by Burbie52, HSM team writer

I began playing Final Fantasy XIV about nine months ago when the open beta started. I was one of the people who got an invite to the game before it officially opened up to everyone, and I have enjoyed every second of it so far.

There are a few aspects of the game that I didn’t expect, though, and one of them was the market.

Playing the markets in Final Fantasy is a whole meta-game unto itself; there is so much to keep track of and do in it that you could spend a good deal of your time doing just that and nothing else. It is a very simple concept, yet also a complex system of understanding how it works. There are so many factors involved, and everyone has their own strategies, but once you learn what to do you can make a great deal of gil, the money used in the game to purchase things.

How important is the market? I would propose that it is the heart and soul of the game itself. Without it, the game would be a lot less interesting. When I came into this game it was as a newbie; I had never played a game where you could buy and sell in an active market. Skyrim allowed you to make things and sell them, but it is a single-player game — and adding the other people playing into the quotient makes for a whole different animal. An animal which can bite you in the behind if you don’t know what to do.

When you first enter the game, all you can do is buy at the market boards found in every major city’s marketplace. This is also where you will find the NPC vendors that you will buy from until you reach a higher level in your decided-upon class. Trying to buy in the market board is a bit hard at first, as many of the items there are priced much higher than NPC vendors might sell them for; many of them are made by crafters and are High Quality (HQ) items. When you are a lower-level class, gil is a precious commodity and hard to come by. The variety of items is endless, from potions and food to armor and weapons, and all of the things that crafters use to make a myriad of products.

As you play the game, you will collect a great deal of spoils or loot by various means. Fighting even the smallest low-level enemy will give you skins and different things, and they can fill your inventory very quickly. You can only sell the to the NPC vendors in the game in the beginning, and as you will need money to purchase anything you might need, it is smart to just sell most of what you obtain at first.

A typiclal NPC vendor

Once you reach a certain place in the main story of the game you will be given the opportunity to hire retainers. These are NPC helpers, and they are the only way you can sell things in the markets. You create them in the same way that you create your own character in the game, so they can look like whatever race you choose and have all of the same customization that you have to make them uniquely your own. The base game fees allow you to own two retainers at a time, but you can pay an additional $2.00 per month per retainer, to add up to two more of them.

This may seem a bit unnecessary, and at first it really is. Two retainers is more than enough to start with, but the thing about them is they also hold all of the gear and materials you aren’t using at the present time, or gear that you are saving for a future class choice. These gear items can add up quickly as you obtain things from dungeon chests, and many of them are one-of-a-kind Aetherial (pink colored) or Unique (green) pieces of gear. This type of gear is much better than normal gear becuse they have additional attribute points added to them to boost your stats for fighting or defense. Your retainers will hold these until you can use them or get the right to sell them to a Grand Company for seals — the only way you can get rid of them besides using them until they reach 100% spirit bonding and turning them into materia, a type of gem used to enhance equipment.

Nicoli: One of my retainers

So yes, the markets have a lot of strategies to them. You can sell low if you want and it will garner you some gil, but just undercutting everyone by a lot of gil will eventually end up cutting your own throat, as it tends to lower the general prices and then no one makes money. You have to read the market every day, several times a day, because the prices can fluctuate a lot from hour to hour. Sometimes I pull things out I have for sale because the prices are too low, and keep them for a time when they go up again. Other times I have bought all of the lower priced items, if I can afford it, and sold them at a higher price.

That particular strategy can bite you, though, because someone can come along and undercut you again and leave you with a lot of unsold merchandise. Most of what you will sell in this manner are things you acquire in dungeons and in general fighting throughout the game. Some of these items can be sold for good amounts of gil, especially if they are HQ, as crafters desire them to make their various wares.

Once you become a Disciple of the Hand (crafter) or a Disciple of the Land ( gatherer) the whole game changes when it comes to marketing. Even some lower-level creations can sell for a lot of gil, though the materials to make them can come at a pretty price as well. It is a true balancing act trying to reckon cost with earnings, and as I said, the marketing meta-game changes yet again. You can sell things you harvest or things you make, both can give you a lot of gil, but you have to keep your hand on the pulse of the market like it is a living thing, which in a sense it is — as it is made up of a lot of human beings all striving to make their way in the game.

I am truly enjoying playing the markets in Final Fantasy XIV, something I never would have dreamed of when I started this wonderful game. I think you will too if you choose to join us.

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One Response to “Playing the Markets: Final Fantasy XIV”

1. McJorneil says:

   June 13, 2014 at 12:27 am

   I have read about some players losing millions of gil they earned from the markets due to it entering the game by way of the RMT people. They would put their wares up for sell, which were then purchased by RMT accounts. Square Enix then stripped them of that money.

   Crafting is probably my favorite thing to do in the game, although I also enjoy being able to freely switch to fighting or gathering whenever I please. I kinda want to see a dual synthesis option added, wherein they have items that require two players simultaneously using their crafting skills together in order to successfully create it. Sort of like Home’s two person emotes. I got the idea while watching two NPCs using a large saw blade on a tree.

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