As happy as a Tam in a room full of mats

On top of pulling in a decent profit on quivers today, I happened upon a NM lizard in Konschtat while out farming sheepskin today.  He gave me a piece of skin that sold for a sizable chunk of gil, which doubled my crafting budget for the day.  Oh, and I treated myself to a Light Staff—now I need to give up one of my precious macro book slots to make a "party" book and keep the one I normally use as a solo/duo book—as RDM, I don't want to be hitting mobs with a staff, but that "Cure potency +10%" is simply too good to pass up if I'm not in a mob-hitting situation.

I'm all about leathercraft for the rest of the money.  I'm really not that crazy about the craft so far, it seems slow and cumbersome, but bonecraft is on hold until leathercraft is 18 (okay, maybe 17)—high enough to do something with all the dhalmel hides I get while I'm out farming (they drop a lot more often than the femurs I need).  I'm also working on Tav's cooking here and there to one day make use of all the dhalmel meat.

For me, one of the most frustrating parts of any craft is when you decide to try to desynth all of those [random things with cheap mats] that you just made, in the hopes of being able to re-use some of it.  The breakage rate is a source of a lot of frustration.  On top of that, the cost of lightning crystals can make it a tough call as to whether doing so is more economical than just buying a fresh stack of mats.  These two factors make for an unfun time.  In my experience, it seems relatively safe within one or maybe two points of the recipe's skill cap, but almost foolhardy otherwise.  Regardless, it's a must to compare the price of lightning crystals with the price of a stack of the material you would be obtaining—if the lightning crystals cost more than half, I don't waste my money.  On the flip side, if even one successful desynthesis would make up the cost of the crystals, I'll try it even earlier.

Alas, with a mere eight points under my belt, I'm starting to run close to my budget.  I just might go out farming at 15 and see what happens.  /shrug