Is Alchemy Dead?

[FatCharlie]

Over this past weekend I noticed that Prism Powders and Silent Oils have been severely undecut. They're going for 20-22K and will probablyy drop even lower. For alchemists 60 and below these 2 items are usually the main source of income. Don't people understand that their items will sell if they put up their items for sale at the same price as everyone else? I'm tired of the mentality of people wanting their items to sell before anyone else's and therefore undercutting the market. How is an alchemist 60 and below supposed to make any money with this type of mentality? Don't people WANT to make a profit? I was going to retire Alchemy at 60 so I could take cooking to 100, but as the economy is now Alchemy is comepletely useless to me now. If I want to make any profit I'm going to have to level it higher so I can leave prism powders and silent oils to the n00b undercutters and make higher priced items. Sorry for the rant, but I used to be able to make a comfortable living off of oils and powders. I gave up making poison and sleeping potions for the same reason. Maybe I'll go back to those if their markets are more stable.

[Ellipses]

My alchemy is 53. I've made precisely three stacks of Silent Oil in that time, and only because I happened to have Slime Oil and Beehive Chips anyway. Never even attempted to profit off of it. Prism Powders are still profitable at 20k/stack for me, because I know how to get Glass Fiber (tip: it's not under Materials > Alchemy) and Artificial Lenses. But I don't even bother with those. Sairui-Ran, Bolt Heads, various potions, and Bolts for me.

Plus, y'know, they've been 20k for what, a week? At most? Give it a little time, Chicken Little.

[Mazon]

I totally skipped the Silent Oils and prism powder phases. For the cost of making the items, it wasn't worth it. I save my Glass Fibers, in the manner Ellipses is hinting to, and make my own prism powders because I can HQ them quite well.

Alchemy for me was nothing but profit from the get go. I looked into it and realised that there is no hot ticket item, just consumables. So I move on from one item to the next. I've since abandoned Alchemy at 60, and only come back to it for my own personal use.

Oh, and Glass Fibers still sell pretty nice. And easy to come by.

[Balfree]

Same problem here, i used to be forced to undercut or my stuff would never sell until i realised id simply give it a break as me undercutting too would just worsen the situation, even thoug i was in a situation where goods would drop drastically, poison potions took a major hit because thats what i was making a living off of, one quickly realises he cant trust on a single item, it tends to drop fast.

Nowadays i only sell certain items at certain times, i check the dynamis calendar and make poison potions to sell on that specific day, couple hours before the run happens.

I make tons of black ink and keep it in a mule, i check ffxiah's site every now and then to see how the prices are faring and when i get home i either sell them if the price is ok, or hold em for next day

[FatCharlie]

I get my Fibers from de-synthing masks. I suppose I could sell the fibers themselves, probably more profit in that. But yeah I think I'm gonna try bolts and such.

Yeah ffxiah is a great tool!!!

[Ellipses]

Yeah, relying on one or two recipes in any of the consumables crafts is dangerous. It blinds you to other (possibly more profitable) recipes, and makes you more fragile to saturation or competition. I imagine that's true in the non-consumables crafts, too, but Alchemy and Cooking are the only ones I've put real time into.

[Sabaron]

This happens a lot especially on 60- items. There are a lot of 60- alchemists who are all making money on the same things you are. Lets take a look at Silent Oil:

Bismarck Jeuno AH Prices courtesy www.ffxiah.com (http://www.ffxiah.com)

Slime Oil: 25,000 / 12 (2084 ea)
Beehive Chips: 18,000 / 12 (1500 ea)
Fire Crystals: 3,000 / 12 (250 ea)
Water Crystals: 500 / 12 (42 ea)
Distilled Water: 144 / 12 (12 ea)
Triturator: 900 / 12 (75 ea)
Assuming 60 skill:

Beeswax (5): [HQ Rate ~ 50%]Yield (@ Base HQ 2x Rate): 6 Wax / Stack of Chips
Synthesis per stack of Slime Oil:
4 Stacks of Chips = 72,000
16 Fire Crystals = 4,000
16 Distilled Water = 192
Total = 76,192 / 24 Wax
Beeswax sells at 38,000 / 12 on AH or 76,000gil for 2 stacks.
Triturate Beeswax:
4 Stacks of Chips = 72,000
6 Fire Crystals = 1,500
6 Distilled Water = 72
6 Triturator = 450
Total = 74,022
In order to make your own wax @ 60, you must triturate or it's not worthwhile on your server.

