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The Ultimate Guide to Crafting

Table of Contents

1.1 Introduction to Crafting
1.2 Crafting Recipe Lists
1.3 Note on High Quality and Upgrade Items

2.0 Approaches to Crafting
2.1 The Low-Cost Approach
2.2 The High-Output Approach

3.0 Getting Rid Of Your Product

4.0 Tips for Crafting: When to craft (includes order of game days)
4.1 Tips for Crafting: The Secret of Decomposition

5.0 A Crafting Example: Cooking (0-30)

1.1 Introduction to Crafting

This tutorial assumes that you may be completely new to FFXI, so let me begin by explaining the system of crafting. Crafting is a method of creating objects by means of synthesis – you ‘use’ a crystal, then you are prompted to provide ingredients with which to synthesize. Depending on the crystal you use and the ingredients you provide, your character will attempt to synthesize a certain item. If you attempt recipes that do not actually exist, it will tell you so and will not attempt to craft anything – so you are not at risk of losing anything by trying a non-existent recipe. Your ability to craft the item depends mainly on your current skill level in that particular crafting guild (other factors will be examined throughout the tutorial – mainly in section 4.0). There are a total of 8 crafting guilds in the game: Blacksmithing (also known as ‘Smithing’), Goldsmithing, Carpentry (aka Woodworking), Boneworking, Alchemy, Tanners (aka Leathercrafting), Weaving (aka Clothcrafting), and Cullinary (aka cooking). There is also a 9th guild, fishing, but that does not involve crafting or synthesis – but rather just fishing, which is a different topic altogether so it isn’t necessary that we examine it in this tutorial. It should also be noted that some crafting recipes require skills in two or three guilds – for example when making a Claymore. It requires a certain amount of Smithing, Leatherworking, and Woodworking skill in order to make.

1.2 Crafting Recipe Lists

Several sights have good crafting recipe lists. Refer to the following links for lists of existing recipes and the crafting skill you should be at to have reasonable chances of creating the item. Some of the listing even include a range, for example it may list a recipe and in brackets it’ll show (6-10). What this means is that you can start making this item with a good success rate once you crafting skill level is 6, and making this item will lead to skill improvements until your skill level reaches 10. Skill levels will be explained more in section 2.0.

http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/db/guilds.html
http://db.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/file/final_fantasy_xi_guild_recipes.txt
(if problems with direct linking occurs, go to www.gamefaqs.com and search final fantasy , then find final fantasy XI for the PC and click on the FAQs).
http://www.killingifrit.com/list.php?c=guilds
www.ffxionline.com (listing is on the right hand side under ‘Guilds’)

Some listings have certain recipes that others don’t, although most of these lists are pretty complete. It’s still nice to verify multiple lists though J

1.3 Note on High-Quality and Upgrade Items

When crafting, it is sometimes possible to obtain high quality items, which will often show up as a + 1 type item, for example a Bee Spatha + 1. This occurs for a number of reasons which will be covered in section 4.0, but luck is definitely a factor. The recipe does not differ at all to obtain these items. Additionally, high quality items can possibly have slightly different names, for example a flame sword is a high quality fire sword. High quality items have better attributes and/or effects than the regular item, and are worth more gil. Upgrade items are a different story. Upgrade items occur when you take an item as part of your crafting recipe, and upgrade it into a different item. These have specific recipes and can be replicated provided you have the necessary skill level. This includes items you see around such as San’Dorian boots, or Bastokan Knuckles, or Windurstian cloaks. These items involve crafting with a conquest point item, and turning it into something else. When you see ‘Federation’ items, those are high-quality upgrade items. So may be you were creating a pair of San’Dorian boots but got lucky, and out came a pair of Federation boots! As with other high quality items, these are generally better. The recipe listings are still somewhat unknown to a large portion of the NA community, but some primitive listings such as this one have been developed:

http://www.ihtu.com/~iurbina/ffxi/conquest/items/hqcq%20translation%20notes.txt
Other found listings and recipes will be edited into the tutorial as they are found.

