So recently I was in Bastok at the GS guild, and overheared the following conversation:
Player 1: Anyone around here have high GS?
Player 2: Why?
Player 1: I have 8.5 million gil - will it be enough to get GS to 48?
Player 2: Hell no! It cost me 9 million to get mine to 42
<Aladria scartches her head>
Thie inspired me to write a beginning GS guide (what i have done so far) on how to get to lvl 40... while making money. I don't think there are any earthshattering statements here, and no easy solutions for synthing gold once you get into the 50s... - but if someone wants to level GS up to ~42, here's what I did
0-3 Copper Ingot = Fire crystal + 4 copper ore. Go to an airship merchant in you favorite city (the one you are most famous in). Bring about 4-5 stacks of fire crystals... spend an hour buying copper ore and synthing.
Material costs: 8-10K per stack of crystals, 9-12 gp per copper ore
AH cost of item: 30K per stack
Verdict: Profit (~50-60K depending on speed of skillups)
3-5 Copper Hairpin = Wind crystal + copper ingot. Make some more copper ingots while you are at it, then waste them. There is nothing you can do with these except equip your lvl 1 mule with one or NPC them away.
Materials cost: 6-8K per stack of crystals, ~10K per stack of ingots if you make them yourself
AH cost of item: nil
Verdict: Loss (~20-40K depending on speed of skillups)
5-9 Brass Ingot = Fire crystal + 3x copper ore + zinc ore. For this you may need to camp the guild, try to get your zinc ores for under 1000 gil each. With adv synth support, there will be relatively few breaks.
Materials cost: 8-10K crystals, ~8-12K zinc ore, negligible copper ore
AH cost: 30K/stack of ingots
Verdict: Profit (marginal, depends on frequency/nature of breaks)
9-11 Brass Sheet = Fire crystal + brass ingot. Once again, make some more brass ingots while you are at it. Brass Sheets stack, and sell slowly, but you will actually need these, so go ahead and keep them.
Materials cost: 8-10K crystals, ~20K for "make them yourself" ingots
AH cost: ~20-30K, but you will not be selling these
Verdict: Loss (~40-60K)
11-13 Brass Scales = Wind crystal + brass sheet. You've just made some nice brass sheets... Unfortunately, you will now turn them into worthless garbage to get the next two levels. Fortunately, you will not be spending any money to do this except the cost of wind crystals (which are free if you decide to farm them)
Materials cost: 6-8K crystals, "free" brass sheets
AH cost: ~5K / stack, and does not sell - you will need to NPC these away
Verdict: Loss (proportional to cost of crystals)
13-17 Silver Ingot = Fire crystal + 4x silver beastcoin. The beastcoins can be bought at the AH for about 12-15K a stack, or farmed from the key-dropping Yagudo in Giddeus. Try to keep the cost / synth to about 5K or less (count the crystal in the cost). Also, try to accumulate several stacks at once, then go to the guild for synth support to minimize <breakga>.
Materials cost: 8-10K crystals, 48-60K beastcoins
AH cost: 70K / stack of silver ingots in jeuno
Verdict: slight profit to slight loss depending on break rate
17-20 Silver Ingot = Fire crystal + 4x silver ore. For this step, you have two alternatives. You can go to the GS guild in Bastok, which has a chance of having silver ore for as low as 450 gil / pop, but also has a very high chance of being sold out of silver ore. The benefit of being in Bastok is adv. synth support. Alternatively, go to Mhaura. They have silver ore for about 700-800 gil a pop, but the competition there tends to be much less. However you get your ore, try to keep the cost to below 1K per piece.
Materials cost: 8-10K crystals, 20-50K ore
AH cost: 70K / stack
Verdict: profit
20-24 Silver Bullet = Fire crystal + silver ingot + firesand. Note: this synth requires Alchemy 52. If you are skilling alchemy at the same time, it's an alternative to holy water (at the expense of possibly breaking more costly materials). In general, I would recommend having alchemy around there anyway, but if you don't and don't want to lvl alchemy, then try to find something else to fill the gap. Silver bullets sell well, and provided you make your own silver ingots for this step, you will make good money even with occasional breaks.
