Ok,
We all see alot of posts about how broke people are and that they just started the game and can't make any money. Along with that and the all the new European players comming on board I figured I would write a quick guide to making some money as a new player. Well my wife just started playing the game 2 weeks ago and has had no problem making money. Here is what I told her.
1) Signet
First and foremost before going out to level your little lvl one character talk to one of the gate guards. Gate gaurds have a few valuable things to offer you and the most imortant one at this level is what's called a "Signet". Gate guards are stationed at the exits of the cities and will have 2 letters at the end of their names, like W.w. or T.K. Baiscally you ask the gate guard to cast a signet on you. What this does is put a small icon at the top of your screen that looks like a diamond. Having this signet cast on you allows two things to happen.
a) It allows you to gain what we call CP or Conquest Points that you can spend later,
on some nice equipment for you to use or to sell if you wish. This also goes towards
putting your nation in the lead against the other nations.
b) It also allows you the chance to obtain Crystals when out leveling. If you have a
Signet cast on you, when you defeat an enemy, you now have a chance of them dropping a
crystal.
Why are Crystals so great you may ask. Well 2 reasons really..
a) Some crystals such as Fire crystals sell for about ~2,000 gil at the Auction House.
b) You can also save your crystals to use for crafting, such as clothcraft, alchemy,
or cooking just to name a few.
At this stage of the game I would not bother saving your crystals for crafting. It takes some start
up money and you won't make much money for a long time crafting. So after you get a stack (12 total)
of the same type of Crystal, head over to your local Auction House and put your stack of crystals up for sale.
2) Item Drops
Secondly when your out leveling you will get item drops. Different enemies (mobs) drop differnet items. To a lvl 60 person these items will be pretty useless but to a lower level person such as yourself, these items are MONEY!. Now as your leveling your inventory will start to fill up with all these differnt items and crystals. Every once in a while go into your menu and select "Item" from the list. This will pull up a list of all your items. Now hit the triangle button or plus sign button on your keyboard and select "Auto" from the sorting menu. This will take all items and crystals of the same kind a stack them together freeing up more space in your inventory. Now go back and kill some more stuff and keep saving everything that drops. After you get a few stacks of 12 of any item, head back to the AH and put them up for sale using the method from the Auction House section below.
Some of the different types of things that drop are....
(These are just examples do not throw anything way, SELL EVERYTHING)
-Beehive Chips
-Rabbit Hides
-Ore
-Silk Threads
3) Fishing
Thirdly you can try your hand at fishing. Please note that fishing take a very very long time to skill up but you can get started with very little money. If you want to skill up fishing past lvl 10 your going to need to make your way to Windurst Port and sign up at the fishing guild. After some of your stuff has sold, if you want to start fishing, head out and buy yourself a Bamboo fishing rod and a stack of insect balls. Insect balls are used as bait to catch "Moat Carp". Moat carps are fished up in many areas with Fresh Water fishing spots. Why do you want to fish for Moat Carps you might ask...well
a) They sell for about ~4,000 gil a stack. Not a bad investment if you think about it.
b) You can turn these in (as a quest item) for what many consider to be the greatest
fishing rod in all of VanaDeil. Lu Shang's Fishing rod. This quest required you to
turn in 10,000 moat carps. Thats alot of fishing.
c) You can level your fishing skill on moat carps from lvl 1-11 pretty easily on these.
Mostly at least for now your going to be fishing moat carps to sell for money and to skill up on.
4) Auction House
Here is an example walk through of how to sell crystals at the Auction House (AH).
Once at the AH select the Auction House window and choose Bid. Then go down to Crystals and select it. A list will pop up for all the available crystals and how many are up for sale. You will notice two listing for each type of cyrstal. The first one will be for single crystal sales and the one below it will be for a stack. It looks like the following
Earth Crystal (45)
Earth Crystal 12 (10)
The number 12 represents a stack of 12 and the number in parenthesis represents how many are currently up for sale. As you can see from this example there are 45 single Earth Crystals for sale and 10 stacks of Earth crystals for sale. If you select the second one a menu will show that allows you to Bid or Check the recent history. Select the history and take a look at how much the Earth Crystals are going for. It will list the last 12 or so sales of Earth Crystals so that you get an idea of what they are selling for.
Lets say the last 6 sales were for 500, 400, 450, 500, 480, and 500. As you can see the average price is around 480 or so for a stack of earth crystals. Now that we have this information back out of the "Bid" menu with the circle button or the esc key on your keyboard. Now that your back at the "Bid", "Sell", "Sales Status" menu, choose Sell. Now select the item you want to sell, in this case the stack of 12 earth crystals. Once the name turns yellow and if you look in your log it will tell you how much it costs you to sell a stack, select the name again. Now you can enter in your sell price for the crystals. From the list above, I would probably list my crystals at 480 or 490. Now your done, you have a stack of crystals up for sale and go back out and start leveling again. Remember to always get a signet cast on you if it wears off.
When your items or crystals sell at the AH the money is automatically sent to your Mog House. If you go to you mog house and select the moogle there, he will give you a menu. on the menu will be an option for "Delivery Box". Select this option and it will list your gil that you recieved if anything was sold. Take the money out of your delivery box and you will now have some gil to spend.
Also when you go back to the AH make sure you go into the "Sales History" option and clear out anything that has already sold. Items in yellow mean that they have been sold and you need to slect them to clear them from the AH. You can only place 7 items up for auction at any given time, so make sure you clear out your sold items.
5) Closing
Well thats about it. My wife was able to take her Blm from lvl 1-10 in 2 weeks (Casual player) and make her self about 16k doing just the signet and the item drops. Fishing is a bonus thing you may want to do as later on in your fishing career you can stand to make alot of money fishing. But it will take you a considerable amount of time to do so.
Special Note:
Please everyone remember, we all started at lvl 1 at some point and you may think there is no way to make money but we all did, and I have tried to give you some pointers on how to get started. I can't stress enough that begging for gil is one of the lowest things you can do in this game. Take your time, get your signet and save your item drops. You can easily make enough money to get started in a craft of your choice, start fishing, and buy all your spells, weapons, and armor. If my wife can do it so can you.
Edited, Fri Sep 17 14:04:21 2004 by Thiefcat
Edited, Fri Sep 17 14:25:56 2004 by Thiefcat
Edited, Fri Sep 17 15:18:49 2004 by Thiefcat