2.0 Approaches to Crafting

When you create a character, all of your crafting skills start at 0. There are also a set of rankings, going from: Amateur (0-10), Recruit (10-20), Initiate (20-30), Novice (30-40), and also rankings from 40-50, 50-60, 60-70, 80-90, and 90-100, all of the names of which I’ll refrain from naming for the sake of space and clarity. As you attempt to synthesize an item within your skill range, there are three possible outcomes: You synthesize the item correctly, the synthesis fails (losing at least the crystal, and potentially any number of the ingredients used in the recipes), or you obtain a high quality synthesis, which were introduced in section 1.3. Sometimes high quality synthesis can include getting a larger number of the item, for example getting 66 shurikens (throwing weapon) instead of 33 from the recipe. At the same time, if the item is in the appropriate skill range, your skill will go up by a factor of 0.1 most commonly, but 0.2 skill increases are still common, and the 0.3 skill increases are rare. If you attempt to synthesize items to easy for your skill level, your skill will no longer improve – although you can still make the item. If it is too high of a skill level, you will constantly fail losing most of the ingredients involved. You do not need to be a part of the guild to begin to increase your skill level in that guild, and there is no limit to the number of guilds you can be a part of. However, your ability to improve your skill is capped every 10 levels, at which point you must join the guild in order to increase your skill any further. You will then be tested by the Guildmaster for that particular guild. He will ask for a certain item and once the item demanded is traded to him he will promote you to the next skill level, for example he will promote you from Amateur to Recruit, uncapping your skill level until 20. You should know that you can take these tests as early as #8 of that skill level. So you can be promoted as early as skill level 8 to recruit from amateur, and as early as level 18 to initiate. Important tips for increasing the success rate of your crafting will be looked at in section 4.0. The location of the guilds can be found at: http://ffxi.stratics.com/content/info/crafting/crafting-intro.php and just about anywhere else. Next, we will examine the two most basic approaches to crafting: Low-cost and high output.

2.1 The Low-Cost Approach

The key to the low-cost approach is through the use of NPC (Non-Playable Character) vendors scattered across the world. The cost of the ingredients necessary to craft are generally more expensive at the Auction House than at the NPC vendors for three reasons: first, many people are unaware of the various item locations from vendors, second, people are willing to pay simply out of convenience, and finally many items are sold by guild shops, which have limited amount of inventory at the start of each game day that they open. Players looking to make profit will camp that NPC vendor until the start of the next day and try to buy out that ingredient as much as possible then make profit by selling it at the AH. Of course, only guild shops will run out of supply. There are vendors scattered all over that will sell you items cheaper, so for this approach it is strongly suggested that you have at least two mules located in the two cities that you did not start at, and your main character in your home town. Generally there are stores such as grocery and general stores that sell the same items as guild shops in the various towns, as well as the less popular guild shops set up in port towns such as Mhaura and Selbina. A growing item database is Allakhazam’s, which has a search function. http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/db/search.html]<a href="http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/db/search.html" target="_blank">http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/db/search.html</a> . Although it is far from complete, it is still very handy at tracking down vendors that sell the items you need for crafting. Another way of going about reduced costs is by making the least costly item to increase your skill. Considerations for this are the materials and the amount used in each recipe, and the crystal (you’re better off using an earth crystal recipe than a fire crystal recipe, because of how much cheaper earth crystals are). A third way of reducing costs is by chaining crafting. What I mean by this is producing other things from your products. An example of this would be using yagudo necklaces to create grass threads to get your skill level from 0-3 in clothweaving, and then using those grass threads you have to get your skill from 3-4 to produce grass clothes, then using leftover grass threads and the grass cloths to create capes from 4-10.

2.2 The High Output Approach

This mostly applies to higher and mid-range crafting items. As you begin to craft, you’ll notice that some things sell for significantly more than the price of the items require. Examples that I’m particularly familiar with are things like Insect Balls, which are only a LV 24 cooking skill item, and require an earth crystal(30 gil) + little worm (3) + distilled water (10) + Millioncorn (44) = 89 gil. Yet, they sell commonly for 300-400 gil a piece, at about 300%+ the cost of the materials. Although the profit isn’t large in terms of gil, it is still a good idea to craft these while increasing your skill to make a profit while you’re at it. Other mid-range items include meat mithkabobs (if you can get your hands on the ingredients for a fair price). These are just two examples of the many items which sell for a noticeable amount more than they cost. Another consideration is the price the item sells for at NPC vendors, which will be examined more in the next section.

