Tales of a CrafterFollow

Soooo ... not that anyone is interested, and I'm sure you have all experienced this, but I wanted to post it anyway !

A while back I decided I was going to start cooking to save myself money on the foods that I like to eat (crimson jelly, mushroom stew, marinara pizza, tav tacos, etc). I created a mule just to start stacking up the mats that I would eventually need, once I got around to it. About a month or so ago I finally decided it was time to take the dive. Off to Windy Waters I went. To my amazement, the skill ups came relatively quick and before I knew it, I was able to buy raw fish handling and start crafting low level sushi!

One thing I noticed rather quickly was I used a lot of the same ingredients, which low and behold I can grow myself with gardening. Off to the AH I go to buy pots and earthy furniture to fill up my MH. On all 3 characters (gear mule, mats mule, and main) I set up pots and planted different seeds for each one. Woo Hoo, 30 pots going, making even more goodies I will need for cooking!! I even managed to talk my BF into doing the same thing and now he had 30 plants growing as well!! YAY!! So now, I find myself logging onto the game before work, just to check my plants and then again when I get home. It's a total obsession!

I leveled up cooking to 68 and found my next synth was Chalaimbille, which I was ecstatic about, since I could store until I was ready to make pizzas! One problem ... in order to make the cheese, I need Carbon Dioxide, which is alchemy (21) craft and there are NONE on AH!! So off I go to Bastok Mines to start leveling up alchemy. When I got within 5 levels of 21, I started using the Carbon Dioxide recipe to skill up on and kept them for my cheese!

Now you may be wondering where I got the trumpet shells from! This leads me into my next adventure. I need to skill up fishing so that I can catch the fish/items I need for cooking. OMG does it ever end? So off to the AH I go to pick up a rod and the fishing skill + gear. I head out to West Ronfaure and start fishing up crayfish and moat carp. But where oh where are the skill ups? I have literally been fishing for about a week, usually bringing in around 75-100 fish per trip (I just can't do it for 200 fish, sorry hardcore fisherpeeps) and I am still only level 4 ... WTF!?! Luckily I have a friend that fished me up a couple of stacks of trumpet shells and I bought one stack to make the carbon dioxide!

As I am crafting all this fun stuff, I am keeping items that I may need for later synths. The next thing I know, I am completely out of storage space on my mats mule. What is a girl to do? Well, the answer is simple, level the mule up to 20, get the appropriate fame, and start the mog safe expansion quests. So this past Monday, I literally spent all day on my mule. I leveled war to 10, mnk to 20, turned in Cornettes to Yoran, completed subjob quest, took the boat from Mhaura to Selbina, turned in stacks upon stacks of millioncorn, ran to Jeuno and started the gobbie bag quests as well. To my amazement, I actually got to rank 7, giving me 70 inventory slots, 70 satchel slots, and 70 sack slots. That should totally solve my inventory woes!

So yesterday, as I am stalking the guild pattern page on the AH website, I finally see it refresh to show me that my daily GP item requires Cooking (29) no biggie, I'm 76 and Woodworking (9) ... oh h3ll here we go again!! Off to Northern San D'Oria I go to pick up some logs and start my adventures in Woodworking. I crafted as much as I could until I ran out of mats, then headed out to East Ronfaure to fish up some salmon while I waited for the guild shop to open back up. I continued to craft to level 7 woodworking, keeping the stacks of lumber just in case, and then made my smoked salmon. It was a pleasant surprise to get skill ups for woodworking while cooking!

As I'm running to Windurst Waters (which I really need to change my home nation back to Windy, because even w/ Tahrongi maw, chocojig, and Tandavas it's still too much sometimes) I realize, I have not changed out of my fishing skill +1 gear (other than my Tandavas) in 3 days ... 3 days I have done nothing but fish, cook, and woodwork. I haven't gone to Aby, I haven't killed any monsters, I haven't died (which is the largest surprise), I haven't done anything but craft!! That completely amazes me! I have actually said no to LS members that want to know if I want to join them for a NM hunt because I was too busy! LOL!!

The dynamics of this game totally changed for me when I started crafting. I have new goals and while I still find myself on the forums reading about ingame activities, I find myself spending more time research crafting supplies and skill up synths. I have scanned through 13 pages .... 13 ... of the tradeskill forums looking for as much information as possible. I was reading threads from 2008 on fishing, because the lack of skill ups was frustrating. Glad to know I'm not the only one!! I log on in the morning before work, which I never used to do, and I check my mules when I log on in the evenings before logging my main, then again before logging off for the night! All so I can see what they may have grown or how their AH sales are doing, since I have them all selling food for me!! I must say, it is definitely crazy and I can only foresee it getting crazier!!

