Each crafting trainer has a quest for some basic materials crafted by that profession. But you don't have to be a crafter *of* that profession to take the quest! You just have to have the crafted materials.
So, for example, on the Elyos side, if you want to get about 3150 kinah, buy or hit up a friend for 3 pieces of thin leather (requires 6 light hide as I remember -- sorry the game's not in front of me this week!), and you'll get a recipe you can sell to a vendor, and 3000 kinah.
Do something like this for six crafting NPCs, and you're talking about a gross of over 18K kinah, with a profit likely well over 10K kinah, at least.
Even if you want to learn every crafting profession's basics, this means that each crafting skill will only cost you a net of about 500-700 kinah, after the 3.6K training cost and in some cases some charcoal or other bought materials to make the necessary mats for the quests, with the 3K kinah turn-in.
An example: Every new cook in Aion makes some kind of cooked shellfish for the 1 pt crafting recipe. These are usually on the broker for no more than 300 kinah each. So buy three for 900 kinah or less. (In beta they were usually much cheaper than the default price because everyone grinded them for early points in cooking). Say you pay 1200 kinah for three?
Go to the crafting expert for cooking, and she'll challenge you to make her three of this first recipe. Hand in the three roasted clams (or whatever they are on your side of the world). Get 3000 kinah and a recipe worth 150 kinah.
-1200 kinah (mats)
+3000 kinah (quest reward in cash)
+ 150 kinah (quest reward recipe, sold to vendor)
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+2950 kinah net gain, in your pocket
Cost to make the mats if you decide to be a cook:
-3650 kinah training (I think that's right -- it's 36xx anyway)
- 177 kinah (3) salt to cook shellfish
+3000 kinah cash from the quest (and use the recipe)
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- 827 kinah actual net cost to train Cooking
(hmmm... sorry about the formatting, but the forum doesn't seem to understand about whitespace being significant in serious accounting!
)
Understanding that you'll get most of your training cost back from the quest completion makes training in a basic profession skill much easier to take at level 10, when you're probably kind of kinah poor.
Enjoy!
Shava