Materials cost: 8-10K crystals, ~30-50K for self-made ingots, 13K / stack of firesand
AH cost: ~30K / stack of silver bullets, each stack of materials can generate up to 4 stacks of bullets. Provided you get at least 3 stacks out of every 12 synths (75% success rate, you should have this with synth support), you will be making good money.
Verdict: profit (200K +)
24-28 Thief's Tools = Fire crystal + copper ingot + iron ingot + yew lumber. Note: This requires Smithing 19 and Woodworking 13. I recommend making your own iron ingots for this - it will level your smithing (to 20 :) ), and will save you significant amounts of money on ingredients. Also notice that this recipie does not have an HQ variant, so your main goal is to not break it all the time. Copper ingots can be made at the airship merchant as noted before, yew lumber can be either made or bougth in Sadoria for 5-8K a stack.
Materials cost: 8-10K crystals, ~10K copper ingots, ~50K iron ingots, 5-8K yew lumber
AH cost: 20-25K / stack of tools, each stack of ingredients generates up to 4 stacks of tools. These sell pretty fast.
Verdict: if you can get cheap iron, it will be a nice profit, otherwise, you will break even or have a marginal loss ( < 100K)
28-33 Silver Chain = Earth crystal + 2x silver ingot. This stage is both good and annoying. It's annoying because you really should make your own silver ingots for this... which means several hours of patiently mining the GS guild in either bastok or mhaura. It's good because eart crystals are dirt cheap (no pun intended :) ), and because you will make money doing this. As usual, try to have several stacks of silver ingots before going to Bastok for adv synth support when you actually do the synthing.
Materials cost: 2K crystals, 2x ~45K for ingots
AH cost: 125K / stack of chains in Jeuno, and they sell
Verdict: Profit (~150K, or about 25K per stack of chains you make)
33-35 **** Ring = Earth crystal + silver ring + gem of your choice. Pure loss, but take one for the team because it makes the next set of recipies much less painful. It's also extremely easy = go to the jewelry shop on the second florr of Lower Jeuno. They sell silver rings for ~1250 a pop and all tier 1 gems for about 1900/pop. Gems stack. You will need at least two stack of components, possibly as many as 3.5, but you don't have to overcommit much - you can buy as many or as few at a time as you want. The price never goes up, and they never sell out. Alternatively, buy some tier 1 gems at the AH - noone ever bothers to sell them, but if they do, you can get a stack for as little as 6K. The rings themselves will be worthless unless you can get really lucky and HQ one... in which case you might actually be able to sell it. Additionally, you can NPC the resulting rings on the spot to free up inventory room.
Materials cost: 15K / stack of rings (they don't actually stack, sadly), ~25K per stack of gems
AH cost: nil, NPC the rings for 250 gil each
Verdict: Loss (~80-100K gil)
35-37 Mythril Ingot (optional) = Fire crystal + 4x mythril beastcoin. This recipie is optional, but you can get mythril coins in jeuno for ~30K a stack, which makes it a break-even proposition. With adv synth support, you will almost never fail this (unless you get unlucky, which happens).
Materials cost: 8-10K / stack of crystals, 4x 30K for beastcoins
AH cost: ~140K / stack of ingots
Verdict: break even or marginal profit
37-40 Mythril Ingot = Fire crystal + 4x mythril ore. If your nation is in first place, go to the airship merchant. Otherwise, go to the GS guild in bastok. I've seen them have mythril ore for about 1800 gil a pop, any time you buy the ore for 2K or less, it's a good deal. With adv synth support you should have very few if any breaks. This is why we did the stage with rings - dump 80K down the toilet, but now the chances of breaking expensive mythirl are very low.
Materials cost: 8-10K crystals, ~95K ore
AH cost: 140K / stack of ingots
Verdict: Profit (~30K per stack of ingots)
This should get you to lvl 40 in a week or less of semi-concerted efforts. It requires fairly little revolving capital (about 300K should do the trick), and it will actually make money. Of course, this will only stay current as long as the prices I've outlined hold true, but they have for the last couple of weeks. Hope this helps!