronze Bolts is strictly due to money. These things sell pretty quickly on the AH and you'll end up making 1-2k/stack if you do it right by farming up most of the mats. This is also where you're going to be using your previously synthed Ash Lumber.

Recipe: Earth Crystal, 1x Bloody Bolt Head, 1x Ash Lumber
Cap: Level 16

I didn't like this synth very much. The sugar will sell on the AH for about 1k/stack each and it takes a minimum of 4 logs to make a stack. You won't lose money, but you'll be sitting on this for a while unless Sandy is third in the conquest rankings. I found while making all of this sugar that making fun of Canada again caused the time to go by faster and the skill ups to come quicker.

If you saved some of your previously made maple lumber, turn it into a maple table and rank up at 18.

Recipe: Lightning Crystal, 1x Maple Log
Cap: Level 21

Phase 3: Back to the Lumber

This is a bit of a horrible stretch when it comes to keeping your money around.

Buying the logs for 2k or less will keep this generally at a break-even point. They're usually in decent supply, so finding them for this price usually isn't an issue, but going any higher will definitely cause you to lose money. This is a long stretch for one type of lumber synth too. Cap on these and then turn in a harp for your rank up. Hopefully you've made a little money on the previous synths to balance the potential loss here out.

Recipe: Wind Crystal, 1x Chestnut Log
Cap: Level 28

This is listed here mostly as a bridge synth, but also as a bit of a money synth. Farm up 2-3 stacks of bird feathers and make some room on a mule. These things sell pretty decently as a lot of mage jobs find some good benefit out of the stats. You can also start taking advantage of synthesis support here as well.

Recipe: Wind Crystal, 1x Bird Feather, 1x Chestnut Lumber
Cap: Level 32

Same deal as the Chestnut Lumber, only a little more expensive. The AH is usually cheaper than the guild. Sell your results on the AH. Depending on how patient you are, singles generally sell for more than the stack average.

Recipe: Wind Crystal, 1x Oak Log
Cap: Level 35

Phase 4: I Say...Is That An Arrow in Your Pocket?

Here come some money makers. Take note of the nation that's in first and be ready to start moving around to wherever the bundling NPC is. This is also a good time to mention the Lumberjack key item as well.

If you're leveling bonecraft along with this, at 33, you can make your own beetle arrowheads for this synth. Farming up the beetle jaws (should only need a stack or less) will save you the vast majority of the cost in this synth. Chocobo Fletchings cost next to nothing and you may or may not still have some arrowwood lumber laying around. These sell for a good profit on the AH if you spend a little time farming the jaws up.

Turn in a Traversiere for your rank up.

Recipe: Earth Crystal, 1x Chocobo Fletchings, 1x Arrowwood Lumber, 1x Beetle Arrowhead
Cap: Level 39

These sell about the same pace as the beetle arrows for the same margin. Also the same deal as before with farming up the fangs in this. You shouldn't need more than a stack of fangs. Kill some Yagudos for the fletching portion of this synth and buy up some more arrowwood lumber.

Recipe: Earth Crystal, 1x Fang Arrowhead, 1x Arrowwood Lumber, 1x Yagudo Fletching
Cap: Level 42

At this point, you've got a couple different options. The first is if you don't have alchemy at 29. The second is if you do. Or you could skip these two recipes altogether and just go straight to making more arrows.

AH is almost always cheaper for this log than the guild. The lumber sells for a bit of a profit too. Problem is the log isn't always available, which is why the lumber sells for a slight profit.

Recipe: Wind Crystal, 1x Rosewood Log.
Cap: Level 45.

This is the more popular option for this particular stretch. There's money to be made here. Not an incredible amount, but when you factor in that this is a key ingredient in making Shihei, you'll often times catch lazy woodworkers taking a bit of a shortcut. As of this writing, the stacks of these generally sell for ~5k on the AH with a mat cost of ~3k. If you choose to go this route, you'll need alchemy at 29 (or near it). Buy the moko grass and distilled water from NPC (both in Port San d'Oria) then synth away.

