Cooking profitable, but on the low end...?

[SonikU4ia]

I have been 100 Cooking for about 6 months now and my general opinion on the subject of making money basically boils down to this:

If I do Marron Glace, on average, I can HQ 1 Bijou Glace's per stack (sometimes 2-3 other times none.) On my server, prices fluctuate between 3-6k for NQ, usually selling for 5k mostly and HQ sells for 50-70... but mostly 50k (70k if lucky).

So, if I sell an average stack of Marron Glace that's around 100k. Making a stack can cost upwards of 20-25k depending on AH or if I want to farm and then selling back thru AH. Roughly, a 75-80k profit.

Marron Glace sells particularly well. I can certainly sell 1 stack w/i 24 hours. If I stood out in Jeuno and advertised, I could sell tons more, but that sure is rather boring and annoying lol.

Thus... I find it rather feeble and almost not worth the time. Sure, if I worked my butt off and not have any fun I could have some gil.... -_-; but w/e lol! >.> It's pose ta beee funnnnnn...

Anyway, what else is everyone doing to make money off cooking? Sushi I hear is profitable, but that seems to me like you would require 1. fishing 2. farming, both of which I hate to do lol.

[LoneGamer]

I make money on Sushi without farming or fishing. Cooking is money over time. Keep your auction slots full, and you'll have a steady income, as opposed to hoping for that NM drop, or that HQ on the item you have to HQ to make profit on.

[Hilde]

It seams you have to be able to cook the items which everyone wants. I know when I finally got to applie pies...sadly that was when everyone had discovered melon pies. So location also works, I know people who go afk in valkrum selling low level potions kabobos and the like.

but I don't think there truly are many high/fast profit guilds.

[Amiraphe]

Fisherwoman and Cook here, helloooo :rolleyes:

For the past year or more, my racket has been in the sushi market since it only makes sense I profit off of what I catch. I grew my rice for along time, I even farmed my earth crystals. It was a beautiful market because sushi is such a fast seller, consumables are great.

Then when that crazy thing happened during Xmas, you remember, when the prices of everything went insane? Well, if you were a chef then, you were making incredible gil. I don't know who, what, where or why, but I freaked when I saw in 2 days the prices shot through the roof and honestly, I rode the wave. I didn't exploit it, trust me on that, but I rode it. Our customers paid, they never tried underbidding when they should have, it was a crazy time.

I think more people noticed that cooking was a gil maker and so everyone and their uncle decided to level it up to the max. Now I see we're flooded with new sushi chefs who are completely undercutting the prices to sell faster than the next chef, and there's barely any profit at all now. Sure...ok, for one stack of NQ sole I make a 20k profit (I stopped growing rice and farming crystals, I got lazy.) But it's not the cash cow it used to be and cooking probably won't be again for awhile.

On my server, (yes I'm blabbing sorry, it's Friday) I decided to check out some other form of fishing/cooking other than sushi. I saw Fish Oil Broth. I noticed they run 28k a stack. Nice. The recipe is so simple and cheap. So I began my new avenue of profit.

Alas, a known fish botter on my server that I have fished next to many times, (level 1 war who dies with every AOE in Qufim and it gives me joy) who has 3 bots of a similar name that fish and cook, decided to dive into this market, and when they were going for 28k steadily and fast, they sold it for 19k.....why???

I just don't get it. I don't think we should have the market exploited like it was during Xmas, but the profit margin has decreased so drastically that it's not worth the trouble to fish for hours, run around for ingredients, farm and grow them, or what have you.

So, OP, chin up, it hurts everywhere. We're lucky to be in consumables. It's steady. But it now takes double effort and time to make a substantial profit.

[Icemage]

A lot of consumables have been taking a hit lately. Overall I think the economy is finally deflating a bit, which was long overdue.

I haven't really fished or cooked for a profit in a while, but there are still moderately profitable synths on any given day; you just have to watch the trends and jump on ones where the supply has vanished while you can.


Icemage

[rsironko]

I thought of something I am going to do someday. Synth. a bunch of stuff and go into an area like Qufim or Valkurm (sorry, thats the farthest I have gone ><) and open a bazaar. You could go afk and come back... and have sold something for sure.

