Synthesis failed.

The Dhalmel Overpopulation Action League has been stood down.  The amount of effort going in simply wasn't enough to have any lasting effect on the dhalmel population, and it didn't make sense to keep devoting that amount of manpower to a task that has proven to be an exercise in futility.  Again, my current lack of need for dhalmel-related items is a mere coincidence.

I did, incidentally, get leathercrafting from 15 to 20 by making dhalmel hides.  It would have gone to 21, but I capped my guild rank while valiantly fighting in the field, and the DOAL was decommissioned before I made it back from the tanners' guild in San d'Oria.


I haven't been doing badly with reclaiming the gil I spent leveling leathercraft, but my supply of sellable items has run dry.  FFXIAH shows my normal standbys (bast parchment and shihei) as being less than lucrative at the moment, so I decided to take a look at the leveling guide I use to see if I could skill up to anything profitable.  After reviewing my options for the 20-ish leathercrafting recipes--and the price of iron chains on AH--I came to the conclusion that parchment (Leathercraft 31) was my best option.

Eleven skill points is a huge gap, but I stocked up on dark crystals, tea leaves, and rolanberries, and headed for the tanners' guild and their lovely Advanced Synthesis Image Support.  I ended up having to buy a lot more crystals while in Sandy, and twice had to order more rolanberries from friends that were in Jeuno (yay for Ham and Kisuke!), but I did level to 24 on it (which is actually a reasonable range for the recipe with advanced support) and came up with a little over 2.5 stacks of parchment.

30k sounds like a lot for 4 points, but it was dramatically less than it would have cost using any recipe that involved an iron chain or linen cloth (which is approximately all of them in the 20s), and another similar investment should have me at (or very near) 30 in leathercraft.  On the "profit" end of things, I was able to use some of the parchment to synth a few Flutes +1 to sell, and the rest of the parchment is going to AH as-is.  I should at least break even on the investment, and I don't think I'd be able to say that if I'd gone with a "safer" recipe for my skill level.

Bonecraft is at 31-and-change thanks to some beetle jaws from Kisuke.  Tomorrow I'll probably buy what I need to finish off the partial stack of beetle arrowheads that I have, and then start on a new recipe with whatever bone chips I can get my hands on for a reasonable price.

In other news, DRK made it to 16 before I got tired of it.