The marketboard as any crafter knows is the real end game of Final Fantasy. It is a brutal chaparrel of angry no-lifes and casual-terribles festering together in a rage-fueled orgy of undercutting and spitefulness. It is the black, pulsating heart of procrastination and idolatry whose veins flow with the wasted time and potential of it’s innumerable victims. It is a meaningless forever race that rewards greater and greater numbers of fictional worth and impotent use. It has no value outside of itself, and the time and commitment required to receive its hollow rewards is almost criminal.

I love it with a passion that frightens me. I’m Gammon Fatsbarrell, king of the Leviathan server. I have wasted a great deal of time gaining false worth in an imaginary world. And in light of this regretful realization have decided to share all of my tactics in profit accumulation so others may suffer now that I have more specious wealth than I’ll ever spend, in an attempt to reconcile the year of my life I’ll never get back. Let’s get started.

I’m going to describe some general strategies and terms that I use to make a pile of money that doesn’t really exist. You can skip this part of the guide if you aren’t interested in economic theory applied to an ethical vacuum and instead look at my list of everything I sell further down below.

1.Spite - It’s important to know that spite is the most powerful, entropic and dynamic force that exists on the market board. This is an extremely narcissistic and ego-based subsection of the game so players will be on the attack when it’s in their best interest not to work together. Did you just put up a bloodblossoms that there’s been 0 of for three weeks? I guarantee that you’ll have competition within a day or two. Do you undercut a particular market every 5 minutes because the profit is so huge? Someone is going to destroy it. Do you see your rival’s name over and over again whenever you post an item? He’s going to find the rest of your markets and try to cut you down. Spite is the reason. People don’t behave rationally on the boards. Especially if they have enough money not to care, like me. They want to sell fast, “beat” the other guy, ruin his profits or hurt him instead of working towards mutual gain. It’s basically market board pvp. And I’m absolutely condoning it because it’s hilarious and fun and it happens all the time.

2.False Scarcity – This is when you buy up all of something that’s needed to make a particular item, preferably something rare or annoying to get, then take over that market after all of it sells. For example, I often buy out all of our server’s Levin orbs or Leviathan barbs for the chocobo bardings. This not only increases sales of the barding because there’s no components to make them, it quickly gives you dominance in the market because there will be significantly less competition. I’d recommend doing this with any lower cost primal or boss component.

3.Market Killing - If you are having difficulty competing with some of the soulless husks pretending to be human beings that stand next to the marketboard near their house and do nothing but update every item on their retainers every five minutes, consider completely destroying the market. Undercut by 10-100k intervals or more over the course of the day and then when the lizard person reaches his event horizon sell it for 1 gil more than him. You aren’t losing any money because he always undercuts you faster than you can change the price and this way he’s either losing gil or breaking even. Now keep doing this until he either leaves the market or until the end of time. Keep in mind that sometimes it’s forever. There is one item on my current list that I do not make money on, and haven’t in six months. But I will never, ever raise the price. Because fuck that guy.

4.Know your competition – You should really aim to learn the names and tendencies of the other major merchants on your server if you intend to try and make a lot of gil. You can even create a crafting linkshell if you can somehow manage to get along with one another. I know that Bob will undercut in the crafting gear market until it becomes unprofitable if you update to much during the day, but he’s never around late night. I know John hates me and will try to find markets that I’m in so he can ruin them, however if I ignore him he loses interest after one or two items sell. Mary actively tries to control the Thavnairian gear market but doesn’t like to compete in undercutting wars for very long. Peter is a total dick and needs to kill himself. These are important things to know.

5.Don’t flood – Versatility is the key. Choose lots of different things to sell. You never want to have more than 1 or AT THE ABSOLUTE MOST 2 of an item in a given market. Otherwise you end up eroding profit more quickly.

6.Analyze your server’s market – This goes without saying but spend a few hours looking at item lists and individual item histories. Find out exactly what sells well on your server, how many people sell it and how often. Your goal should be to make the absolute most profit as efficiently and easily as possible.