Recipe: Lightning Crystal, 1x Moko Grass, 1x Elm Log, 1x Distilled Water.
Cap: Level 45

Starting to see a pattern here? You don't need much in the way of materials for the arrowheads. Farm up a stack of ram horns, turn them into horn arrowheads if you're leveling Bonecraft alongside of this, then synth away. These sell about the same pace as the previous two arrow synths we've done, but the horns are a bit more of a pain to come across due to the low number of ram spawns.

Cap on these and turn in your final rank item, a Rose Wand.

Recipe: Earth Crystal, 1x Horn Arrowhead, 1x Bird Fletching 1x Arrowwood Lumber
Cap: Level 49

Starting to sound a little repetitive with this guide, but the AH again is far cheaper than the Guild, but the AH usually won't have a huge supply of them around. This is mostly to close the gap a bit to your next synth.

Recipe: Wind Crystal, 1x Mahogany Log
Cap: Level 51

This is a large gap to cover this far into the game with one synth, but with synthesis support and the farming of your arrowhead materials (especially if you're leveling clothcraft and bonecraft along side of this...), you will gain money pretty easily during this part of the process. Unfortunately, you're going to need a lot of room too.

Recipe: Earth Crystal, 1x Insect Fletching, 1x Scorpion Arrowhead, 1x Arrowwood Lumber
Cap: Level 59

Phase 5: WTF...One More Level Is a "Phase"?

Yes, because this is one of the spots where there are a lot of differing opinions on what's best to cap this off. Some will suggest doing Chests while others will suggest going straight to your next bolt synth (darksteel bolts, but those are unnecessarily expensive to do.)

This is my personal favorite given how inexpensive the logs are on the AH and the fact that you can usually turn them around for twice you cost. The lumber also sells relatively fast as well. Why?

Well Ebony Lumber is used in the Elemental Staves synth and if a woodworker doesn't catch the logs on the AH, they'll usually resort to just buying the lumber outright.

Recipe: Wind Crystal, 1x Ebony Log
Cap: Level 60 for our purposes, but the cap is actually 61.

I mention this one and the next one due to the inexpensive cost of the materials and the sheer profit on them. Their cap is a little higher than that of the Ebony Lumber, but nothing synthesis support won't help you overcome. The results sell a little sluggishly, but they do sell.

Recipe: Wind Crystal, 1x Feyweald Lumber, 1x Gargouille Eye
Cap: Level 60 for our purposes, level 63 otherwise.




Recipe: Wind Crystal, 1x Turquoise, 1x Gargouille Horn, 1x Feyweald Lumber
Cap: Level 60 for our purposes, level 63 otherwise.

So there you have it. Unlike the previous two entries in the 0-60 series, it's entirely feasible to make a decent chunk of gil in the last 20+ levels of Woodworking even though you probably lost a bit in the first 40. Overall, Woodworking is one of the easiest crafts to get to 60, even if you don't have the sub-crafts or parallel crafts I mentioned along the way here. It's also a craft that's used as a subcraft for a lot of different main crafts.

Next week: Leathercraft

Critical Break: 0-60 Series: Clothcraft

This originally appeared as an article/guide written by me for Ringthree's blog.

Critical Break is our crafting and economics column written by Qtipus. Q is an experienced crafter and also well versed in using the Auction House to turn a decent profit. Enough so that he was able to fund his own relic, Gungnir. Every Tuesday you will find Q's rants, raves and good crafting practices here. This week, Q continues his 0-60 series with part two covering Clothcrafting.

I hated leveling this craft to 60. The reason why was because damn near every one of the synths required multiple parts. And not only did they require multiple parts, some of the parts required you to perform synths just to make the parts for the synth you were trying to skill up on. That sort of pattern could drill down 2-4 synths deep just to make one item to skill on. It's the sort of thing that would drive someone as frugal as me completely insane.

It's kind of a good thing too. Technically, you could take Clothcraft to 60 just recycling everything you made during your previous skill up synth. It's not very economical to do so as there are usually other parts required and the end results don't sell on the AH or NPC for very much, but it is possible. That will be a bit of a theme as I map out how to go from 0-60 as efficiently as possible. Clothcraft is rather easy to get to 60 without blowing much gil or even possibly making gil.

