So I know I've said this before, but I'm finally quitting FFXIV for real this time (sorta). Had some light insomnia last night so was doing some crafting leves trade-ins, getting my crafters to lvl.45 and at the end I was like wtf am I doing. Yeah, doing the daily GC crafting turn-ins is only like 45 mins a day of work, but when I only have 3-4 free hours each night, that's like a 1/4th of my free time spent every night just crafting and turning in. At around 360 hours now and at least 1/3rd of that time has just been crafting. That's like 120 hours that I could spent on more fun things to do. And what have I gotten out of my 120 hours+ of crafting/gathering? Nothing really. I haven't made any money (in fact considering I spend 100k-300k a day on mats, I've probably spent 10-20 million gil; I'd probably be much in-game richer if I never get into crafting at all), haven't made any cool items outside a couple of minions, etc... the only drive has been that one day when I hit the level cap at 60 the crafting jobs will be useful.
...but by the time I get there SB will be out and then it'll be lvl.70 and being lvl.60 will be sorta useless. If SB wasn't coming out so soon I'd be more motivated.
Anyhow, I deleted FFXIV last night. I'm gonna take that daily hour back for my life. After I finished Zelda/Nier and some other small stuff I'll re-install it and play through HW->3.5 and all the combat content with my NIN. But I'm over the crafting/gathering/2nd jobs/etc.... I'll just stick with my ninja and enjoy going through the content for the rest of FFXIV's life. This was my first MMO and being a completionist I got way too into doing everything, but that's just a bad bad idea for time efficiency in MMOs.
When you start playing again, just do the MSQ and concentrate a little more on battle classes. If you end up doing your weekly challenge log even just a little you can make some money just by fulfilling the minimum requirements for it. By the time you finish the MSQ and start levelling up other battle classes, you'll have done those those awful moogle quests in Churning Mists to unlock the crafting beast tribe in HW. You can get Glass Fibres easy from them to sell on the market board, and you get to level up your level 50 crafters easily enough. But definitely get the MSQ out of the way and continue doing it into the patch content so you don't burn out on the game's frills like crafting and gathering. A lot of options open up to you and become dramatically easier when you have at least one class at 60 since you can go anywhere and many level 60 quests open up to you. The weekly Wondrous Tails at level 60 is a good way of getting tomes to gear up, and to get stuff to make money from. Same with the crafter/gatherer equivalent which was added in 3.55.
XIV was my first MMO since stuff like RuneScape, and I'm enjoying it a lot more because I feel like I can go at my own pace and no one really gives a shit about how slowly or how quickly I'm going. If I'm getting way too into a grind, Sunblade thankfully tells me to cut it out, then we go to netflix n chill. Just remember that you /don't/ have to do everything. If it's more beneficial to you to focus on one thing at a time, go for it. I did that when I worked in a hospital lab while finishing up school with limited free time last year, and I was pretty happy with my progress in-game at that point.
When I started crafting for profit, I ran into similar issues: I spent too much on materials and I ended up not getting as many returns on it. Now I... uh, make more money than Sunblade does. This is fine because we're saving up for a house in Stormblood, I guess? I don't know what he thinks of it lol. What I ended up learning early was that even just the tiniest earning contributes a lot to your overall funds. If people keep undercutting on the market board, even if the undercutting is crazy obnoxious, it's fine. I made my initial 15 million on crafting mats and orchestrion rolls (either acquired from Aquapolis, raids, or mats I made myself). I learned early that people don't like making their own crafting mats, and while it's tiny money at first, it starts adding up. Another idea is to stick to a gil threshold. My current one is 32-33 mil, and I refuse to spend money to go below that, even on mats. If I'm at that threshold, I suck it up and gather my own mats. I also learned that going through your crafting logs and crafting everything in there expends more money than you want depending on the market. People hate getting mats and just buy the mats off the board, so that's a good option to start with. It's slow, but it's a consistent profit. I have other strats, but that's mostly looking at the market board every now and then every day to see where material or gear shortages are.
That's even with the big hit that the market board took since 3.4/3.5 due to PotD drops/Diadem drops. PotD drops screwed a lot of crafters/desynthers, so a lot of us had to look elsewhere for profit. I used to craft High Allagan Replicas, Primal Weapons, etc for profit, and I used to desynth a lot of stuff for BC3s, FC3s, or demimateria. But since PotD hands HQ sets out like candy, several of my profit avenues were cut. So I do more market research than I did before. I don't make glamour prisms because at least 2-3 people on our server monopolize that market and it's funny to watch.
Definitely taking time off doesn't hurt. Take a month or two off and you'll be able to catch up if you focus on MSQ and NIN. I took 1-3 months off from heavy play in Oct-Dec since I was studying for my medical exam at the time, and I was pretty happy coming back.
