What's the best method to leveling Miner? With and Without Leves.

[Curcio]

It's kind of hard for me to figure out what's the most productive use of my time. I consider the leve investment worthwhile, to a point. I don't want to spend all of my leves, or even most of them, on mining.

Regarding leves, too, is the fact that I hate the RNG nature of the +% leves. It's something worthy of 1.0s awfulness. Having to sit and wait for my GP to recover just so I can guarantee a +25% is a bummer.

If I'm just mining grinding, what's my best option? I'm currently using EXP manuals and going after stuff my level. Attempts are no longer guaranteed, and even HQ gathers are lower than the 15% chance I'm used to. Should I mine for stuff below my level for guaranteed XP/better HQ? Or should I mine things exactly my level? Stuff above?

Tips, please.

[Hudd]

Hi there, i normally go for items that are around 80% chance of gaining without buffs. You will get roughly around 220 -300 xp per item so with a chain about 1000xp per node which soon adds up. im lv28 miner and have been grinding silver ore lv25 for now.

[BaconNarwhal]

I made a AutoHotKey script to calculate average exp gain per hour base on %, HQ, and base exp per hit.

http://pastebin.com/AftyMijY

As for leves, there are usually 4 types generated randomly. 4 nodes no evaluation, 8 nodes no evaluation, 4 nodes with evaluation, and 8 nodes with evaluation. The best exp per leve is obviously the 8 nodes with evaluation, however those usually require +15% gathering rate to get the max score. The ones with no evaluation usually charges my GP back up to full. I usually do a evaluation leve with a no evaluation so I always have full GP for those evaluation leves.

[Curcio]

Thanks for the tips guys. I just started on silver ore, but that leve tip actually sounds pretty useful.

[StarMarmot]

Have done a fair bit of leves. Using the cordial potions for the 8 node evaluation ones and stacking up GP before hand as was mentioned. While they are good, in retrospect I would have saved my allowances for tradecraft leves where the HQ bonus is just massive (200% increased xp compared to 25% increased xp for a full evaluation mining one). Stopped doing them at around 40, mostly doing electrum then, I got just about enough of it for my goldsmithing by level 47 (I did however go for HQ crafts/leves, would have gotten away with less mining otherwise, though I'd had to grind more wind shards). Any more leves there and I would have had to backtrack anyway. I'd say just go easy on the leves and use one if you need a jump to a higher tier material for your crafts.

If you're just looking to get 50 as fast as you can to sell top end stuff or whatnot, I'd go full out on the leves though.

Also don't forget your buff food. Even the vendor stuff adds up with 3% xp and a bit of useful stats.

It's a rough grind in any case!

[TohruHonda]

Using leves makes mining to 50 a breeze. As I leveled my other jobs I stacked up leve quests and burned through them on my Miner, hitting 50 was a joke and I will do the same thing to level Botanist.

[Voodoofreak]

I have the same issue. I am lv 34 miner and am currently at mythril ores. I tried the leve quest route, but it really didn't seem faster. Perhaps because I tried that at earlier levels.

[Odd]

I mine once a day to use up my rested XP. I Also add a survival manual bought with seals for from the GC Quartermaster and have a 100% bonus to xp until rested bonus/item buff wear. I'm still getting one level every day doing this and I'm up to 39 now.

[KhalidTheGreat]

Using leves makes mining to 50 a breeze. As I leveled my other jobs I stacked up leve quests and burned through them on my Miner, hitting 50 was a joke and I will do the same thing to level Botanist.

what kind of leves did you do?
Do you choose ones that were your level? Or ones that are a couple of levels below?
Did you only choose the ones with evaluation? And did you always get 25% ?

More details please

[jcw005]

Early on, it's probably worth it to alternate between levels obtained via leve and levels obtained simply by mining items. It doesn't take too long to do the latter until you are about level 40. Use your gathering log to tell you some of what's available around your level, and then check these items against the marketboard to see which ones are worth investing time in. (Nothing pre-50 will sell for that much, but you can at least save things up for yourself to craft with later.) I leveled entirely with leves from 44-50 over the weekend, and it would have been a nightmare to do otherwise. Here's a few thoughts.

Leves:
Always stick only with evaluation leves; they're the best bang for your allowance buck. If you know what you're doing, you can consistently/always get the 25% bonus, which makes any other leve a waste of allowances.

This is how they work:
All evaluation leves require you to reach a score of 160 per 4 nodes (320 for the 8 node type). There are two items that you can mine, an easy and a hard item. The hard item will have a low % of success, and will always grant 9 evaluation points per success regardless of level. The easy item's score is dependent on the level difference between you and it. If your level is equal to the level you initiate the leve at, then you will receive 7 points per success. +1 gives you 8 points per success, and +2 9 points.

4 Node type:
This is the easiest. Always use Sharp Vision II (+15% to gathering rate) and select the easy item. Have your leves at +1 of your level for the easy 25% evaluation bonus. At six hits per node, and 4 nodes total, you have: 4 * 6 * 8 = 192, or a margin of 4 misses over the 4 nodes. Even when you hit the highest level for that leve, i.e. when your level is equivalent to the leve's +4 setting, you should be getting right around a 100% success rate with Sharp Vision II. At six hits per node, and 4 nodes total, we get: 4 * 6 * 7 = 168 (you have a one-failure leeway which you shouldn't need). Since there are only four nodes, you should have enough GP to do this for each node.

8 Node type:
This one requires a bit more strategy since you won't have enough GP to use Sharp Vision II on each node. As long as you are still below the max leve level, this should be easy enough to achieve. Use Sharp Vision II on normal nodes when possible and select the easy item (for 8 points), and Sharp Vision I on +10% to high-level item nodes, and again, select the easy item. You shouldn't have any problems getting the 25% evaluation bonus.
Once you reach the maximum leve level, your strategy needs to change (and will take a little luck). On +10% to high-level item nodes, now use Sharp Vision II and select the harder, 9-point item. On normal nodes, vary between Sharp Vision I and Sharp Vision II as your GP warrants. You should be able to get the 25% evaluation most of the time, though sometimes your luck can be terrible.

*: Make sure to be upgrading your gear as you go along, in order to keep your gathering up.
**: This uses a lot of GP, but it doesn't really take that long to recover. You gain back 5 on each successful hit as well as 5 GP every Eorzean minute, i.e. 3 seconds of real time. To recover 500 GP entirely from scratch takes (500 / 5) = 100 Eorzean minutes * 3 seconds real time/1 Eorzean minute = 300 seconds, or 6 minutes. Not terrible. Considering you get only 6 Leves per day, it's worth the extra wait I'd say.