Dive into the madness after the jump.



Phase 1: Of Yagudos and....Yagudos.

Get ready to spend a lot of time with our feathered beastmen friends. I hope you have a handy THF/BLM or BLM/THF floating around that can dump a couple Blizzagas or Thundagas in Giddeus. Even a job that can whip out a gun or bow or some sort of ranged attack that can potentially one-shot the Yags here is extremely handy.

Make an absolute shitton of these. I'm serious. You'll likely need at least 15+ stacks of thread just to get to level 8. Grass thread can be bought cheap enough at the guild and on the AH, but you're also going to want the feathers from these birds too for a later synth. Load up on some Wind Crystals, train the hell out of Giddeus and nuke down some birds. You'll be coming back here later too.

Recipe: Wind Crystal, 1x Yagudo Necklace
Cap: Level 1

Save your results from here. If you farmed Yagudo Necklaces, you haven't spend anything other than crystal costs.

Recipe: Earth Crystal, 3x Grass Thread
Cap: Level 4

This is the part where farming your Yagudo Necklaces saved you a lot of gil. There are some that would suggest making Sabiki Rigs after Grass Cloth as a bit of a bridge synth, which is fine if you already have Goldsmithing at 21, but odds are you don't and odds are you don't particularly feel like making Cotton Thread yet or Copper Ingots. Plus, you already have a crapload of free grass thread and grass cloths, right? Cap on the capes, NPC the results and save one to turn in for your next rank.

Recipe: Earth Crystal, 1x Grass Thread, 2x Grass Cloth
Cap: Level 8

Phase 2: Thread...Cloth...Thread...Cloth...Fly Lure...Wut?

Store all your grass stuff for now and take a deep breath. You don't have to farm for a bit.

Ok I lied, you might have to farm. It depends on guild prices and supply here. Buy up as much Saruta Cotton as you can get, hold, or afford as long as you can pick it up for 100 gil or less ea. Cotton thread will be used later on in rather large quantities.

Recipe: Lightning Crystal, 2x Saruta Cotton
Cap: Level 11

See previous entry. You're going to want to make a decent amount of this for later use.

Recipe: Earth Crystal, 3x Cotton Thread
Cap: 12

You're going to lose a little money on this unless you farmed up all your saruta cotton somehow. This will eat up some of your cotton thread/cloth supply, but shouldn't eat up too much. There's also the option to skip this entirely and go straight to Linen Thread (which is something I'd recommend), but some don't like to attempt crafting items that are more than 5 levels from their current level.

Recipe: Wind Crystal, 2x Cotton Cloth, 1x Cotton Thread
Cap: 15

Here's where it gets a little fun. Buy Flax Flower from guild or standard conquest merchants (nation needs to be in first and you need to be a citizen to take advantage of it). Load up on some lightning crystals and just craft away. This is likely the laziest stretch you'll come across while skilling this craft. Make these to cap and save most of your results if you decide to make cloth next. Once you hit 18, turn in a Cotton Cape.

Recipe: Lightning Crystal, 2x Flax Flower
Cap: Level 19

Turn your previously made linen thread into linen cloth. Or....

Recipe: Earth Crystal, 3x Linen Thread
Cap: Level 22

...sell some of your linen thread on the AH and use up those Yagudo Feathers you picked up while mass farming Giddeus. Stacks of 99 sell for around 3k on the AH and 2-3 stacks sell/day it seems.

Recipe: Wind Crystal, 2x Yagudo Feather
Cap: Level 22

These sell rather decently on the AH as people tend to break lines and lose their bait a lot while fishing. This is the primary reason I listed this here. The secondary reason is that it's materials are relatively easy to come by, but plays into the madness of synthing the materials to use as materials for the materials you need to make the fly lure. Chocobo Feathers are dirt cheap and can be bought from an NPC in any city except the ToAU areas for 7-8 gil. Animal Glue is super easy to make (and you can skill Alchemy alongside it to boot if you don't happen to have it up to level 8 yet) and Bat Fangs are usually super cheap on the AH. AH your results here and I hope you have a ton of room on a mule to do it. I wouldn't necessarily advice taking this to the cap of 30, but getting yourself to 28 so you can start taking advantage of synthesis support isn't a bad idea. Turn in a Heko Obi and move on up.

