Tag: Crafting

Learning to Spearfish!

I’ve been back in FFXIV for just over a week now, picking up with the beginning of Endwalker and meandering my way through the story. In my down time, I have always loved crafting & gathering jobs in the game, so it wasn’t too long before I learned that spearfishing had been revamped in 6.1 – and that I had not even picked it up prior to the revamp.

It’s a mini game that opens these days. You find a node much like you would with botany and mining, and you have to use your spear on fish that swim by. I thought the game was pretty fun, and a nice change from the regular fishing that I have all but forgotten how to do. I picked up a few hermit crabs that I needed for a provision mission, and a handful of other fish that I put on the auction house. I don’t have a lot of gil in game (probably one of the few games where I spend most of my time broke) but I’m trying to save up so that I can enter the housing market. We’ll see how that goes. My husband has also returned to the game, so he’s been working through the older expansions with a handful of friends, and I’m now waiting for him to catch up in Endwalker. Overall? It has been some nice casual gaming, and a perfect way to spend a few evenings.

Addons to Optimize Craft Orders

With Dragonflight we were introduced to a brand new craft UI, and with it, crafting orders. The ‘end game’ to professions relies on these craft orders to obtain your skill points and in some cases, those first time craft points. Unfortunately, the base UI leaves out a lot of information, and so I’ve been using some very specific addons to enhance the experience and I want to share them with everyone. First up – Journalator.

Journalator is an optional addon that relies on auctionator, and it comes with a whole slew of features for recording what your character is doing in game when it comes to gold – but what I’ve been using it for is tracking those pesky craft orders. Not only can you see who sent what, but it also records the materials used. Are you uncertain if the customer provided the mettle? You can mouse over the crafted item and it will tell you.

If you’ve placed an order it will also track that and who you placed the order with – you no longer have to remember the name of your favourite crafter. Maybe you want to order something else from them in the future, or get a recraft. I would be lost without this addon.

Next up – CraftSim. This addon calculates stat weights & average profit, as well as helps find the most profitable profession gear, and can simulate any knowledge point distribution. If you want to know what materials to use, how close you are to procing up the next rank, how much inspiration you have, or any of the other little tiny numbers that the basic UI likes to hide – this addon is for you.

TooManyAddons – this addon doesn’t help me make gold directly, but it does help cut down some time. You can create addon profiles and swap between them with the click of a button. I have one set for raiding / dungeons, another set for gold making, and even one set up for taking pretty screenshots.

Those are the main ones I’m using to help me out with my professions these days. I’m sure there are many more out there, but these are the ones that have helped me the most.

As always, happy gaming – no matter where you find yourself!

Raiding, Adventuring, and Having a Good Time

What have I been up to in EQ2 lately, you may ask. Well. Things have been pretty busy – which is a sure indication of why I haven’t been keeping up as steadily with my posts as I should be! I have deadlines for work looming in and that always makes for some sporadic posting as well as a lot of real life happening at the moment. Things should settle back down in a few weeks (just in time for them to take off again, as always).

I’ve joined up with a new guild on Oasis, and I’ve been busy trying to get comfortable – which is harder then it sounds. All 12 of my EQ2 characters are over there now, and I’m happy that I seem to have at least broken myself from the multi server gaming habit. It was just getting too hard to be in three places at once and I was constantly left feeling as though I was letting someone down by not playing with them on their server. What’s the point if I’m not having any fun myself. I’ve added three of my characters to the new guild, my mystic, the dirge, and my paladin (mostly so I could grind crafting writs). So far things are going nicely. I got to explore Erudian Research Halls with them, and on Wednesday we did Ward of Elements, which was fun (especially since most of us were 90 and hence the zone was green).

The dirge is now level 88, and half way through 89. I’m excited, although I have a LOT of work to do on this character still. She only has 112 aa and that hurts very badly. That’s what you get from power leveling though. The paladin is also at level 82, almost 83, and I’ve been doing battlegrounds with her which I quite enjoy. There’s something decidedly satisfying about taunting attackers off of your dps so that your dps can cause their heads to explode. I’ve got her wearing the level 80 set of PvP gear, which doesn’t do much for me in terms of PvE, but that’s alright.

