Craft madness week continues!

First off let me apologize for my wall-o-text posts.

Took bonecraft from 0 to 50 over the last two days and got 18 levels into cloth also last night. Also bumped fishing GP to 50k so I should have those waders in under a week unless SE decides to screw me with a string of 1200 gp days.

Must say I am rather excited to obtain my first ever bit of GP equipment^^.

Bonecrafting was a blast, I will be capping that off at 60 after I complete the other items on my vanity craft list. I learned the value of properly estimating material quanities too... Other than over estimating and purchasing an obscene amount of beetle jaws Bone went very smooth. The "ring" levels hurt a bit as it would be nearly impossible to sale the amount of rings I made (bone, beetle and horn) but the arrowhead levels provided some return on my investment. All in all I estimate bone at a 50-75% loss >< not good at all but I can say that if a few weeks of farming pre-crafting had been done I would have made a tidy profit. It also was such a blur that I really have no clue what crafted items or excess materials I have floating around at the moment so maybe the losses are not as bad as I think.
The investment into bone was moderate and close to my guess. The one thing that perhaps saved me from going farther over budget was the number of synths that required non-stackable items (ram horns, scorpion claws, giant femurs) and that all the ring levels could be offset by desynthing the items back into workable stock. The beauty of non-stackable items is the ability to sit at the AH near cap and purchase them bit by bit and not getting stuck with a whole pile of 4k items clogging your inventory.
I kept synthing till I ran out of materials and passed my 48 goal, eventualy I will bring it to 60 for the "cap"

Since I was already in windy and crafting there has its perks (quick run to the fishing guild to turn in points) I decided to tackle cloth.

I really only want cloth to 30 for now, if I can find a "reasonable" route I will run it to journeyman also to ease the eventual 60 cap cap run much like I did with bone.
So far cloth is an utter pain in the ass. Having to go back and make cloth from threads to make items to desynth into threads to make cloth is making me dizzy. Circle of life I guess. I would much rather purchase the cloth and eat the loss but I must have picked the wrong day/time to start and got shafted. I really think I may have over estimated my needed materials on the venture but a good deal of them sell fast on the AH in windy so offloading a good chunk of them quickly is a viable option vs. NPC'n them for a loss.

After the cloth run is complete I think a crafting break is in order to sell off the items I made and open some more room on the mules again. Then on to leather o.O...

Another thing I noticed is that the "Big Four" late 50's early 60's body gear is all 69ish cap crafting. Vermy, Hauby, Byrnie and Scorpion Harness all perfectly capable of being custom made and signed on a single character^^.

Arrows, quivers and bolts Oh my!

Level 70 WW obtained! Tens of thousands of arrows and bolts muled! Total cost of running WW to 70 in two sittings? 3.1 million gil. Guess-timated value of muled quivers and lumber 1.75-2.2 million gil. Total estimated loss 800k - 1.25mil gil. All in all it cost me my Marine male gloves to obtain Artisan status, not shabby.
Of course if I take my time and mule the swag off slowely I can get it closer to 300k (another guess). Still no hard data on the returns, I have not sold a single item yet. To be honest I had hoped to go a bit slower and roll with the market on a good portion of it but I caught the crafting bug and went nuts with it. The big hurt came from synthing Demon Arrows and Platinum Arrows, 400-500k per stack of those arrow heads, 3 stacks total between them.

I need a minimum of Lvl 72 WW to bother repairing Lu', but my legendary fish catching days wont be coming around for a while so I will take 70 on up as slow as I can stand, most likely break rod fishing for dual skill targeting large fish for fish skill that will also break my rods to work off those last few levels of WW with repairs.
No fishing the last two days, did not bother to go for GP fish as the points were crap, todays points are just as crappy but I need the last 25k turned in for waders soon. I may start the break rod fishing today if I have the time to sort the debris from my WW marathon out to mules. Kind of sucks that I spent all that time less than a week ago cleaning and organizing mules to have Hurricane Lumber land on them^^.
next on the list is to cap out alchemy and cooking, just a few levels of each to hit that sexy 60. Alchemy at 58 so a night of ogre eels and thats done, cooking is 56 .. I loved cooking but the recipe items take up too much space to make for a comfortable cruise.