Recipe: Earth Crystal, 1x Animal Glue, 1x Bat Fang, 1x Chocobo Feather
Cap: Level 30

Phase 3: Ra..er Counting Sheep

Prepare to be frustrated by a level 15 sheep sleeping your level 75 character.

You're going to need sheepskin and lots of them. If you followed my Bonecrafting 0-60 guide, there's a point where you'll be needing sheep teeth early on. Odds are, you're going to be getting just as many sheep skins as you are teeth.

Remember that maddening part I mentioned before? Yeah well here's where it gets somewhat bad.

Take some wind crystals out to your favorite sheep farming spot and break down a pair of sheep skins into sheep wool. This will cap Leathercraft at 4. Once you have 2 pieces of wool, hopefully you have some Lightning Crystals with you too. Turn those into the wool thread. Depending on how far you skilled up on the Fly Lures, this portion could take you a while unless you just feel like blowing money on the AH and clearing it out of sheep skins.

Recipe: Lightning Crystal, 2x Sheep Wool
Cap: 35

Hopefully you got enough wool thread made out of your sheep-raping exploits to pick up a couple of levels on this without having to make another farming trip, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Recipe: Earth Crystal, 3x Wool Thread
Cap: Level 37

Phase 4: The Oddities Before the Storm

Sell off your wool cloths as you won't be needing them any more unless you actually want to lose money making your rank item of a feather collar. If you farmed up everything, you're going to make a nice chunk of gil for your time and efforts. From this point forward, making money will be a bit hard to do, but doable.

You have a few different options with this. Farming these feathers isn't incredibly difficult as the birds that drop them are usually in good supply with a good drop rate. Buying them off the AH around 1k/stack isn't too shabby either. Either way, the end results of these don't sell very well unless you happen to catch a woodworker that's skilling up on Horn Arrows. NPC your results. Turn in a feather collar when you hit 38 and then keep on keepin' on.

Recipe: Wind Crystal, 2x Bird Feather
Cap: Level 42

Remember all that grass thread you have laying around? Oh you don't have any left? Back to Giddeus with you. This is a nice alternative to the Bird Fletchings. Your skill level is high enough that you can T2 the yagudo necklace synth and in the end, buying the grass thread from the guild ends up being cheaper than buying the bird feathers for the most part. Still though, being in this range with virtually no cost involved in the synths (as long as you're farming some too) is pretty good. Only downside is that it takes 2/3 of a stack of grass thread for one synth.

Recipe: Earth Crystal, 8x Grass Thread
Cap: Level 43

Phase 5: The Final, Velvety, Silky, Smooth Push

Going to be spending a ton of time with anything that drops silk threads, so warm that TH up.

Here's a chance to use up the rest of your wool thread. You'll be farming up silk thread as well. The option to buy off the AH is always there, but again, the point of these guides is to minimize your interactions with the AH as far as buying goes.

Recipe: Earth Crystal, 1x Silk Thread, 2x Wool Thread
Cap: Level 45

Wait, you just talked about this. Why do you have it listed again?

Well this is one of those recipes that make absolutely no sense. Much like the blood stone I mentioned in the bonecrafting guide, this synth somehow has a higher cap than the previous synth despite the materials being a much lower level synth than the materials for the previous synth.

Confused yet? Long story short, that cotton thread you saved from your wee-little clothcrafting days is going to get used up here. If you don't have any cotton thread left, buy up the saruta cotton and make some. If you picked up the Spinning key item by chance, this process goes a lot faster. Turn in a pair of Wool Bracers for your final rank up once you hit 48. You don't have to cap on these as the next item will be used a f***ton for the final item, but it won't make much of a difference to your wallet either way.

Oh and you still gotta farm silk threads.

Recipe: Earth Crystal, 1x Silk Thread, 2x Cotton Thread
Cap: Level 51

Seeing silk cloth here probably makes you wonder "Hmm...why didn't he show us a way to make silk thread?".