Crafting has taken a small back seat while I just roam around Norrath looking for trouble. I’ll get back to it before too long no doubt, as I’d really like all 9 crafters at level 90. We’ll just have to see how that goes.

In the mean time, it’s FRIDAY and I’m looking forward to hearing about everyone and their adventures at PAX East this weekend. I won’t be attending – but I WILL be going to the SOE Fan Faire in August. Hope to see everyone there!

Second Crafter hits 90, and Simply Exploring

While there have been some mixed feelings about the content of Sentinel’s Fate, one thing that has NOT been up for debate is how absolutely beautiful the newest expansion is. As groups made their way through instances last night all we could hear was how amazing everything looked, especially those zones under water. The graphic teams outdid themselves this year, and I’m proud to be able to show that sort of thing off. I absolutely love being able to ‘fly’ around via the landing pads, and just marvel at how everything looks.

I spent some time working on the crafting chain of quests yesterday, and harvesting. When I wasn’t doing that I was working on my 2nd crafter (who managed to hit 90 just after dinner) my jeweler. Now I’ve got a 90 jeweler and alchemist (taking care of scout skills as well as fighters). Next on my ‘to do’ list is a carpenter, so I can ogle all of the amazing house items. I enjoy the fact that I’m getting the bonus’ again for having max level characters, I knew I would miss it once it was gone.

I don’t imagine I’ll be working another adventurer up to 90 any time soon as there is plenty for me to do with the one I have, but I do want the crafters to 90 (for obvious reasons). I hope everyone else is having an amazing time in game, and I’ll see you in Norrath!

Making Money in EQ2

I figure that title is bound to get me the most spam comments I can possibly get, aside from maybe “how to level from 1-80 in an hour” or some other similar title. When you get down to the nitty gritty of EQ2 you really don’t need money for a whole lot. If you’re used to running instances your master spells will drop and there are quite a few zones that have masters on smart loot, in both RoK and TSO. Then there are the research assistants and their monthly (or less if they’re lower level) masters available to players, gear that comes from questing (a la shard runs) and if you’re a raider you’re taken care of pretty well too. There are repair bills but then there are also raids that pay a nice amount, and if your guild sells gear at all chances are you’re used to a guild split every so often.

If you don’t have a plethora of alts chances are you can see some fairly good coin from doing quests and selling items – of course alts are expensive, to gear them out and purchase their masters (or expert skills) on top of the ones you’re trying to gain for your main can be a little annoying. Multiply this by 10+ (yes, some of us have that many alts) and it’s a very expensive hobby. So how do you off set that cost?

One of my main methods of making coin is to craft. On most servers this would not be a good form of income, in fact on most other (non rp servers I’m talking here) servers it’s better to actually sell the rare components rather then to craft something from it and try to sell that. Whether it is due to the number of people per server who harvest or some other factor I’m not quite sure – anyhow – on Antonia Bayle most of my coin comes from selling items in the 20-60 level range. It seems like everyone has an alt, and everyone wants to twink them out.

I can buy severed fir for 12g a shot (some times lower) create a bow or club from it and put it for sale for anywhere between 25-50g (as noted on my sales log) and it will typically sell on the same day that I’ve put it for sale. The problem is knowing the market, and figuring it out. It takes some time. I’ve always known lower level items sell exceptionally well on the roleplay servers since I’ve played there, there’s simply more people between those levels then end game.

Cloth is another good seller (or leather I suppose) there’s lots of druids and brawlers leveling through the ranks, and I always find a short supply of woven gear for my own characters, so I figured putting some up for sale would be a good thing. Furniture also sells pretty well, there are a lot of avid house decorators out there who run out of this item or that and when budget isn’t a huge issue they don’t mind purchasing that last item from the broker.

I’ve never found it that hard to make money in EQ2, I have had over 500p at one point in time and I don’t really try to make coin or at least I haven’t in quite some time. It wasn’t until I was looking over my reserves yesterday that I noticed I was well below 20p between both my accounts, and that had to change. Now if only I’d stop creating all these alts who seem to take coin from me before I make it to the bank..