So leather, cloth and bone are next on the craft list. I would like to get leather done as a priority since hides etc.. seem fairly easy to farm and maintain an income off of. Cloth mearly as a sub skill and vanity craft, signed fishing gloves and pants to match my guild boots and apron. Bone is the 100% pure vanity craft, no reason to pass 48 after I get those specs^^.
Blacksmithing (28 Currently) and Goldsmithing (23 Currently) both need to climb as I can get to them but the cost on those scares me.

I do not see WW passing the mid 70's unless the skill up rate on broken Lu's is godlike. I'll have 25 or so post 60 skill points to alot to other crafts but nothing is really calling out to me atm.

Save the trees.

Brought WW from 16.0 to 57.4 yesterday. What did I learn from this PL session? I learned that I am stuck with shit loads of arrows and that becoming a ranger with low overhead costs is now a viable option. Oh its not about to get any better either, I picked up all the ingrediants to run up to 69 tonight looks like its time to go skill up archery eh? After 69 my options for skilling "easy" end and I will have to be a bit more frugal with my gil. So far it has been an estimated 50% loss, this is just a rough guess, I have yet to sale a single item yet and did not include unsynthed Mythril Bolts or Demon Arrows. I also have a lot of excess arrowheads, lumber etc.. sitting in storage now for future synth/sales.

Suprisingly this cost far less than I estimated so.... I think I need to get myself a pair of boneworkers Protective Spectacles they remind me of the old style Oakley Frogskins and kind of look like those yellow tinted fishermans glasses. Of course I could just dat mod them in and save some cash but then I wont be able to share the sexy with others^^. I really think I want a pair of shades, I do have gold in the 20's but it would cost insane amounts of gil to boost it to 48, my cloth like bone is sitting at 0, cloth is another option for glasses but it seems like it would cost far more to level than bone, also cloth seems far more time consuming than bone to boost up for vanity. Then again I am bringing cloth up to 30 for signed fishing gear.....

Why the crazy crafting schemes with no long term goal? Well there is a goal of sorts. I have done my share of exp and I loved almost every minute of it, I wouldnt trade it for the world but it lost its luster. I could never focus on any one given job without burn out so I bounced many jobs accumulating gil and gear as I went. I was never happy with the standard stuffs and drove myself to obtain the best gear I could, not always the most outrageous +1 items but in the end I would show up to party in gear far above the norm. I made and lost fortunes: one week I had 43 million in my pocket, at the end of the week I was killing giants in quifm for choco money, a few days later I was dropping millions again. A constant circle of buying and selling gear, creating mules to store choice items or sell those same items, etc... In the end I had a lot of good stuff but never really held onto anything I would pour myself into one job only to short change myself in another. Changing jobs on a whim was a bad idea to say the least.
Then I said fuck it all and started fishing. little to no overhead, lvl1 gear no worries about pt's or ls's, the good life, retirement. Hmm no jobs to worry about, multiple mules packed to the gills with equipment, time to get a nest egg going. I told myself when I hit this or that level wealth I would invest in a certain job again and streamline my gear.. wait damnit thats what got me here in the first place. So after a bit of thinking I decided to take retirement seriously. No jobs, No gear, No exp. What to do with this steady flow of income from liquidation? Well first off was my Lu Shangs, dumped a lot of money into moats and fast tracked that. Near the end of my Lu' run we hit the jackpot with the mercurial kris, loaded again. Now back in the day my cut of the kris cash would have been gone in a flash on some trinket, now with nothing to buy but bait, a self imposed ban from the AH and that steady flow of cash from my mules my nest egg had to be saved for a rainy day or invested in something. I first thought about working the AH to stockpile an X-mas fund but given the current deflation trend that could turn out small profits or even a potential loss. So I started researching crafts.
I knew I wanted WW to 80ish to repair Lu' if I should ever get my fishing that high. While I was to sick to play last week I researched other crafts and started building a list of what I want need and the best or easiest route to get there. The goal with crafting is for the most part to spend every last gil I get raising my guild levels until I am 100% completly flat broke, no gear to sell, empty mules, no nothing. Then I will start a job from scratch or pick up a currently leveled job. I like the idea of taking one of my few pre-dunes jobs and giving him a fresh start with the tools to carry it via crafting, fishing etc.. and seeing what I can make of it. I know its a reckless plan at best, more thn likely I will kick myself in my broke ass at the end of it but like I said I will have the tools at my diposal that I never gave a second glance to back in the day.