No? Yeah well, I didn't think of that until I just got to this point in the writing process. You can make silk threads via crawler cocoons that drop off the same crawlers you're farming for silk anyway. You can also buy crawler cocoons for relatively cheap from the guild on some days (range of 137 gil-870 gil...). Make sure you check those prices from time to time, but the odds of catching the super cheap cocoons in any large supply probably won't happen. Guild price needs to be around 420ish gil ea. to break even with AH stacks listed at 10k ea.

At any rate, no matter how you decide to get your silk threads, turn them into silk cloths. Save all of your cloths as the final synth will require you to go through 7 levels of clothcraft.

Recipe: Earth Crystal, 3x Silk Thread
Cap: Level 53

Here it is! Your final synth. There are some other synths here that might work out to be a bit cheaper, but the mats aren't always readily available. The idea with this synth is to NPC the results after you've made it. Barring breaks, if you manage to keep your silk thread cost at 725 gil or below, you will break even simply NPCing these with max fame. From a crafting standpoint, it doesn't really get much better than that. There are two downsides to this though.

The first is that the skillups are slow and the temptation is great to just buy all your silk threads off the AH instead of farming any of them up. Resist the urge...or don't give a crap about the gil you're spending/losing and clear the AH out. There will be some happy sellers thanks to you, but then there will be some pissed off crafters thanks to the spike in silk thread prices all thanks to your impatience. :)

The second is that we're back to the maddening point of this craft where you have to make the materials before you can perform the skillup synth.

You can strike a balance though if you want to speed this process up. Again this is barring breaks (which there will be, so just chalk those up as a loss to begin with...), but if we're to assume that 8700/stack of silk threads is the break even point, then you can technically farm up one stack and effectively end up paying 4350/stack. You're still making money by NPC'ing the results and you're making faster progress. You don't always have to work on a 1:1 ratio for it since farming can be a rather tedious process, but as long as you understand where the break even point is for this synth, then you can speed up the process.

As of this writing, Silk Thread stacks are selling for approx. 13k on the AH for Odin. Farming up one stack of silk thread reduces your cost to 6500/stack. That's not too much wiggle room for trying to break even if you factor in the actual material losses from breaks as well.

This means, should all your synths be successful (and they won't), you're going to NPC 8 Green Ribbons. 8 x 2175 = 17,400 gil. You made a 4k profit in the best case scenario. Buy two stacks at 13k and farm one stack? It means you're going to NPC 12 Green Ribbons. 12 x 2175 = 26,100 gil against a 26k investment. Yes, you can possibly pull this off, but trying to find some undercutters who put their stacks up at 11-12k would work out better for your wallet too. Always keep this in mind and always keep your other costs in mind as well like synthesis support and crystal costs.

Conclusion

Mentioned at the beginning of this writing that I hated leveling this craft. You'll likely share my pain as you level this up too due to the silly amounts of pre-synths you have to make. Don't use this guide as the end-all though. Clothcraft is one of the few crafts that have a lot of other options for skilling up as well. Look at the recipes on FFXIAH.com and FFXIclopedia to see what else you can potentially do.

Critical Break: 0-60 Series: Bonecraft

This originally appeared as an article/guide written by me on Ringthree's blog.

Critical Break is our crafting and economics column written by Qtipus. Q is an experienced crafter and also well versed in using the Auction House to turn a decent profit. Enough so that he was able to fund his own relic, Gungnir. Every Tuesday you will find Q's rants, raves and good crafting practices here. This week, Q starts a series of do-it-yourself guides that update how to go from 0-60 in various crafts.

While digging through Wikipedia the other day, I ran across some guides again that I haven't looked at in a while. Some of them are rather outdated given the rather seismic shift in the economy since they were written. Because of this, I have decided to write up a series of crafting guides to get all your crafts to 60 as cheap as possible.

Before I get started though, I need to point out that I tried to stick with items you could farm up with relative ease to actually ease the cost of burning a craft to 60. I also need to point out that what may be "burning" to some people is not necessarily "burning" to me. My definition of burning a craft combines the all out mauling of game critters in conjunction with AH purchases and the synthing process itself.