3.0 Getting Rid of Your Product

There are several strategies for getting rid of the items you produce. One of them is the Auction House, which to maximize efficiency you must use multiple characters or mules – since you can only sell up to 7 items at the auction house at a time. Even with multiple characters, this can be tedious and the amount of items you produce prove to be simply too much. Luckily there is the bazaar to consider. If you have no problem with leaving your computer on overnight, then simply head over to Jeuno, put the items in your bazaar, and have a nice sleep. Why Jeuno you ask? Because the auction house there has a large amount of tax, about 110 for single items and 500 for stacks of 12, whereas your bazaar only has a 10% tax. So often, low cost items sell cheaper in your bazaar than at auction house because of the bazaar tax vs. the AH tax. If you want to sell higher priced items via bazaar, you’re probably better off in one of the main cities where there is no tax. However, if you’re the kind of evil macro user that I am and enjoy to reel in profit by fishing overnight, you should consider the third option. This third and definitely the most convenient way of dealing with items you produce is by selling them to NPC vendors. The selling of goods works in two ways in FFXI. If you try to sell the item to a guild shop, they will offer it a price at a fraction of the price it sells for there, and since the price goes up as more people buy items at a guild shop, you make the most by selling these items to guild shops. However, these guild shops have a limited amount that they will accept before saying their inventory is full for the day. Other shops, such as magic shops, will buy any item you have in your inventory for a slightly lower price than a guild shop will ever offer but have no limit to the amount they will buy. You can use this as a consideration in getting rid of your product. Items that have been heavily devalued (especially low level crafting items) sell easily and at almost the same price to NPC vendors. An example of how selling to NPC vendors can work to your benefit is shown in the cooking example in section 5.0.

4.0 Tips for Crafting: When to Craft

There are a number of different factors that effect how successful your synthesizing is, most obviously of which is your skill level. Successful crafting occurs reasonable if you are within at least 4 of the minimal crafting skill demanded. If you have a much higher skill level than that demanded for the creation of the item, then you are also much more likely to obtain a high quality item. Another factor is something called Advanced Image Synthesis Support, which increases the chance of successfully crafting items. It is strongly, strongly, strongly suggested that you get this every time you start crafting, and not only that but one of the 3 NPCs per guild that offer this service, offers a stronger version of which you have to pay gil for. The amount you have to pay is equal to 30 * the level of your crafting. So as an amateur from 0-10 you will pay 30 gil for that support, and from 10-20 you will pay 60 gil. This lasts a lot longer than the other synthesis support and is a lot more effective. It is without a doubt worth it since when you consider crystals cost from 30-350 gil each, and every failed synthesis will result in loss of a crystal AND potentially ingredients – one prevented failure and you already make your gil back! Less obvious is the day on which you craft. To understand this, you must understand which elements are weak to which. This will be explained using a single arrow to show dominance, so fire -> ice means that fire will defeat ice.
Water -> Fire -> Ice -> Wind -> Earth -> Thunder -> Water (as you can see, we’re back with water). Light and Dark both oppose each other and are separate from this loop.
Each in-game day has a name and a property corresponding to that name, for example Firesday has a red moon and is considered to have Fire-based attributes that day. Here is the list of the order of in-game days:
Firesday -> Earthsday -> Watersday -> Windsday -> Icesday -> Thundersday -> Lightsday -> Darksday -> (end of the week, start over with Firesday).

Now, here are the statistics concerning when it is best to craft from several high level crafting JPN players on Diabolos server who linked me to several sites. These are the relative crafting bonuses for the day you craft on:

the day before: 26%
the same day as the crystal used: 10%
the conquering elemental day: 18%
any other day: average 9%

This is all related to the type of crystal you use. What this tells you for example is, say you are crafting with a Fire Crystal. You are then concerned about Firesday. The day before (darksday) you have a 26% bonus. The same day (Firesday) you have a mere 10% bonus, and the conquering elemental day(watersday) you have an 18% bonus. Every other day you have approximately a 9% bonus. This is perhaps why people think your crafting isn’t as great with fire crystals on iceday – because iceday only has the lowest bonus of 9% (since ice is in fact not the conquering element for fire, water is. Fire is the one that is more powerful than ice). Although these figures are not perfect, I have been told that they are a fair representation.

A final consideration is the moon stage. Every full moon and every new moon, crafting (along with fishing and mining and many other things) receives a partial additional bonus to success rates. I have heard a full moon is even better than a new moon for crafting. Both a full moon and a new moon last just about 7 hours real time, which is about 7 in-game days which is nearly an in-game week (which is 8 days, or 8 hours real-life time). When these moon cycles occur can be seen in the Virtual Vanadiel Timer at http://www.manakun.com/hari/ . So, if you wanted the best possible chance of crafting a fire crystal item, you should craft on the darksday when the full moon is out while also having the most powerful advanced image synthesis support (not to mention the highest skill level possible ;)) .