Continuing on with Silent Oil using Tritted Wax:

2 Stacks of Tritted Wax: 74,022
1 Stack of Slime Oil: 25,000
1 Stack of Water Crystals: 500
Total Cost: 99,522 gil
Silent Oil (24): [HQ Rate ~ 30%]Yield (@ Base 2x Rate): 62.4 Oils (5 stacks + 2~3 ind.)
Silent Oil sells for 22,000gil per stack currently on Bis:

Gross Retail Value: ~114,400 gil
Profit: 14,878 gil
Profit Per Synth (6 Wax Synths + 12 Oil Synths): 827gil
Profit Margin: 15%

A 15% Markup looks good from a consumer standpoint and since what you are making is relatively easy to make, I'd say 827 gil per synthesis is a good profit. Remember that you are in a highly competitive market and if the profit margin rises to high, low-level crafters will use this synthesis to skill-up and since they will have disproportionately high inventory, they are likely to sell their oil at or just above cost to get rid of it.

I can't to a very good analysis on Prism Powder because it involves (generally) the highly volatile Goblin Mask desynthesis and I'd wager that the prices on Bismarck are -not- based on Guild or Market Fiber.

[Mazon]

Sabaron is blinding me with numbers. But I think somwhere amidst the math, there is truth.

[FatCharlie]

Agreed. :biggrin:

[Dux]

I am not sure what other people do with all the time they are LFP but I farm for my ingrediants for alchemy and all my crystals are sent to my many crystal mules for later synthesis.

In the 56 levels of Alchemy I have done so far I have only ever made a loss on 1 synth, and that was Carbon Fiber. I estimate I have made approximatly 500K gil profit in Alchemy so far and I expect to get closer to 600K by 60.

Alchemy is definatly not dead.

[Sabaron]

I am not sure what other people do with all the time they are LFP but I farm for my ingrediants for alchemy and all my crystals are sent to my many crystal mules for later synthesis.

In the 56 levels of Alchemy I have done so far I have only ever made a loss on 1 synth, and that was Carbon Fiber. I estimate I have made approximatly 500K gil profit in Alchemy so far and I expect to get closer to 600K by 60.

Alchemy is definatly not dead.

Dux is an example of the other kind of Alchemist you'll have trouble with in the market--the farming alchemist. This type of alchemist doesn't pay for reagents, so when they put items on the market, they're near 100% profit. Therefore, a farming alchemist will always be able to sell for less than you and make out quite nicely. You can't compete with a farming alchemist except by becoming one yourself. Expand your inventory, get a mule, and don't throw away or sell crystals and reagents that you find--subbing THF unless you're in a PT is very nice as well.

A note, however: a farming Alchemist cannot generally affect the market in any great way since it takes a lot of time to get the reagents this way, so while the farmer's products sell very quickly and you'll never touch their prices, the market value is largely determined by purchasing alchemists who can come by a much larger quantity of materials and make their money by moving large volumes of material instead. The more you can move as a purchasing Alchemist the more money you can make; even at a 15% profit margin (say 15,000 per stack) if you can move 7 stacks a day, that's 105,000gil per day. If you camp fast moving products like Silent Oil and Prism Powder zealously, you can do this. In contrast, the farming alchemist will have to farm up 4-5 stacks worth of reagents to make the same amount of money. Existing somewhere in between farming and buying is probably where you want to be.

Dux: ...groan... Carbon Fiber... I made 4 stacks of it. It took 2 RL weeks to sell 1 stack. I turned the other stacks into Carbon Fiber Fishing Rods and sold them at a slight loss to get rid of them.

[Dux]

Dux is an example of the other kind of Alchemist

I don't know why but that made me feel special. :D

Dux: ...groan... Carbon Fiber... I made 4 stacks of it. It took 2 RL weeks to sell 1 stack. I turned the other stacks into Carbon Fiber Fishing Rods and sold them at a slight loss to get rid of them.

Yep, that was probably the slowest moving skill-up item I made so far. Took about a week to get it out of Bastok AH.

[Grizzlebeard]

Jusatsu!

Farm Beastmen Blood in Pashhow and you're golden. That recipe alone made me a small fortune with HQ's.

