[Sabaron]

My Smithing skill is up to 25 now, so I can make Jamadhars with assistance. It'll be 30 shortly. As for supporting skills, all that is needed to support alchemy is:

Smithing: Boltheads, some bullets, arrowheads, some weapons
Got it recently: I can make all of the different bullets at present with the except. Not enough for Cutlass--no one makes 'em, no one buys 'em.
Goldsmithing: Lures (garbage) and bullets
Can make Silver Bullets, not enough for Hanger but no one uses Hanger anyway (at least not on Asura)
Bonecraft: Cermet/Stun Claws (latter is useless), some arrowheads
Don't have it... Maybe later, but I'm not particularly interested in most of the synths
Woodworking: Shihei, Bolts, some idiotic fireworks that no one buys.
Enough for bolts and Shihei. I'm not wasting money making Airbornes... I only make Shihei for myself. I plan to do Wood-60 for Garden Bangles, but I'm in no rush as there are never any Korringan Buds on anyway and they sell at 300k each which is approximately the price of the Bangles themselves--thus farmed product is the only way to go.

Maybe I'm missing something, but what else do I need? There are plenty of recipes in Alchemy, and I've almost always got a nice stable influx of profit. The other crafts require heavy tuition (with the exception of fishing, but see below). Eventually, I'll do Cooking 60 for Yagudo and Mulsum. I have found Alchemy to be my favorite craft overall because most things stack and most are also consumable. SE has designed the crafting system in such a way as to generate hideous, hideous, amounts of product and consumability is the only good way to move it. If 4 people level up smithing on Aspis, how many Aspis will be on the market? How many can in handle in circulation? At least goldsmithing has different stones of the same level.... If you don't HQ though, it's junk and no one will ever buy it...might as well bust out a Lightning crystal or stick it in the Guild inventory. I don't like tuition.

I hate fishing. Tried it--boring. Fish prices make it unappealing as well. Medicines and consumables are great products. Fish are marginal. In fact, the only fish I ever actually buy are Ink fish (whichever's cheapest) for Shihei and Cobalt Jellies which anyone with a fishing rod and time to kill can catch.

I've never tried to sell a Mamushito to a vendor... I didn't know they paid so well... I suppose that'd be the way to go. I don't like farming ingredients--it's awfully time consuming. To get 1 point of skill you need 3-4 stacks of reagents. How long does it take to fish up 36 Three-eyed fish--and as a secondary question... How much money could you have made/sold synthing various alchemy products during that time? With your profits from said sales, how much paralysis dust could you buy? Even if your stuff doesn't sell instantly, you have to remember that instead of fishing all that time you could be questing/levelling while you wait for your money to roll in so you can spend it on skill-ups and if you've picked a good synth, you should get back more money from your skillups than you spent--thus speeding up your skillups especially if you're still making money on the items you usually run.


On Asura, there are only ever the minimum number of Cobalt Jellies at the Guild (6) or 12 (I think) on Darksday. They are generally sold out at just after 8. I buy them from AH @ 5k/stack (416ea).

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I really don't know why I don't like fishing... maybe because there aren't any recipes and half the time you don't get anything good. It takes longer to fish a fish than to synth something, and the primary use for fish is food that I don't eat and can't make. In the time it would take me to fish up a stack of cobalt jellies, I could've bought 12 stacks of them and made a ton of mercury, taking in orders of magnitude more profit than I could ever hope to get either selling or processing the fish... I usually don't do any recipe that has a low work/profit ratio. A 30-second synth generally nets me at least 5k whereas I'd have to fish up some weird rare fish or 10 crappy fish taking a good deal longer.