Quote from Sora;22058:
I need to ask, what Rank do you think is a good rank to stop and only make on demand, where you can sorta start making money? I guess, what rank do you think is a good rank to stop to call yourself a "Sufficient Blacksmith"
This depends on your server, because it depends on how many smiths there are and what ranks they are. To make money, you need to make something that is fairly easy to make, so you don't lose money from failing. Then, it has to be a useful or popular item. Spaikas Silver Plate Boots are an example. It has 2 def and you can start making it at rank B. But you will fail a lot at rank B, which hampers your ability to profit off of the boots you make. At rank 9, spaika boots become same rank difficulty. You would think rank 9 would be a good place to stop then.
But, demand and supply of materials are different for every server. Maybe in your server, everyone who wanted spaikas already got a pair. They dont exactly break very fast. This means you will have a hard time selling them. This goes for any other item. It is worse with weapons. People want good stats for weapons, and if there are higher ranking smiths, they will produce better ones than you can. So even if you can make the weapons, people will buy the weapons with better stats rather than yours.
At rank 9 most of the harder items are off limits to you, being too difficult to generate any profit. On the other hand, it requires a hefty investment to rank past 9, perhaps more expensive than the amount of money you can potentially earn after you rank past. And there is the problem of other smiths. If there are many smiths training blacksmithing, they will end up with tons of items to sell. The more of these items are being made, the more people willing to sell cheap. They want to sell fast, and quickly, so sometimes they are willing to sacrifice profit. This will offer hamper your ability to make money.
Ultimately, it falls on you to do your own research on your own server. You need to find out what items are wanted, but are not available. Then you need the rank required to make that item. Unfortunately, ranking takes quite some time, and its possible the situation has changed by the time you get there. So, in the end, I guess its pretty much impossible to know where you can stop and just smith for profit. You will just have to keep going and find out on your own where is a good rank to stop. Yea, I know that's not too helpful, but that's just how it is ^^;