4.1 Tips For Crafting: The Secret of Decomposition

Decomposition is the word associated with the Lightning Crystal (the same element that is often referred to as thunder). It is sensible when considering crafting certain items, for example when synthesizing Linen Thread, you use a Lightning Crystal to ‘decompose’ two Flax Flowers. But, there is actually something of a secret associated with the lightning crystal. Certain recipes can be ‘decomposed’ into the ingredients used to create it. The exact listing of all of the items I do not have, but I do know that you must have a skill of at least high enough to make the item in order to be successful with the decomposition. An example of how this would be useful is with the Leather Bandana, a low skill and very cheap Leathercrafting item. Since they also drop off of orcs, they sell especially cheap in San’Doria: about 100-200 gil. But with a lightning crystal (about 100 gil cost) and a Leather Banadana -> you can decompose it to receive anywhere from 1, 2, or 3 squares of Sheep Leather. And Sheep Leather sells for about 500 gil from the AH! That’s anywhere from 300-1300 gil profit from an easily obtainable item. As people find more and more items which you can decompose, you should simply post a reply to this tutorial and help us make a nice list .

5.0 A Quick Crafting Example: Cooking 0-30

Here are some examples of how to improve your cooking skill in a day from 0-30. This method is cost efficient but also kind of cheats in the sense that it crafts certain items out of it’s range for convenience. This is why you should take a look at section 4.0 before you attempt to craft and ALWAYS remember to use the high quality advanced image synthesis support.

0-3: Water Crystal + 4 San’Dorian Carrots = 4 Carrot Broths. Water crystals cost 300 per stack, or 25 gil each. Carrots cost very little in any of the San’Dorian shopsVendors that sell them (again use http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/db/search.html to easily find the locations of items). Each stack of 12 carrot broths sold (although slowly) on my mules for about 450-500 gil a piece. The loss of gil is minimal (if not profitable).

3-11: Wind Crystal + Bastore Sardine = 2 Sliced Sardine. The Bastore Sardine can be bought for about 54 gil at the fishing guild shop. The Wind Crystals cost about 1.1k per stack, or less than 100 gil each. The Sliced Sardines sell for about 64 gil each at the fishing guild shop and you produce 2 per recipe. Since your failure is noticeable from 3-6, adv. Image synthesis support is definitely suggested. The loss is extremely minimal, about 15 gil per successful craft.

11-20: Ice Crystal + Rock Salt + Selbina Milk = 4 sticks of Selbina Butter. The selbina milk costs about 40 gil at vendors in Selbina and SanDoria, although noticeably more at the Guild Shop in Windurst. Rock Salt costs about 10 gil each in Sandoria, and ice crystals sell for about 1.2k a stack. However, this only produces 4 sticks of Selbina butter, which sell questionably well on AH and not overly well to the vendors. At this level you will experience your largest loss in gil, although it’s still neglectible compared to other crafts.

20-26(optional to 28ish): Earth Crystal + Little Worm + Distilled Water + Millioncorn = 12 Insect Balls. The Earth crystals are valued at 25 gil each (300 for 12), Little Worms sell constantly for 3 gil each at the Catalyst shop in Windurst Waters, and the tavern there also sells distilled water for 10 gil each – both are unending supply and don’t change price. The Millioncorn is subject to price change so is best bought in SanDoria. You make about 300% profit from selling this recipe, so no loss should be involved, even profit should be expected.

26-30: Water Crystal + 2 Kazham Pineapples: If you buy the Kazham pineapples in Kazham or other vendors you will save a lot of gil, and pineapple juice will again sell for more than it costs. You could passively make this up as you level, making juice for your mages if you’re not keen on power-levelling your cooking skill. Minimal loss or profit should be expected.

30+: There are many possible ways of going about raising past 30, but since I have not yet done it I can’t offer solid advice. But the big monster meat mithkabobs can be made as early as 30, although I hear it’s safest not to make them until 35ish – since they’re so costly to make a failed synthesis can hurt.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this crafting guide. If there’s anything you disagree with, or any simple corrections you want made, simply PM me or add a reply to this thread. I’ll probably edit / tweak out the tutorial, in particular the cooking example as I level it up further. Feel free to PM me known decomposition recipes and I’ll compile a list and add it to the tutorial.