Leveling Alchemy to make bolt heads cheaply?

[Takelli]

Re: Leveling Alchemy to make bolt heads cheaply?

When you are advancing, there will always be 10 points worth of recipes that you can use to gain skill. The best thing to do is to look at these recipes and decide which ones are profitable and how profitable and which ones are lossy and how lossy then create a bank of recipes which you will attempt that will yield the best result

I have been looking at other guides. The main guides I follow are the ones written by Ctownwoody. got Cooking to 50 fairly cheaply, and at profit at times. I do look at the recipes, and see if it will be profitable. Just like the Tsurara, very low profit if you farm the clusters.

Learn to use Excel to analyze your crafting recipes. Learn to recognize the rates at which your recipes sell. Learn to use FFXIAH.com (Please note: It doesn't always give you the correct answer, but it can tell you how people buy things).

I have never used Excel, but its like the spread sheet right?

I do use FFXI AH when I am looking at recipes and not near an in AH, or in game at that moment. Its helped me make some minor money, and low loss crafts.

Thanks for the tips as well.

The skill rate gain though... How do you increase your skill gain. I always thought it was a set number of crafts with a (reasonable) random number added to it, and you would gain like .1, or .2 increase depending on how far, or close you are to the skill cap.

[Sabaron]

Re: Leveling Alchemy to make bolt heads cheaply?

Crafting is a fluid science. There are many guides. The best guide is your own brain.

When you are advancing, there will always be 10 points worth of recipes that you can use to gain skill. The best thing to do is to look at these recipes and decide which ones are profitable and how profitable and which ones are lossy and how lossy then create a bank of recipes which you will attempt that will yield the best result.

You can start with a guide, but AH markets fluctuate wildly so just because something was profitable at the time the guide was written, doesn't mean that it works that way when you do it. Of course, the number one thing you are looking for is the exceedingly rare, "sure thing". This is a recipe which is profitable or has a a controllable loss when you sell it to NPC merchants.

Learn to use Excel to analyze your crafting recipes. Learn to recognize the rates at which your recipes sell. Learn to use FFXIAH.com (Please note: It doesn't always give you the correct answer, but it can tell you how people buy things).

You should focus your analysis on these measures prioritized to suit your need:

1. Liquidity: The time it takes to convert your products into gil.
2. Cost: The amount of invested gil required to manufacture the products.
3. Profit: The amount of gil received in exchange for manufactured products.
4. Availability: The availability of materials to manufacture the products.
5. Skill rate: The rate at which skill is gained from the synthesis.
6. Saturation: The number of days worth of supply of a given product currently present on the market.
7. Inventory: The amount of space that it takes to retain inventory of the product versus the amount you can reliably store.

[Takelli]

Well. I just started alchemy not too long ago, and to get from skill 6 to 16, I need tons of crystals. Making the Poison dust, and the mercury, then making them into Poison Potions at lvl 16 to lvl 18. The thing is... I need TONS of lightning crystals. I tried farming them, and in with in 6 or 7 hours of farming, I only got four lightning clusters.

I do not want to buy the clusters or crystals as I will need to buy the fish (Yellow Globe X2+Lightning Crystal. Fish costs 2k/Stack, and Cluster 1.5k/stack so it will be costly to buy all of it.) to make the poison dust. (Fishing lvl 1, and I REALLY despise how boring fishing is in the game.)

So what My question basically is... Does anyone know of a good zone (And Possibly <pos>?) that has a decent amount of thunder elemental spawns, and is almost always a thunder weather like the Glacier is almost always icy (Got 28 Ice clusters in under 15 mins... Unreal I know. But that's what It seemed like)?

Anywhere will be fine as long as a 75 Sam/Dnc with decent gear can kill them. Please help me. I am very poor in the game, and it takes too long to make money. I am doing this craft to supply my thief and ranger with cheap home made bolts. Any help is appreciated. thanks! :D

I tried Lower Delk's Tower. 2 spawns every hour. Pashhow Marshlands over three hours no lightning weather, Jugner forest same, and Carpenters Landing. (Was in there for like 10 mins then decided to go to bed. )