[Standablaze]

By the time I get 2 beastmen blood I can get 2 stacks of Beehive chips to be honest, which HQ nicely.

Alchemy is not dead. I'm level 61 Alchemy, taking it to 100, and I've started making very nice profit.

Prism Powders may be a stable for most people, but it depends on your methods. There are a few ways to get glass fibre other than buying it for the current 40k on ramuh. Whenever I make prism powders, I do it in a big way. I save every bit of glass fibre I can get my hands on, from various sources and auction houses and rarely bazaars (but I have found some), and I make a good 5-8 stacks of prism powder. Thats about 200k profit and will sell rather quickly.

Beeswax is always nice if you farm. 2 stacks of beehive chips will roughly nab you a stack of beeswax at lvl60, which goes for 40k on ramuh. Today beehive chips are at 20k a stack, so there is no profit made in comparison to just selling them and not crafting them, but often enough beehive chips have dropped to 13k and below, and thats when I personally make my move and farm as much as possible.

A nice hint for people making money in alchemy: south gustaberg, vomp hill. here you can farm beehive chips, flint stones, and goblin masks.

I'm currently in the middle of lvling smithing to the 20s so I can make Iron Bullets, and when I can HQ them, I should make a nice bit of profit out of that, but nothing to relay on. When all these methods fail, I run to the fishing guild, buy all the Jellyfish I can, and make mercury. I can sell these off for 15k a stack, or turn them into poison potions (although this is tedious as they dont HQ). Again, more money.

As someone said already, the farming alchemist only makes profit. Farm farm farm, dont relay on other people as your only means of money

[Sabaron]

I like to farm Konschtat Highlands.

Sheep drop skins; if you have a large inventory, take some dark crystals, water, and Windurstian Tea Leaves with you and you can make Sheep Leather which sells for a very nice profit. You can also use your farmed sheep leather to skill up leather craft or for a couple points after you max out your skill on the leather, you can do wool with just Wind Crystals and 2 skins.

The bees drop Honey and Beehive chips; very nice. Take fire crystals and use some of your water to make wax in the field.

The saplings drop Treant Bulbs which can be used to make Vitriol (2x Bulbs + Water Crystal) which you can, in turn, use to make Acid and Corrosive weapons. The saplings also drop seeds that you can plant if your pots aren't full of cuttings, saplings, or the new Wildgrass seeds. Use a Dark Crystal on them to make Fungus or Tarutaru rice, both of which are a nice profit and well worth the crystal--you might also get a Black Rock or some Light Crystals which are both excellent results.

Mist Lizards drop skins and tails which are not necessarily lucrative, but you can use the tails to make Potions while your out and about.

Goblin Diggers and Ambushers will drop masks, and the Ambushers drop Glue.

Lightning weather occurs frequently in Konschtat and when you figure out where the Elementals spawn, you can farm Lightning Clusters.

If you have 30-35 Leathercraft you can kill the rams and turn their skins. These are nonstackable, so if you can't turn them yourself, they take up a lot of space, but they're usually profitable.

Ghosts drop Luminicloth, Revival Tree Roots, and Cotton Cloth all of which are very nice.

Dogs drop Revival Tree roots as well.

You can get flint stones, silver ore, and zinc ore from the Rock eaters in the passes and near Gusgen mines.



Make sure you level THF for farming, and farm with your main at 30+ to take advantage of Treasure Hunter.

[Ellipses]

Personally, I'm not a fan of farming. To say that any given recipe is profitable if you farm your materials is to say that it's not a profitable recipe. It's just that by farming ingredients, you've chosen to pay for your loss in time rather than paying for it directly with gil. Time is money, loss is loss.

Not that farming ingredients is a bad thing in its own right. I don't usually enjoy it, but to each his own. I just prefer to call it what it is; if a synth is only profitable with farmed ingredients, then usually it's the farming that's profitable, not the synth. (I don't think that "usually" really needs to be there but I'm too tired to think it through completely to make sure.)

[levish]

I switch recipies when oils go less than 22k a stack, i don't hang onto the oils but I also stop making them till they go back up past 25k.

Wierd thing is people were buying them at 35-50k a stack what do the silly undercutters thing they are accomplishing by driving the prices down to these stupidly low profit price points?