Thanks!

Also ~ I'm definitely curious to know how many people have experienced this type of change in your game behavior.

As a LS member and her boy friend I have to say, I have noticed the change in her play style as of late. While I do find my self on the positive side of her new crafting activities, I can also confirm that she does pass over on some nm kills due to crafting.

Then she wonders why I never got into crafting. I have so much going on in game and so much gear that there is no way I could find the room. I really do want to start wood workings, but after watching what she has gone through with parts of the crafting process, I can't say it makes me want to dive right into it.

Also, as far as how into it she has gotten, you should see the worksheet she made for cooking and for wood workings of things she put together. In word documents it sits at over 100 pages long. So she has done her research.

I am proud that she has stayed with it for as long as she has, the highest I have gotten was to 18 for smithing and even that seemed like a chore. Of course that may have been because I was mining my own ores as well.

We have actually already talked about this. When I was leveling my blm and whm, my BF did the quests with me and then sold the scrolls for a pretty nice little income. When I leveled my mule the other day, the first thing I said was "Oh, we could run these quests again on my mule and sell the scrolls! Cha Ching!" LOL

I can completely relate to this. I decided on clothcraft as my main, and by the time I had gotten my subcrafts up to various levels to support this, I realized I might as well just finish all of them. I know a few people in my LS think I'm a little crazy for having gotten cloth to 100 and everything else (not counting fishing) to 60, plus having picked up every guild point item for cloth except the non-HQ ring. The major reason I put a mule in every starter city and one in Jeuno was to have access to every AH and all the regional vendors for better synthesis materials access; the storage sure came in handy though, when I started saving pretty much every drop from every mob because they're almost all useful for crafting. At this point, all I can say is - synergy, I've got my eye on you. ;)

I too enjoy crafting and would like to add another to your list. Synergy. It's interesting, there's no risk of losing materials, and it can complement your crafting. Also, the synergy crafted teleport earrings are key for cooking skillup with no wasted time.

As an example, I recently decided to go for ebisu pole. Three weeks ago, my fishing was 56. Through some rather ridiculous luck, I traded some liks and gugrusaurus given to me by a friend and got Opal Silk on 3rd trade, and Bamboo Shoot on 7th trade. Now I needed 78 skill and Serpent Rumors. So, just after midnight JP time, I log into ffxiah.com, check guild fish. Click wikia link to see where best to catch it and with what. Go catch my fish/buy from npc/ah, etc. Use my federation earring to teleport to windurst waters right near the cooking guild. Run down to Port, trade my fish in, grab advanced fishing support. Use my Nashmau earring. Fish at least an hour, sometimes 2, then go off to do my other stuff for the day. I get 1-2 levels of skill in fishing per day this way using Albatross Ring so I don't have to focus particularly hard to land fish and Pelican Ring for increased rate of skill. Now 74 fishing. I hope/expect to get my Ebisu this sunday.

These earrings are GREAT for cooking too. A lot of recipes are great skill up choices due to the fact that all the ingredients can be obtained from npc vendors. Unfortunately, it sometimes seems like SE planned for you to have to visit 4-6 cities to get everything you need this way. Even when they are conquest vendors, it seems like your ingredients are scattered all over vana'diel. There are 9 or 10 earrings I think, one for every single city in present day vana'diel. I made every earring except Tavnazian Safehold back when the cooldown on them was 24 hours. I didn't do Tav because I had ring. Now that the cooldown on the earrings has been reduced to 1 hour and ring hasn't, I'll pick up a waystone and make myself a earring for Tav too.

They're mostly a pretty easy synth. Each requires a waystone from the city you want an earring for, which are sold by a npc merchant in that city. The other ingredient is a silver earring. You can buy those from the jewelry store in Lower Jeuno for 1,250 gil which is cheaper than the 4k I usually see them for on AH. The waystones average about 10k. The earring has 30 charges and since May has had a 1 hour cooldown. Breaks down to a little over 300g per charge, which is a pretty cost effective form of transport. Arrival points are all pretty convenient to vendors and other services in cities. Here's a link for the Federation earring, which drops you within sight of the Cooking Guild. It can be made at basically 0 synergy with a little luck.

http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Federation_Earring