Submitted by sam on Mon, 05/10/2004 - 18:42.

Perhaps my favorite scheme for making a lot of money very quickly involves logging and woodworking. This scheme works very well at levels past 18, but does require an initial investment of around 8k-10k gil.

If you're not in San d'Oria, get there. Set your home point and Mog house to Sandy (you'll be here for a while) and give up your levelling activities or missions/quests for a bit. In order for this one to work, you really do have to work at it.

What we are going to be doing is logging in the forest in Ghelsba Outpost to the north (take Ronfaure West to get there). Each log takes up one space in your inventory and is not stackable, so we need to have a relatively empty inventory and be ready to be dropping a lot of worthless logs (which, will be hard if you are used to keeping all your drops ;-) We will also be working on our woodworking skills which can bring us a lot of gil in the future and help with other things.

Start by purchasing hatchets in San d'Oria. These can be purchased from Taumila's Sundries for approximately 500-600 gil, so only purchase them from the Auction House or personal bazaars if you can find them cheaper. Your fame in San d'Oria affects the price of these, so the more famous you are, the cheapter they will be. Purchase a stack of 12.

Next, be sure to have two stacks of wind crystals. If you do not have them, purchase them from the AH. I typically find them going for 1.7k gil. Sometimes they spike at around 2k, which starts becoming a rip-off and will eat into your profits. If they are at around 2k, then you may wish to wait for more to be placed in to drive the price down, or you may wish to just go out and fight mobs yourself to get wind crystals. You do need two stacks of wind crystals because these are what we will be using to synthesize certain logs into lumber (takes up less room in inventory) and build our woodworking skills. You could proceed without the wind crystals initially, just plan on dropping everything except for one type of log.

Once you have the hatchets and wind crystals, head to Ghelsba. The forest is just past the entrance (large wooded area, you can't miss it). Wander around looking for Logging Points and use your hatchet on them. You should get a fairly high rate of logs.

Start out by keeping only Arrowwood and Elm logs. Arrowwood is quite common and you should get a lot of them. Elm is quite rare, and will only drop once in a while. Arrowwood is cheap and crappy and not worth much to sell individually, however it is easy to synthesize into Arrowwood lumber (one wind crystal plus one Arrowwood log). Stacks of Arrowwood lumber go for around 2-2.5k at the Sandy AH, and your woodworking skill will improve while you synthesize it. Elm logs are hard to synth, and at low levels you will never be able to synth them. However, they go for 3.5-3.7k at the Sandy AH. Your goal is to get as many Elm as possible, and have a couple of stacks of Arrowwood lumber. Drop everything else. Seriously. If you can do this, you stand to make quite a bit of profit from your efforts. My first time out I made around 20,000 gil in about an hour and a half.

Once your woodworking level gets to 3 or more, keep doing the above, but add Maple to your synth attempts (one wind crystal plus one Maple log). The Maple lumber doesn't sell worth crap, but you can use it to make more hatchets in the future (one fire crystal plus one Maple lumber and two Bronze ingots). Plus, it helps raise your synth skill more.

Soon, you will get too high for Arrowwood, and should switch to synthesizing Ash lumber (one wind crystal plus one Ash log). Ash lumber doesn't sell for much either (often less than Arrowwood) but you can use it to make weapons and things (which, don't sell for much either, but can help boost your woodworking levels). All the time, keep shooting for as many Elm logs as possible. These will be where you will be primarily making money, all the others are just to boost your woodworking skills.

If you have the money, I'd recommend getting the full field gear setup: Field tunica, field gloves, field boots, and field leggings. This will bring your defense down, but, honestly, there shouldn't be anything too nasty for you if you're above level 18. The field gear will boost your logging results and reduce the hatchet failures.