Reminds me of the gas prices, alchemists should form a opec of sorts and adjust pricing as needed to maintain a decent margin on stuff ...

[FatCharlie]

I agree with you completely Levish. I'm convinced n00b crafters don't want to make money. They just want the satisfaction of knowing that their stuff sold first.

[supersimian]

No alchemy is not dead at all. Anybody who is having a hard time with alchemy and is unable to make gill at the craft just needs to take a closer look to what can be made with alchemy. The first step would be going to any of the plethora of crafting sights on the web and check the various makeable items with alchemy and seriously consider "is this profitable", perhaps checking the recipe costs and item values.

For instance: A Hellfire axe is pretty cheap to make (butterfly axe-slime oil-firesand) and they are worth like 15-20k NQ, HQ fetches an xtra 10k.

Shinobi Gitana are like 4k in AH, grab a dozen of those a stack of animal glue and some potions of whatever kind. The HQs of the Shinobi made weapons sell quickly and are very profitable.

If you can make melt knives they HQ well you should make some as they are profitable to make and sell.

I make about 5 or 6 times back on robot parts. You can make some with only lvl 60 and wether you HQ those or not the end result is the same, (profit).

Make a dozen beeswords or spathas, if you are even lvl 50 you may be surprised at your HQ rate and profit from those and they are very cheap to make.

These are some examples of things that are profitable to the NON lvl 100 like alchemists. I have done all of these things and much more to make profit and have made considerable profits like this from the Alchemy craft. Try looking into the possabilities and you might even find yourself a temporary gil niche someplace in the craft that is being overlooked which happens alot as alchemists tend to be lazy and stick to prism powder and oils solely for thier profits (which I often do myself, i cant blame you). Alchemy may be very easy and cheap to lvl, but it takes a little time and consideration to pull off making some actually real profits from it.

OH, and one more piece of advise from anyone who is having a hard time with alchemy profiteering, lvl up some other crafts. For example if you have lvl 50 or so smithing and your alchemy is lvl 80 or so you should be pumping out the bullet HQs no problem which are profitable to make and easy like beeswax to make. Of consider those Boltheads which are now profitable sense SE allowed them to stack to 99. etc. etc. etc.

[Sabaron]

...
Shinobi Gitana are like 4k in AH, grab a dozen of those a stack of animal glue and some potions of whatever kind. The HQs of the Shinobi made weapons sell quickly and are very profitable.


Shinobi Gatana are actually [usually] cheaper than this from the Bastok Tenshodo in Port Bastok and available in unlimited quantity--price based on demand like the guilds.

[Claymore00]

Personally, I'm not a fan of farming. To say that any given recipe is profitable if you farm your materials is to say that it's not a profitable recipe. It's just that by farming ingredients, you've chosen to pay for your loss in time rather than paying for it directly with gil. Time is money, loss is loss.


This is something many people forget in economics; if you farm, check the prices of what you've gotten in drops. Farming can have profit loss too, if you synth something that sells for less then the ingredients you farmed.

In that case, you could have made more money selling the raw goods. You loose money by synthing just as you would make a loss buying materials and selling the final good for less then production costs.

[FatCharlie]

Very good point Claymore ans Ellipses. This is something I've take into consideration lately. I've also crafted weapons from time to time but on Bismarck, weapons seem to go in cycles and can't be relied upon completely. Recently I've limited myself to Hakutaku clusters but alas even this is subject to gilsellers and undercutters. I sold my first one for 1.2 mil, then the 2nd @ 800k, and the 3rd @ 600k; all of which I had to split with the peple who helped me farm the eyes. I know Alchemy is not dead, per se, but it has certainly been reduced to a nickel and dime craft. And when you're trying to save up 5mil for a noble's tunic it gets severely frustrating spending 100% of my game time farming/crafting for minimal profits.

[Thoronas]

Lvl woodworking and craft your own status bolts. If you watch the AH carefully you will probably find that some bolts just aren't made very often but the demand is still there. If you can make your own bolts and sell them (either are single quivers or stacks of quivers) you will make more than just by making the bolt heads. You need lvl 16 woodworking in order to do it and that doesn't take long at all.

Right now Im lvl 65 and can make some bolt heads enough to make 5 stacks of quivers and sell them for profit in the hundreds of thousands if Im patient.