Of course you might be able to make more money via auction house or sitting around in Jeuno. :worry:

[melefics]

sit in valkurm with pinapple jucie

[Balodoth]

LOL, I remember leveling in Yuhtunga and catching a good deal on Kabobs. So I bought an extra couple stacks and threw them in bazaar while I played. Worked so well I bought more the next day and a few juices besides. It was almost as quick and easy as cookies at the Harvest Festival.

[Kittykunoichi]

I make pasta. Carbonara sells for 130k-160k and brings in 80k-120k profit, even more if I could get some friends together to kill buffalo. Buffalo Meat, used to make the Buffalo Jerky used in this dish can be 80k-110k per stack, but I can get 4 stacks of Carbonara from each stack of Buffalo Meat.

And Pescatora, which sells for 230k-260k, can bring in 100k-150k+ profit. It could be 200k profit as soon as my boyfriend gets his Lu Shang Rod. This recipie includes Shall Shells, Gold Lobsters, Grimmonites and Sandfish. All of those are pricey fish, and Sandfish is often out of stock because its popular with people trying to make this recipie.

Only problem with Pescatora is the Pomodoro Sauce, which takes 8 ingredients, some of which are pricey like Holy Basil and Wild Onion. The most problematic ingredient for this sauce is the Misareaux Parsley, which can only be bought from Tavnazian Archepeligo Region Vendors to people who are past PM Mission 4.

Took me a good 2 hours to get my hands on that bloody parsley. If anyone knows where else it can be bought I'd like to know.

[LyonheartLakshmi]

80k profit for 12 synths? That's 6.5k profit per synth, which I think is pretty decent. Making 500k per week sounds reasonable for a set up where you're crafting 12 attempts per day. I average around 1M per week, but that's combining my 100 Bonecrafting mule with my 100 Cooking, and using 2 to 3 different chars to AH stuff in Jeuno.

[Stiker]

I thought of something I am going to do someday. Synth. a bunch of stuff and go into an area like Qufim or Valkurm (sorry, thats the farthest I have gone ><) and open a bazaar. You could go afk and come back... and have sold something for sure.

Of course you might be able to make more money via auction house or sitting around in Jeuno. :worry:

Actually I feel you can make more money in your Bazaar as a cook. I'm a big fan of trying to HQ lowbie food, sell what HQs I have on AH, and then go afk in Selbina with the NQ excess. Sitting there with Pineapple Juice or Yag Drinks work very well also.

[Telera]

I don't have the patience for fishing. It's bad enough having to cap summon skill and stand in place for hours on end. Add another very slow levelling skill to that (fishing) and I'll be in my worst nightmare.

So, that essentially makes Sushi nigh on profit-less for me. Unless my boyfriend decides to actually take up fishing, since he seems to enjoy it for some odd, crazy reason... I'm looking into other avenues for my cooking profit. A high lvl cook in my linkshell has told me Marron Glace turn a decent profit, and from my own watching of the AH, some pastas and pies do okay as well. As long as I can pull off a steady (but not astronomically huge) income, I'll be fine. Most of the really good Equip for my job is Rare/Ex past this point. Yin Yang Robe, Relic, Evoker's Ring, etc. The few acessories that I have my eye on are BCNM'able and/or NM drops that aren't too terribly bad for the most part, so any money I make will be going into my dragoon, puppetmaster, and my tarutaru secondary character.

My secondary is going to master Clothcraft and my mule will be doing Bone, which I hope will augment my main's income in some small way.

Anyway.. rambling.

Because I'm just really... not a fishing fan, I've decided to persue other Cooking Key Items and just pick up Raw Fish Handling if/when he or I decide to start fishing. That cook in my LS seems to pull in a hefty chunk of gil off of just his pies, Glace, and pastas. And since I won't really be spending all that much from here forward, it will give me time to accumulate a good bit for my other jobs.

[Kittykunoichi]

On Valefor the pasta prices are being undercut and I'm having tons of trouble trying to sell what I make. I'm looking forother options.