A Rant: Past Player In the Present Economy

[ishio]

So I'm a returning player. Haven't played in over 4 years and couldn't recover my character. I'm thinkin' "ok, thats fine, i'll just start over". So after entering the game, the first thing I did was grab a signet and start whacking bees for wind crystals. I figure a couple stacks and I should have enough money to last me from 1-20. So after awhile of killing mobs, I head to the AH to sell off my crystals and hoping to get some meat mithkabobs(i know the folly in that, but that was before I read about the food update) so I can kill quicker.

I check the price of meat mithkabobs. 3.5? Hey, wow, great. I remember when it used to be 5k per stack. I then flip through all the noobie equipment on sale. I noticed a lot of the prices are a bit cheaper. Average noobie gear goes for about 1-2k now. Down from 2-4k. Quality noobie gear goes for 10k now. Down from 15k. So i'm grinning and thinking, "awesome, the economy must be a lot better now that theres a lot less RMTs!"

I then prepare to sell my wind crystals.

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500 gil per stack?! 500 GOD DAMN GIL PER STACK?????!!!!! Back in 2003-2004 they were going for 2-3k per stack depending on server!!!! How the hell did the price on crystals decrease by over 1/4th while the price on food and noobie gear barely halved?!

Today's economy is not noobie friendly at all.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

The reason wind crystals aren't worth jack is high level PTs tend to favor birds that happen to drop the same crystals.

Back when you originally played, the only common low-price crystals were earth and water. Lightning, Fire and Dark Crystals are the profit crystals these days, but not by massive degrees.

Water crystals were cheap because we fought little else but crabs at 50+, now its very little else other than Colibri.

[Murphie]

The hell it isn't.

Don't buy newbie equipment on the AH. Buy it from NPCs for less. Don't eat Meat Mithkabobs when you're just starting out. Eat Meat Jerky (purchasable from an NPC) for the same benefit at a lower cost.

Wind Crystals decreased in price partly because they are so damn easy to get these days. There are still a lot of great ways to make gil as someone just starting out.

[ishio]

Fire has always been one of the highest profit crystals. Fire used to sell for over 4k a stack. Got as high as 6k before I left. Its under 1k now. 4 stacks of that and I'd have a cat baghnakh +1 back in the day. It would take 10 stacks now. Besides, the starting crystal drop in Bastok was between wind, earth, and water.

I was hoping to score the quality noobie gear(the +1) to help level quicker(no subjob sucks), and you can't buy that from NPCs... or did that change? Though I didn't know about the meat jerky from NPCs, thanks for the tip.

[Murphie]

+1 gear isn't going to speed up your newbie levels that much. You're fine with the NQ.

[assumedvigilance]

i used to hate the high prices on all the gear that i wanted/needed back in the day. spend a week or two builing up 300k to buy an earring/belt/whatever. now the stuff you want has gone down only slightly while the money making farmables from the past sell for a tenth of the past prices... if you are lucky enough to sell anything at all due to the constant undercuting that leaves everyone holding themselves looking around for some way to make that 1mil for that item you still need

[Kyoujin]

I know how you feel. I reactivated a few months ago after a similar length of time away from FFXI. My first perusal of the Auction House had me smiling...until I tried to make some gil. You'll find that most of the old methods of generating gil have either dried up of have been smashed with the nerf-club. It is especially difficult for the early levels. Must be rough on the new players.

At least the lower level zones aren't as crowded these days. You won't see more than a hundred people in the same area outside of Whitegate/Zabi.

[fallenintoshadows]

I find fire, dark and lightning to bring the most profit.

Try fishing moat carp, get a free rod from a goblin and cheap bait from npc. There's always grain seeds, bee chips, lizard skin and many more you can farm.

Don't forget crafts bring profit too, farm everything you get and start in LC/BC etc.

You'll get there :3

[IfritnoItazura]

ffxiah.com is your friend (just be careful not to enable scripting on its advertisement).

That, and give How to Make Money as a Newbie a read.

[LadyKiKi]

Spam the Bubbly Bernie Quest. 500g per run, if you struggle a bit.

[LyonheartLakshmi]

Deflation: the stuff you buy is cheaper, but so is the stuff you sell.

Overall, it probably still take the same amount of work farming to buy stuff today as it did 3 years ago.

[Ameroth]

Fire has always been one of the highest profit crystals. Fire used to sell for over 4k a stack. Got as high as 6k before I left. Its under 1k now. 4 stacks of that and I'd have a cat baghnakh +1 back in the day. It would take 10 stacks now. Besides, the starting crystal drop in Bastok was between wind, earth, and water.

I was hoping to score the quality noobie gear(the +1) to help level quicker(no subjob sucks), and you can't buy that from NPCs... or did that change? Though I didn't know about the meat jerky from NPCs, thanks for the tip.

4k for a stack of fire (or any) crystals is ridiculous imo. There is less than 10% chance I would pay that much for a stack of crystals as opposed to finding an elemental.
Crystals are still useful for making newbie gil, but it's definitely not going to be at those inflated prices anymore. Leveling 1-10 should net you enough crystals to get started on.

Really, there's no reason to waste money on the +1 of the lowbie gear. Srsly, what's the difference between bronze harness and bronze harness+1? 1 defense and about 9k gil on my server. No thanks. Buy all your gear from NPCs as it will be much cheaper and help you move past being a broke newbie again, to a slightly-less broke mid-level player.

[Mhurron]

used to sell

News flash - Things change over time.

You came back and assumed everything was the same and then bitch about it when it's not. Maybe you should have thought before you did something.

[ishio]

Right. Things change. Its called deflation.

Since crystals now sell for 1/5th their price, other items now sell for 1/5th thei-oh wait. No thats not what happened.

I just checked the price of leaping boots on my old server on ffxiah.com. Its STILL around 200k. I read that they introduced a rare/ex with the same stats. I wouldve thought the price would change. I thought the price would plummet way down. But it stayed the same.

And emperor hairpin? What was once around 300k is now 500k. Deflation? The price on that went UP even with a rare/ex version of it. Its obvious that theres some sort of market manipulation going on over the past few years with some high-end items, and inflation/deflation has nothing to do with it.

...atleast Ochiudo's Kote went down in price. From 1.1 mil to 650k.

I was expecting a little logic in the economy after I came back. But this makes no sense at all.

When you have memories of a decked out SAM/WAR smacking tough vultures without breaking a sweat(and this was before the two-handed update), and then die from a DC vulture as a level 5 MNK/none at full health, you'd be grouchy as well.

[nanatsu]

if you died against a DC vulture as a lvl 5 mnk from full health, your gear had very little to do with it. I dunno what happened to you, but I was killing EM recently at that level with a little effort, with no subjob, on a new taru character I created.