[Sabaron]

Right now Im lvl 65 and can make some bolt heads enough to make 5 stacks of quivers and sell them for profit in the hundreds of thousands if Im patient.

I prefer to keep my inventory low... Eventually some craft-tard skiller-upper will make 10 million of your product and flood the market, ruining it for several weeks, so I only make what I think I can sell right now.

[Bricklayer]

This is something many people forget in economics; if you farm, check the prices of what you've gotten in drops. Farming can have profit loss too, if you synth something that sells for less then the ingredients you farmed.

In that case, you could have made more money selling the raw goods. You loose money by synthing just as you would make a loss buying materials and selling the final good for less then production costs.

Oxymoron of the Day: Profit Loss

Maybe you should say you "make less money by synthing..." Anytime you sell something farmed (for free), or a 100% derivative thereof (i.e. you didn't buy the crystal or any other mats), you have made a profit.

Exception: You spent money to farm, e.g. hiring a chocobo, buying tools, food, etc..

The money you make from farming drops is pure profit. How much profit you make from the drops you obtained depends on how clever you are. But, you will never *lose* money by selling items you farmed from drops, or selling synths obtained solely from drops.

[Sabaron]

I believe what he's referring to is a lower profit from a synthed product as opposed to the profit from selling the raw material.

For instance if 12 Sheepskins sell at 2k each, you get 24k, but if you synth it into a stack of leather that sells at 20k, you've "lost" 4k in profit.

One also has to take into account the age old addage that "Time is money". How much money could you have made sitting at the AH churning out stacks of Beeswax while you were out dinking around killing bees for it?

[Bricklayer]

I believe what he's referring to is a lower profit from a synthed product as opposed to the profit from selling the raw material.

For instance if 12 Sheepskins sell at 2k each, you get 24k, but if you synth it into a stack of leather that sells at 20k, you've "lost" 4k in profit.

One also has to take into account the age old addage that "Time is money". How much money could you have made sitting at the AH churning out stacks of Beeswax while you were out dinking around killing bees for it?

Just nitpicking... Of course you could also figure in your subscription costs, equipment upgrades, etc. Also, you could look at bottlenecks, such as 7 AH slots, when you're selling singles vs. stacks... it's all very interesting.

[Grizzlebeard]

Also consider the time wasted farming as an expense. Compare the value of goods bought directly from the AH and say four hours of constant synthing with the chance of a number of HQ's and the margin made from AH bought then sold with three hours farming maybe two stacks of beehive chips, if you're extremely lucky, then another hour for synthing. I know which made me a higher margin when I used to synth for income.

[Kushiel]

I originally got into Alchemy for the fireworks. I never was into the whole silent oils and prism powders. Silent oils alone are too much of a hassle. Either spend a lot of gil on buying materials or spend a lot of time on farming them.


Thats just me though xD

[Sabaron]

My most recent analysis of the Asura Stealth Medications showed that Oils made from Olive Oil were running at 39.17% minimum HQ to break even; from Slime Oil--106.69% Minimum HQ. Prism Powder (not from masks) was at 457.16% minimum HQ. This is why I don't touch either market... ever. They've been like this forever--both before and after deflation set in, but Prism Powder used to enjoy a much better profit margin when made from Masks... It may still, but if you look at the Glass Fiber market, you'll notice that it's better just to sell the glass instead. Ink has always been a good product for lower-level Alchemists and is running at 9.87% Min HQ from Squid, 46.07% from Nebimonite, and 27.20% from Kalamari.

All rates are from Asura.

Farm-crafting is a much better option these days... if your margin slides due to inflation below cost, then, while you're not losing "value" because everything else deflates as well, your money hasn't generated a profit, and if the dip is too steep, you've lost market position from it. I've been mining Oldton Movalpolos to desynthesize Moblin materials (to give away a little secret) for some HELM cash, which I find a lot better than mob-farming unless you're a THF with a BLM friend. HELM can be soloed efficiently. To do farming most effectively you need Treasure Hunter and -ga to maximize trains.

Deflation makes farming more attractive which results in slides in the farming markets, but at least you always come out ahead since it is highly unlikely that your margins are very thin.

HELM almost requires crafting skill because most of the good stuff can't be stacked with the exception of Harvesting which produces a very nice array of stackables, but they have a tendency to be worth a lot less than ELM products. Red Moko from Giddeus is always a winner though.