I've been trouble on what to do. I'm pretty much dead broke and can't upgrade any equipment. I was planning to make an artison so I can use my mats, but I'm wondering if I should just sell the mats and buy equipment. I think it would be kinda stupid to sell mats so I can buy equipment, but not sure. My clan has low lvl people so it's not like I can give mats to get good items.
At this point in the game your probably far better off selling the mats and buying the gear. This will get you through C grade. (B grade might be a stickler again, but by then you should have a better idea how to make money and get past that.)
Just look at the crafting recipes and compare to the manor and check the buy/sell shops in giran to see what is the most profitable.
HINT: >>ANIMAL BONE<<, Iron and then varnish are the main 3. (And things made from them.) Then Oriharukan Ore, coal, charcoal and the rest.
Tip: Take some material to a NPC shop, and see how much they will 'offer' you for it. (Don't actually sell it, just check the amount.)
This value is 1/2 the 'base value' of that material. For example: A NPC will buy Animal Bone at 75a. This means that the game considers Animal Bone to have a value of 150a. When you turn in crops at a manor, this is the value that the game uses to determine how much Animal Bone you get for your fruit. (After the buyback price is factored in.)
Make a list of what all the various basic crafting materials are worth. Then compare the base value to what shops are buying/selling mats for in Giran. (Just keep in mind plenty of sell shops do tend to overprice by a lot, and buy shops underprice! So if there is a high price even between the two, you know it's a 'high demand/low supply' material.)
(Key mat value usually has very little relation to their base value, almost worthless below B grade and well above it at that point and higher. Only a couple of D/C grade mats are worth lots of money to players.)
For example, using our animal bone base value of 150a. On Gustin, the average trading price of Animal bone is about 650a to 1,000a between the various buy/sell shops. That is well over the base value. So if you had 100 Animal bone and sold it for 800a you would make 80,000a adena from that.
So if you spoiled at the same time manored another material you can make far more than what you would get just from a regular character hunting but doing neither of those things. And yes this can slow down your leveling, but do you want to make money or be higher level with crappier gear?
If you just want the fastest way to make some newbie money, consider using the extra character slots on your account (I hope you still have 1-2 open!) and freight some NG gear over to a new character. With NG gear you can probably do 1-20 in under 2 nights on a melee char all the while manoring/spoiling. (Nukers take less time, but don't manor well.)
If you only freight over a minimum of gear, and re-do the quests for free newbie shots and gear, you can make a good amount of money fairly fast. (1k per slot if you have to freight, so about 15K total to freight armor/jewelry and a minimum of cash items.)
Don't underestimate the value of low demand mats! Stuff like stems or suede may not sell fast or often. But if you can manor/spoil them for cheap, every adena they sell for over your costs is profit! If you can sell stem for 100a (base price) but are able to manor it for 25a each, your making 75a per stem. This can be far better than selling a 300a item for 350a!
This can take some time to learn or setup, but once you have a basic understanding of how things work it doesn't take long to get a steady and impressive amount of money coming in compared to what you are making now.