Crafting: Other People Seem to Think We're Crazy

Grymalkyn and I really prefer to farm our ingredient for crafting where feasible, rather than pouring out a ton of gil to buy things on the AH or in stores. Other people seem to prefer the "time is money" approach, feeling they can make more gil doing other things. However, we like the feeling of creating something from odds and ends we collect around Vana'diel. Crafting things while sitting in front of the AH for easy purchases just isn't the same. And it's nice to end up with more gil while we're leveling crafts, rather than just dumping all of our gil into it. Takes a lot longer, but it works for us.

Since most of my gelatin and all of my demon arrows had sold, I decided I could start gathering beetle jaws for my next phase of bonecraft - beetle arrowheads. I made my way through Sauromogue Champaign and Meriphataud Mountains, but didn't get many jaws. Grym headed to the Altepa Desert to start farming beetles there, and I made my way back to Windurst to outpost warp to meet her there. I passed through the Outer Hurototo Ruins along the way to kill the Beady Beetles, and saw the new NM slime, Maltha, and got myself the rare/ex Trailer's Tunica, for RNG16. Not sure it's worth keeping though.

Grym can still get skillups for bonecraft making Carapace Powder, so she was taking all the beetle shells and crafting as we hunted. We decided to head to Jugner Forest, since it really seems to have a better drop rate, but we didn't stay too long. With all our farming, we only ended up with 9 jaws, but Grym had quite a few skillups and made a stack of carapace powder.

We did a chocobo race from San d'Oria to Bastok (read my scrolls this week on DRK - which got it to 41 and let me read the Absorb-DEX scroll I've had lying around for awhile), then decided to do some farming in Oldton Movalpolis. Grym needeed Igneous Ore to be able to finish making all of her pellet pouches (leather and smithing?), and you get those from Bugbears. Our steal rate for the ore was really bad, but they also drop them, so we got a handful. We also got a good assortment of moblin/goblin/bugbear equipment, which we desynthed into its components. I got nearly 3 stacks of glass fibers off of a bunch of masks, which made us decide we should have Kiki make some artificial lenses for alchemy skill. We also got a lot of Kopparnickel ore, which Grym could use to make Paktong Ingots for skill, and Moblin Thread to make some Moblin Weave, both of which sell well in Jeuno for a gobbiebag expansion quest.

So we headed to Windurst to clear up some inventory space, then headed to Giddeus to get the zinc and copper ores Grym needed for the ingots, as well as flint stones for more glass fiber. Then back to Windurst, where we gathered up all the glass fiber and flint stones from various mules, and we settled in for some assembly line crafting. Grym converted all the flint stones to glass fibers, Kiki synthed Artificial Lenses from the fibers, which Grym then used with another two glass fibers to make prism powders just to make more gil off the venture. We ended up with 12 stacks of prism powder, and Kiki got 2.3 levels on her Alchemy. Artificial Lenses will last me another 2.8 levels, so I'm sure we'll do that again some time.