In short...the cheapest and fastest way to your goal.

So without further adieu...Bonecraft, 0-60.



Bonecrafting is one of the easiest and cheapest crafts to get to 60. If you spend the time farming up bone chips (especially for the first 17 levels and middle-end 30-50ish...), it will cost you virtually nothing sans crystal costs. Even then, there are enough creatures floating around that simply leveling a job from 1-10 will net you a good portion of the wind crystals you will end up using. Should you not want to do that, buy your wind crystals in Windurst from the AH conveniently located next to the guild. Buying them off the Jeuno AH will usually mean you're spending twice as much.

Phase 1: Bone-Chip-A-Palooza

For this phase, you will be spending a lot of time farming in Gusgen Mines.

Some guides suggest using shell powder to level 3. That's perfectly fine and all, but I found if you pick up your bone chips for less than 1k/stack or farm them up, it works out to be about the same. The true advantage to doing shell powder instead of this relies on guild prices being cheap enough to justify it and AH prices for a stack of sea shells being in line as well. NPC the results of either for break even or profit if you farmed up the chips.

Recipe: Wind Crystal + 1x Bone Chip
Cap: Level 4

Same deal as the Hairpins. Farm up your bone chips or buy them off the AH for 1k/stack or less. You'll lose a little gil here if you bought solely off the AH, but not much. Certainly little enough that you can go maul a few gigas in Xarc to make up for it.

Recipe: Wind Crystal + 2x Bone Chip
Cap: Level 9

Turn in a Shell Ring and welcome to the next level.

This is the only recipe that I will list that requires a sub craft. Don't be dumb and buy your Brass Ingots off the AH. It will literally only cost you about 500-600/ingot if you take the time to buy zinc ores off the AH and the copper ores from guild or Denvihr (inside the Airship Dock). You're going to have to level the Goldsmithing sub at some point anyway too, so make yourself 2ish stacks of these ingots and go to town making the earrings. AH the results in the starter cities as they're relatively popular earrings for leveling new jobs.

Recipe: Wind Crystal, 1x Brass Ingot, 2x Bone Chip
Cap: Level 12

Spend some time in Konschtat Highlands mauling sheep. Having 3-4 stacks of sheep teeth should be enough for the 5 levels you're about to cover. If farming isn't your thing, buy off the AH for relatively cheap or buy from the guild. Either way, as long as you buy the bone chips and the teeth for 1k/stack or less each, then you can NPC the results for pretty close to break even. Save one of these for your rank item when you hit 18 during the next synth.

Recipe: Wind Crystal, 1x Bone Chip, 1x Sheep Tooth.
Cap: Level 17

Phase 2: Beetle-Parts-Palooza

Pick your favorite spot to maul beetles. I found the ones in Crawler's Nest to be the most friendly when it came to the beetle jaw portions. Most beetles have friendly shell drop rates, so picking a spot where respawns happen in 5 minutes would be most beneficial. Jugner Forest tends to be the best spot for the shells since there's an area in the central-north region that beetles seem to be present in spades. Save those insect wings too, you'll be using them in the Clothcraft burn.

Take some wind crystals with you and just farm the shells for these. The shells are cheap on the AH as well, but the drop rate is such that there really isn't a need to buy them unless you're just in a hurry. Carapace powder really only has one use, so AH'ing your results here will be a slow and painful process. Buying shells off AH will usually result in a net loss of 1k or more and given you have 4 levels to cover here, that can add up pretty quick if you NPC the results.

Recipe: Wind Crystal, 2x Beetle Shell
Cap: Level 21


Popular among the lower level rangers and pretty doggone cheap to make to boot. Farm up your beetle jaws and AH the results for 1k or more unless you get lucky with an HQ.

Recipe: Wind Crystal, 1x Beetle Jaw
Cap: Level 25

Need more beetle jaws for this portion too. These actually sell faster than the beetle rings on the AH. It's entirely possible to skip the rings entirely and just go straight to this, but I opted to put those in there due to the fact that there's more risk of loss should you bust a synth. Buy your silver earrings from Adelflete in the Lower Jeuno shop called "Gems by Kshama." These sell as fast as they do for two reasons:

1. They're damn good for the level, especially the HQs.
2. Bonecrafters making a living on these will buy them to desynth for silver ingots.

