Crafting: Beetle Arrowheads for Everyone! (Bonecraft)

When I'm actually making arrowheads (rather than buying them), I like the fact that they stack to 99 now. Makes it a lot easier for leveling on them. I've in the beetle arrowhead phase of bonecrafting, starting at 27.5 (caps at 33). This is a pretty bad money loser if you have to buy your materials, since a stack of beetle arrowheads would cost nearly 65,000 to make, and sells for a mere 10,000. But being the odd Taru that I am, I've been farming up my materials (plus other things that fund the purchases).

I had 11 beetle jaws and over 3 stacks of bone chips on hand, so I started out with support at the Guild, doing 11 synths for .7 in skill, which took me to 28.2. I got a Beetle Earring off of the Jeuno AH for 2k and passed my Bonecraft Recruit test.

I decided to see how the farming was in Garlaige Citadel, and took along a couple of stacks of wind crystals to convert the non-stacking beetle shells into the stackable (and decent moneymaker) Carapace Powder. I killed any beetle I ran across in Sauromogue, and was lucky to find Garlaige free of parties on the top level. I circled around killing the beetles and got a stack of jaws, 3 stacks of insect wings, and made a stack of Carapace Powder. Plus I got to help people open Banishing Gate #1 several times. :-) I made enough selling the Carapace Powder to buy another stack of jaws off of the AH.

My next bout of synthing (again at the Guild in Windurst) netted me 1.7 skillups (now 29.9) with 24 synths. Since I was running low on bone chips, I went out to the Outer Horutoto Ruins to kill the Wendigos behind the Three Mage Gate. Using my staff, the first would respawn about the same time I finished killing the last, so I had a neverending supply of Wendigos. One thing nice about skeletons is that you can also steal bone chips from them, helping increase your total haul. I ended up with 3 stacks of bone chips, 5 Rusty Daggers, a set of Test Answers and 2 Gravity scrolls.

The extra loot funded another 2 stacks of Beetle Jaws, but I actually ended up buying 3 stacks of Jaws, and got my skill up to 32.6 (2.7 skillups on 38 synths). I think it's time to move on to Fang Arrowheads (black tiger fangs and bone chips). I had some time before I had to log out last night, and headed back to beat up Wendigos again, and should be able recoup the costs for that third stack of jaws I bought with the additional Rusty Daggers and Test Answers I got.

I haven't decided what to do with all of the arrowhead thoughs. I think I have enough to make 150 stacks of Beetle Arrows, more if I HQ them. I would probably end up making about 300K if I do that, versus 40K for just selling the arrowheads themselves, but it would take a fair bit of time to make and sell that many arrows. Of course I don't have to do it all at once, and could do something like make a stack of quivers a week. Then I can start the process over with Fang Arrows.