Pirates Chart's

Yup plural, handed off some extra marlins to Mrfrodo and he got one too! Albatross Rings for all of us^^.

Been pretty damn sick the last few days so no updates just carried on doing GP fish only. Last night was the first night of normal fishing I put in and the combo of pills and Robitussin put me in a zone so I sat and caught 168 Shall Shells in one sitting o.O . Today I finished up the last 1.0 to hit Journeyman in fishing, those waders are calling my name. I think I was more excited about the new GP bracket I'm in, it seems like the points stay pretty high in it.

Going to start WW tomorrow if the regional vendor is up for the maple logs.... looks like all my mules MH will be pimped out in cheap furniture.

Lost my faith in the ferry.

What a crap gp fish the Bibikibo is. The only info I could find about catching it was that it bites only on the return trip from Purgonoro Island to Sunset Docks in Bibiki Bay. Add to that it is not a targetable fish, it falls into the same catagory as junk fish or rusty items.

As luck would have it I showed up in bibiki during the guild holiday so I set up fishing for a few cones and z-bass while I waited on the guild/manaclipper. I began casting a few cures on a BLU trying to gain an ability from an eft, we started chatting and he told me he needed to hit the island also to learn a move from an Uragnite but had been killed a few times trying. I offered to help since I was heading on that boat anyhow. Just before the manaclipper arrived the guild opened, I ran to check it and bought nine stacks of bibikibo's and a few stacks of z-bass to stockpile for GP, should be good for a good 45k gp over time lol. We only saw one uragnite on the ferry and he failed to learn the move. After three kills on the island he learned his venom shell move tossed him a D2 and we did the thank you-np dance. Good deed for the week complete back to fishing....

Hit windy turned in my gp fish warped back to bastok and checked on my chocobo, the little feller' is getting rather big. I set up a mix of care plans rather than his usual music/walk/rest and stuffed him full of greens.

Decided to hit the ferry and shoot for some more marlins to turn in. Shani hit the boat at the same time and got to witness me run blindly into the Sea Horror. I'll blame it on lag or better yet my lack of skill ups over the past few days required a sacrifice to the fishing gods and since there was a lack of virgins (horror noobs) on the boat I did the only responsible thing and offered myself up.
Crap run all in all, 0.1 for skill, only 7 marlins off of 3 stacks of bait, crap loads of titan bites etc.. 0/41 on the charts now. On the plus side I actualy got some bluetails to bite ^^.

Time to start researching some new skill fish. With the sale of the Mercurial Kris I no longer need to stress over profit fish as nice as they are I have to stop relying on them to carry me through skill ups. I should be able to work a few more levels out of shall shells they run between 24 and 36 cph (catches per hour) and cap at 53, another option is to target Red Terapin again caps at 53 also but ran a few less cph than the shall shells. The problem with the terrapin is that they do not AH very well. Used in Vampire Juice a lvl 90 cooking synth and Turtle Soup a lvl 71 cooking synth so maybe I can pawn some off on a cook^^ the soup sells for an average of 34k according to FFXI AH and looks like it has decent stats:

Description: A soup made from the vicious red terrapin.

Stackable: Not Stackable

Food Effects: (3 hours, All Races)

• HP +10%
• Dexterity +4
• Vitality +6
• Mind -3
• HP Recovered While Healing +5

Maybe I should get a few more cooking levels and skill up off of these and save a few for soloing. The downside to the potential profit is the lack of sales.

The Great Mule Liquidation of 06 is chugging along just fine. I find myself setting certain items aside "just in case I change my mind" I dont think I can part with my staves etc.. for now. But everything must go sooner or later. I kind of want to have it all gone then pick up a job to play again starting completely fresh or should I choose to quit down the road I will be set up to hand off gil to friends without trying to decide how to divy up gear. Haha sounds like a grim "getting my affairs in order" speech. It is kinda nice to be rich without having to worry about how long it will last^^. Oh yeah PL WW there goes the rich feeling ..