Again, skip the beetle rings altogether if you want as there is risk of loss trying to cover 6 levels here. Save one for your guild item. Hopefully your fame is high enough in Jeuno to take advantage of the lower earring prices.

Recipe: Wind Crystal, 1x Beetle Jaw, 1x Silver Earring
Cap: Level 27

You're going to lose a little money here if you buy all the horns off the AH, but farming the ram horns themselves are a pain too. Skip to Beetle Arrowheads if you want here, but it probably wouldn't hurt to bridge the gap as Beetle Arrowheads are a loss as well unless you've farmed up all of the mats.

Recipe: Wind Crystal, 1x Ram Horn
Cap: Level 29

Phase 3: Arrowheads-A-Palooza

Once you get to 30, you can start taking advantage of synthesis support and picking up key items. Picking up the Filing key item here allegedly makes skilling up through this section go faster, but given I was already well beyond this point when Filing actually came out, I have no way to really verify it.

Farm up tons of Bone Chips yet again, you're going to need them.

Popular arrow for skilling up Woodworking as well as for leveling up jobs that can actually use it. Unfortunately, they sell for a loss per stack if you buy up your mats off the AH.

Recipe: Wind Crystal, 1x Bone Chip, 1x Beetle Jaw
Cap: Level 33

Same deal as the Beetle Arrowheads, only they don't sell as fast and sell for even more of a loss. Good news is that the fangs are easier to farm up than the jaws.

Recipe: Wind Crystal, 1x Bone Chip, 1x Black Tiger Fang
Cap: Level 38

Pick up a horn ring off the AH or make one and turn it in to reach level 4.

Same boat as the Fang Arrowheads. Not very useful to many people and slow sellers. They will sell though, so have patience.

Recipe: Wind Crystal, 1x Bone Chip, 1x Ram Horn
Cap: Level 43

Hopefully you still have some beetle jaws laying around and some ram horns. Some will consider this synth optional and go straight for scorpion arrowheads due to the ease of farming. If you do nothing but farm your mats, I say go for it, but if you want to use a bit of a bridge synth, this is best way to go.

Recipe: Wind Crystal, 1x Ram Horn, 1x Beetle Jaw
Cap: Level 47

Here's where it gets easy. The vast majority of scorpions have a very high drop rate on their claws. Some of them in Crawler's Nest have a 100% drop rate on a claw, but their 16 minute respawn and limited number of spawns make it a bit of a nuisance to deal with. Should you pick up scorpion shells as well (and you'll pick up a few for sure), save them for a later synth.

Recipe: Wind Crystal, 1x Scorpion Claw, 1x Bone Chip
Cap: Level 53

Turn in a Carapace Gorget to reach the final level of this burn when you hit 48.

Phase 4: Almost There...

I have no idea why a level 1 piece of gear is a level 57 synth, but such is life. It's also such that this is a very cheap synth. Farm up some Yagudo Bead Necklaces and turn them into grass thread (part of the clothcraft burn). Farm up some Giant Femurs from the Dhalmels in Buburimu Peninsula and either go farm up fiend blood or buy it off the AH. AH the results for 1k or so in the starter cities. There isn't much of anything available at level 1 for the waist slot, but most people don't care about that slot at that level anyway. Use this as a bridge synth mostly.

Recipe: Wind Crystal, 1x Fiend Blood, 1x Grass Thread, 1x Giant Femur
Cap: Level 57

Due to drop rates being not-so-great on the shells, I recommend doing as little of this synth as possible due to the annoyance factor. This is why I listed the Blood Stone. There's also the option of the Beetle Knife to 59 as the materials for it are readily available and not so hard to farm up. However, given the fact that these shells make their appearance on the AH rather frequently and are priced anywhere from 1-2k generally, it's a mostly reasonable synth to deal with. Farming up the shells can be pain-staking work at times, but if you stick with it and farm up all you need, then you're not going to really spend anything other than crystal costs. These sell somewhat decently for close to cost on the AH. These will take you to 60 as well.