Once you get to around level 7 or 8 woodworking, switch to only synthesizing Maple (for hatchets) or Holly (one wind crystal plus one Holly log). Holly lumber goes for around 5k a stack at the AH, and it can really help zoom your woodworking skills up (it's actually a level 12 synth item). You may have a high failure rate at this point for Holly, so try doing it on Windsday to help you out. At this point, your focus should be on Elm logs and Holly lumber for selling, and Maple lumber to making new hatchets. Now you should be able to pull in upwards of 40,000 gil per hour or so.

Keep doing this. Rinse and repeat. You may add harder logs to synth like Willow to keep boosting your woodworking levels, but bear in mind that they will not sell for much.

Once your woodworking gets to around level 20, then you can start trying to synthesize Elm lumber (one wind crystal plus one Elm log). You could start trying this earlier, but I put so much value on these logs (3.5k gil each) that I really don't want to lose any of them. A stack of Elm lumber usually goes for around 30,000 gil at the AH. So, admittedly it is less than just selling them individually, however you can hold more in your inventory and, more importantly, sell more in the AH. At this point, you really should be able to pull in upwards of 60,000 gil every hour or two or three. Now your money should be rolling in.

Hey! That jerk stole my logging point!

The absolute hardest part about doing this is the fact that you will be competing with other loggers for logging points. This means that, if you encounter jerks your life will be very hard. Sometimes people will run up and steal logging points from you if you miss your first strike. Other times people will lock on to you and follow while you run around looking for points. When you find a point and begin running toward it, they will use Flee and zip past you and take the point. Additionally, if you do this at a particularily crowded time, even if everyone is nice and courteous you will still have a hard time finding points.

This means that the best time for logging is when no one else is around. I have found that early in the morning (for example, I get up and do this for an hour or so before heading to work) you will get the best results.

This also means that, in the "civilized" world of logging there is a bit of etiquette. Unless you want to be an asshole and have people berate you, I'd recommend sticking to these practises:

• Do not steal logging points! If someone is set at a logging point and misses a few shots, do not come up and steal the point. Let them have it, damnit. You'd want the same, wouldn't you?
• Do not use Flee! Not everyone has Flee. Using it to outrun your fellow loggers is just mean and nasty. Don't do it.
• Respect other's space! Some loggers like to sit in a given area and just scan the trees around them for logging points to appear. Others like running around scanning the whole area for them. Both ways work, and there is room for both ways. If you see someone doing one of these ways, give them space. Not only will you have better results (by not going for the same logging points) you will not piss them off.
• Do not shout that you are selling logs or that you need certain logs! Unless you need really simple logs like Arrowwood or Maple (that are essentially worthless) you'll just irritate those around you. Everyone is doing the same basic thing, so don't think you can just dump your crummy Ash or Arrowwood logs on someone else.

Comments on Logging "Myths"

Checking around some forums and message boards online you'll find a lot of posts saying that logging sucks for making money. Well, this is only partly true. If you spend all your time keeping poor selling logs, or synthesizing crap that doesn't sell, sure, you wont make a dime. However, what I have detailed here has worked for me, and works for everyone I know who has tried it. Sure, it takes patience, and it's not the quick and easy path to money, but it does work.

The Jeuno Temptation

One of the biggest temptations when you've found a money-making method that works is to try and go for the bigger score. Browsing through Jeuno's AH you may notice that your lumber sells for more there. At least on my server, stupid things like Arrowwood Lumber can go for as high as 4.5k gil! Since Chocobo's can be so cheap, you may be tempted to travel to Jeuno to sell you warez there. It's something I've tried, and it's something that doesn't work.

The big problem with it is that the items tend to sell very slowly in Jeuno. Usually, in the time it takes to sell them, you can sell the same items two or three times over in San d'Oria (where the woodworking guild is, which is important! ;-) So if Arrowwood Lumber goes for 2k gil in Sandy and 4k gil in Jeuno, you'll still make more money more quickly by just staying in Sandy. While you may get lucky, chances are Jeuno's sales will be too drawn out.