Hello folks. Comet here. I've been with the FC since the beginning, and I almost bailed around the holidays when there were only 2 or 3 regular members online at a time. But we've since rallied, thanks to all of your recruiting efforts (I am not a recruiter. At all). Yet we still don't have a house. All the cool FCs have houses by now, but not us. This is sad!

People seem to be contributing the Housing Fund regularly, and that's awesome to see. But I have not noticed any coordinated effort to raise gil. I have a few proposals to change that, so that we can finally have a place for people like me to horrendously decorate and play immature games. Looking at you, Chill-.

Each section will have a TL;DR for kids who can't read good.

Initiative One: Materia Madness

Materia farming is one of the surest way to make big gil, and I think the prices have gone back up following the crafting and gathering adjustments in Patch 2.2. Materia's back in demand, and there's no reason we shouldn't hit this market hard in a coordinated effort.

I'm sure you all know the basics: You equip gear and fight mobs of equivalent level, until the gear is spirit-bonded (the bar to the left of the item's graphic turns white). You convert the spirit-bonded item to materia. Bonding grows according to how much EXP you would get from a fight (even if you don't get EXP when you're 50). So, as a 50, fighting LVL 50 mobs in a dungeon will grow the bond faster than LVL 46 mobs in a FATE, while killing a bunch of LVL 10 mobs will do nothing. Spirit-bonding accessories can help. HQ items will bond 20% faster, and a materia meld adds another 20%. And the crafting/gathering gear can be worn by all classes. Items above LVL 45 are guaranteed to give a grade III materia, with a good chance for a grade IV.

Fortunately, I can make this HQ gear very easily. Whether it's rings, belts or the LVL 50 patricians gear (the non-"AF" set for crafters). So why don't I crank these things out, and all of you start generating some materia?

Are you running WP or Brayflox HM 3 times for tomes, or doing all of the high lvl duty roulettes? Load up your right side with crafting/gathering accessories and you could finish with 200k-300k worth of materia. If there's interest, we can organize some full-crafting gear runs of WP. Four people bonding gear in every slot but their weapon? There's at least 1 million gil there, once all the materia gets sold.

As I'm pretty timid, I haven't tried running any pick-up-groups while wearing patrician's gear rather than my WAR myth gear. I've stuck to replacing the belt and the right side (accessories) with craft gear. You may be bolder and try to get away with wearing more on the left side (and let's be honest, you could probably equip the pants without anyone noticing). A clever trickster could probably equip all patrician gear and use the glamour prisms to hide it. But don't be a dbag and make your group suffer for the sake of bonding gear. Make sure you're equipped to do your job well, and then start equipping these non-battle items.

How to participate: If I didn't hector you enough in the previous paragraph, get ready for more. I don't see a way to efficiently execute this plan without relying on the honor system. SO BE HONORABLE, YOU SONS OF BITCHES. I am usually only online for a few hours in the evening, and I don't want everything dependent on when I'm available. Right now, my plan is to load up pages 2 and 3 of the FC chest with gear. These items can only be removed by select members. If you want to participate, ask one of these members to remove the items and send them to you. This way we avoid someone taking a bunch of HQ items and dropping the FC, and there's a rough idea of who has taken what.

More importantly, we are trusting you to give us the fruits of your bonding. I would really love this to be a 100% housing effort, because we are still a long ways off from a medium house and I'm not crafting these things for you to make gil for yourself. If you take an item from the FC chest, it is for the FC fund. Full stop. If you want bonding for your own purposes, I'm happy to come to a private arrangement, separate from the FC chest. Please honor this. A house would be really, really cool.

The details for how to proceed once you get the materia are to be determined, probably in the responses below. I imagine we will ask that the materia be sent to Chillo or some other character(s), who will then list them on the market board. Rather than having you sell the materia yourself and send in the funds. The honor system only goes so far.

What I could use from you: Useless materia for melding. Crafting materials for accessories is mostly electrum ingots (or ore if you're a LVL 41+ miner), raptor skins and sinew (trying for Outer La Noscea atma? Farm the raptors on your downtime) and basilisk whetstones (basilik eggs for LVL 46+ miner). Patricians gear requires felt, which means snurble tufts (golden fleece in E Thanalan) and fleece (karakuls in Coerthas), as well as flax for linen (LVL 31+ botanist). Shards will also be helpful. Primarily wind shards for GSM.

TL;DR: Find high level crafting/gathering gear in the FC chest and equip it in easy content. When the gear is spirit bonded, convert to materia and send the materia to us to sell.

Initiative B: Pass Some of that Coke

I was excited about this last week following 2.2, but it may not be the big money maker I was hoping. High level crafting is now all about master books, which are bought with HQ versions of 2-star ingredients. It is impossible to HQ these items with 100% certainty, and each one requires 9 of a special ingredient. These ingredients, like coke for darksteel ingots and potash for vanya silk, used to be bought with philosophy tomes, now they're bought with GC seals. Each one goes for 2500 seals, or 22,500 seals for one synth.

In other words, these HQ items are not cheap or easy to get, but crafters need them to advance. This helps keep their demand high, and I have a decent chance of making these HQ items. The only problem is amassing enough of the ingredients mentioned above. I can easily gather the other materials (darksteel ore, twinthread, etc.).

So if you have GC seals that you don't know what to do with, consider spending them on ingredients and sending them to me. Every one will go toward these synths, and 100% of the gil will be deposited in the Housing Fund. A darksteel ingot can sell for 100-150k, an NQ for 20-40k. Vanya silk sells for a little less, but I suspect it will rise. I will keep a log to note your contribution.

You may also find these ingredients in the new hard mode dungeons or from treasure hunts. Keep your eyes open and roll Need when you see them in the loot bag. Items to look for: Coke, Potash, Hardened Sap, Peacock Ore, Animal Fat.

TL;DR: If you have extra GC seals, spend them on Coke and send them to me. Your contribution will be logged and used to make HQ items that I will sell. All proceeds will be deposited to the Housing Fund.

Initiative Three: Treasure Huntin

Let's do treasure hunts. Why not? Not a whole lot of gil, but sometimes expensive things drop. If you have a LVL 46+ gathering job, try to amass Peisteskin maps. And let's coordinate some day (or days) of the week to run a bunch of maps at once.

I believe every person in a peisteskin treasure gets 1600 gil, rather than a set amount divided by the number of party members. So if we can get an 8-man party together, run 10 maps in the course of an hour, we could add over 100k to the Fund. Do that once or twice a week, and it's not too shabby.

Remember that if you are a gatherer, you can hold 4 maps at once: one map in each retainer, one map in your inventory, and one deciphered map (it goes into your key items).

TL;DR: It wasn't that long, just read it ya dummy.

Let's do it! I'm going to work on getting my BTN up.. I need another 10 or so levels to get peisteskin. Maybe 3 times a week we group up for an hour and bang them out? We made 80 last night on just those few maps.. That can really add up!!!!