The crafting plan (for now)

Considering the 'slow burn' nature of Alchemy profits, I think I'll take the overstocked mule approach and sell common Alchemy items needed by higher level crafters.

I'll set aside 2 nights out of the week.

• One night to farm up materials for the Alchemy HQ cash cow: Silent Oil. If gil isn't that heavily needed, this same night will instead be spent on earning Guild Points. I want to earn as many of these in this tier before taking my test and moving to 61 (since GP items in that bracket will be more expensive to synthesize). This will essentially be a 'building' day, adding to my gil or GP pool, rather than simply keeping up with expenses.

• Another night (preferably Saturday) to stock up the Jeuno and Bastok mules with Carbon Fiber and Firesand (using all NPC-purchased ingredients) and have them keep 3-4 of each product on the AH every night. With the remaining time on that night, I'll play the newly discovered Hi-Potion game on the Jeuno AH (buying vines, crafting, and immediately selling the potion at about 4k profit, undercutting the living crap out of whoever has been playing Baron of High-Potions and hiking them up to a ridiculous 8k apiece on weekends), and I'll also craft up some quick small profit items such as Tsurara and Echo Drops (using the incidental Honey drops from my Beehive Chip farming). The income throughout the week from the mules and the spike from the High-Potion game will help offset the price of food, transportation, and gear upgrades during my other activities.

On a whim last night, I decided to try my hand at HQ'ing a weapon: Hellfire Sword. Ingredients are Earth + 2-Handed Sword (about 20k) + Silent Oil + Firesand. I'd crafted the other items, so the synth essentially cost 20k (give or take 1k for other ingredients). I bought the only three 2-Handed swords on the AH, crossed my fingers, faced south, and crafted. Results: 2 Hellfire Swords, 1 Inferno Sword. The Hellfires go for around 80-90k. I put one up on the AH. The Inferno Sword only goes for about 30k so the profit there is smaller though not negligible. I could have easily NQ'd all three though, since I'm only in the >11 bracket on this synth. I don't think I'll do this style of crafting until later in my Alchemy career, but it was fun to try out nonetheless, and the lucky double-HQ made it that much more fun.

Oh, and does anyone else love the fact that you can visually tell that you HQ'd an item just by the way the little crystal explosion changes to a more 'intense' version? I think it's great, considering the result takes a second to display in your log; at least you know you're getting something good ^_^