Recipe: Wind Crystal, 1x Scorpion Shell
Cap: Level 60

Conclusion

This is the first of this 0-60 Series. Most crafts aren't all that expensive to get to 60, even if you buy all your mats off the AH and can recover the gil lost from it relatively easy through other means. However, gil-burning a craft to 60 (or even 100 in some cases) often times will wreck the market for certain items. Bonecrafting (up to 60) is fortunate enough to have a rather unwavering set of recipes that only require you to spend a lot of time farming 2-3 certain items that are used in nearly every one of them if you don't want to waste a lot of money. On top of that, they're rather common items to boot and are readily available through farming or the AH.

Next up: Clothcraft

Before She Asks...

http://www.playonline.com/pcd/topics/ff11us/detail/4936/detail.html

No.

Dark Knight

So it has begun.

I determined a while ago that Dark Knight would be my next job to 75 followed up by either BLM or COR. In prepping for this particular venture, I discovered something that I hadn't really given much thought to...

I really f***ing hate farming for coffer keys.

The lead up to this is relatively simple. I got DRK to 37 a long while ago.

"But Q, you have DRG, WHM and PLD at 75, what purpose do you have for leveling DRK to 37?"

Well, it's a fun job and, before the 2H update, my thought process was along the lines of trying to figure out different ways I could boost DRG's damage in zerg situations.

Yeah I know...LOLDRG/DRK!!

Anyway, I have pretty much all the gear necessary for a 75DRK thanks to my DRG shenanigans. Full Ares, full N.Gear set (although the quest for Cursed Cap-1 still continues...0/12 currently), full homam, etc. Just need the weapons and whatnot.

It takes a while for me to get into the mood for leveling. I knew I wanted to level DRK, but I didn't want to put the party together or spend a ton of time in parties just yet. So for the past few weeks, I've been dumping XP scrolls and campaign ops into it. I ended up taking it from 37 to barely into 42 this way. That gets boring pretty quickly...

Given this, I went ahead and put a party together over the weekend consisting initially of:

Kaelis (PLD), Erimentha (RDM), Phacia (SCH), Kreoss (DRG), Mimitsu (BRD) and myself on DRK.

Phacia was our level sync anchor. We sync'd up at level 30 and headed out to do beetles in Eastern Altepa Desert. About an hour into the party, Kreo dc'd due to a power outage, so we picked up Leanaci as a temporary replacement until Kay could get there. About an hour after Kay got there, Phacia had to leave for work, so I got Mexibishe to come replace him on DNC. Now our party looks like this:

Kaelis (PLD), Erimentha (RDM), Faisa (DNC), Mimitsu (BRD), Kaylea (DRG) and myself on DRK.

Eri was our Level Sync anchor at this point. We stayed in the desert until she hit 37, then moved to East Ronfaure [S] where we partied until Eri hit 42. What's remarkable about this party is that Eri started the party right at 31. I started just barely into 42. When the party was done, Kaelis and I were both 50, Faisa and Mimi had picked up a number of merits, Kay went from something like 53-58 and Eri went from 31-42.

We also had a PL assist from Tohmane, although I suspect he was mostly there to keep Mimitsu alive...

*cough*WHIPPED*cough*

Anyway, back to my original statement.

Being at level 50, that obviously opens up the AF quests for a job. I have 3 jobs at 75 and have done the AF quest for them multiple times, so why this revelation is just now dawning on me is beyond me, but...

I really do hate farming for coffer keys.

I ended up spending 3+ hours in Davoi last night killing the piss out of every orc I could find with no luck. I even had Kay up there as RDM/THF and Suraph up there with TH3 helping out to no avail.

I thought SE fixed those coffer key drop rates.

Once I get past this stumbling block, the push to 75 will begin. If you thought I had issues staying alive on DRG, wait until you see DRK :)

I found...

...baby Canuck.

Bluuuuuuuuuuuuuurr....

...rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrghhhlewargle.