Why is crafting/gathering so difficult/grindy?

Any good way to farm aethersand in stormblood on ilvl 290 gear?

Aetheriel reduction is really easy to do.

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Originally Posted by Maeka

Right, because everybody who is currently leveling should level to 60, STOP, go grind HW Endgame or pay millions of gil, just to progress into SB. lel.

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I'm not sure what your problem is, but me and my FC progressed into SB gathering from HW gathering so easily without any HW end game gear, that we didn't even realise it's an issue.

I have all my gatherer at 70 now, and I entered SB with level 58 adept gear (which is really easy), bought NPC gear when I could, then progressed to 70 without any problem you faced.

The only awful grinds I got were from 50-51 and 60-61. It kinda makes sense tho, it shouldn't be too much of a faceroll entry into the new Xpac, if you're catching up you gotta go and get your stuff from the last Xpac to get ahead in the new one. Otherwise, yeah it may take a bit more work.

You're going to need the scrips for the end game books, Master Recipe/Folklore so yeah may as well do your level grinding through red scrips.

If you're leveling up all your gatherers and crafters about the same time, you also should be investing your gathering into getting materials for making HQ versions of your gear.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...w_cp_crafters/
(If you're having that much difficulty reading the first page of a reddit post "I hate the formatting of reddit" ...I dunno what to tell you because usually I read the first post since I didn't permalink the comment that was relevant to this discussion).

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Originally Posted by Maku

If these kind of "annoyances" where not part of the system everyone and their mother would have all crafts and gatherings levels and there would be no market.

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Exactly. Crafting is supposed to be a niche on this game tha few people would bother... otherwise items wouldnt worth a dim and if crafting was easy so everyone would have it then i doubt we would have good itens to craft like now...

It sounds like you are crying cause you are too cheap to pay for melds before getting level 70 gear and your stats suck. I would of tried the same if I didn't already have gear. You got all NQ left side with no melds on your gather set, and jewelery is single melded with gp...you really been doin this wrong. Jewelery only ever gives GP which is trivial, you should of put gather melds in jewelery a long time ago and just used it for the meld stats. Belt, and helm give little gathering skill and mostly perception which is also trivial past a certain point, it would of been worth it to meld some hq or even nq level 61 ones and wear them 61-70. You could of crafted an hq gaganaskin vest at level 61, spent 50k melding it, and it would have 18 gathering more than what you are wearing now. You could of made the level 62/63 hq weapons for botanist/miner and melded those full of gathering materia, and each of those weapons would of given you +50 more gathering than the weapons you are using now. Melds might cost 300k - 400k for all the weapons but they would carry you to level 70 and that is 152 more gathering each of your classes would of had 4 levels ago. If you couldn't craft anything yet it would of been 100% worth it to buy them. I kinda feel bad for you, that grind must be rough lols.

There is probably a lot of people that level crafters through the moogle dailies and then get overwhelmed when it starts to require effort. The "rich" people who level'd them up before you had to do the grind too and it sucked. Most of us didn't have moogles and when we melded V's were actually expensive. Don't feel like you are getting shafted any harder than we did, you are not.

There's no point in getting the 61 or 63 HQ set when I'm going to replace it at 65.

As far as the melds, I was simply tired of not having enough GP to do anything, so I melded max GP. *shrugs*

The thread is more about the Crafting side than Gathering anyways, because everything has such ridiculously high Progress and Quality meters that I don't understand how they could expect anybody to get anywhere near the HQs without having ridiculously awesome gear from the previous expansion's endgame, BUT I still posit this question:

What about players who are just now arriving at Level 60? Are they expected to stop, drop everything they're doing, and grind up Scrips before they can start on trying to get to 61? Or are they expected to pay millions of gil to get several different suits of armor, what again, 12 tools, etc before they can start on trying to get 61?

And when they DO get 61, they are faced with another ridiculous money-sink, in trying to get the HQ 61 set which seems to be required to do anything in SB, because no, the NQ just can't be good enough, nope. We can't have NQ-wearing "scrubs" being able to make anything, can we?

And I looked at that rotation someone posted above from reddit, and it's basically same song and dance... build up IQ stacks, buff up, dump Byregot's on it... it's just the numbers are set way too high on Lv61 stuff, that you blow most of the durability on JUST trying to get the progress meter to almost done. The fact that everything in SB is 61 instead of 60* is also punishing because you need to somehow get 62 before you can even start trying to reliably craft anything in SB or you get hit with crushing penalties, on top of wearing NQs.

HQs simply cost too much on Marketboard on my server to go that route, especially for gear you are expected to replace every 2 levels. I'm not going to want to dump 50k melds into 100-200k gear (for single pieces) which all add up to a million+ maybe closer to 2 million gil for a whole outfit, only to go through it all 2 levels later.Maybe if the prices were more reasonable, I would think about getting HQ gear, but not until at least 68, if not 70.

Now that said, I will admit that Gathering in SB is not as punishing as Gathering was in Heavensward.... I'm starting to see 80%, 6% naturally with no buffs and the Gather+ nodes are actually activating now. In Heavensward, it took quite a bit longer until I could finally start gathering junk at a reasonable rate.

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Originally Posted by Maeka

And I looked at that rotation someone posted above from reddit, and it's basically same song and dance... build up IQ stacks, buff up, dump Byregot's on it... it's just the numbers are set way too high on Lv61 stuff, that you blow most of the durability on JUST trying to get the progress meter to almost done. The fact that everything in SB is 61 instead of 60* is also punishing because you need to somehow get 62 before you can even start trying to reliably craft anything in SB or you get hit with crushing penalties, on top of wearing NQs.

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This sounds as if you're just doing something terribly wrong and dont understand all your crafting-skills to well. Or maybe you lack some crossclass-skills that really, really help you to get enough progress in. I've been using Raths rotation for most of my leveling - granted Markers Mark is/was painful, but there are other skills at your disposal to get some good, fast progress in:
1) Markers Mark - just to repeat it for completion here. Pair it up with two PbP at the start -> Markers Mark, comfortzone, steady hand, PbP, PbP and then Flawless Synthesis until you run out of MM-stacks is a good way to start off
2) Piece by Piece - already mentioned, but worth mentioning again
3) Muscle Memory
4) Once you hit 67: Focused Synthesis

Yes, Crafting requires you to put something into it before you get something out of it. Maybe I dont share your experience because I went into SB as a HW-mastercrafter who sold ilvl255-gear during the last weeks of HW. So I had a fully melded ironworks-set and a mix of green and blue HQ-tools for all my crafters. But let me tell you: That lasted me til level 70 (I only replaced some of the green tools along the way, granted).
In addition to that: The NQ-65-set is more or less onpar with unmelded HQ-ironworks, so it should basically work as good as that. And if it doesnt: Put in the effort to craft it yourself in HQ - its very possible, it only requires you to know what you're doing and how to use the skills are your disposal.
Heck, I even worte some macros to HQ 40-dura-crafts. I never felt the numbers where to high, but again: I used the skills I had at my disposal to push them properly.
You dont need several suits of armor either - ironworks is shared by all crafters and if you say thats to expensive on your server: Get TWO sets of armor, namely LTW and weaver and go and make your ironworks stuff yourself! Or ask someone to craft it for you - you should have lots of glass fiber from the moogle dailies anyways!

If you feel 60 to 61 is such a terrible grind there is a very easy soltuion for that: do 2-3 days of your GC-turn ins (you should do that anyways!). On that level the required crafts are HW-stuff still and they will push you to level 61.
Same with scrips really: at those levels you should still be able to get scrips and good exp from HW-items. Or just do them on cul, where the mats are often cheap (or easy to gather) in the first place.

Crafting is already pretty easy in SB. Leveling is pretty easy aswell - easier and "nicer" than HW for sure since every crafter gets at least one very attractive leve-quest (I'm talking about those that only require lumber/thread/nuggets etc. instead of a "real" product). We're back to 40/80-dura-items aswell! SB-crafting really isnt to hard if you know what you're doing and how to prepare yourself.

...and knowing what to do and preparing is just a simple basic mechanic in this game... I dont know... I dont want to come of rude but your whole complains are sounding like those of someone who wants all the rewards now but without putting any effort into them.
You dont expect to get your O4S-kill by just pressing 1-2-3 and claim that "This worked in Sastasha NM!", do you?
Crafting is as much as a learning process as fighting. I enjoy crafting "puzzles" and figuring out how to do certain things.
You sound as if you only enjoy 100% guraanted-sucess without putting effort into it.

I neither found gathering nor crafting extremly difficult or grindy. GC-turn-ins, good leves, collecatble for gatherers (and if you like for crafters), exp-manuals, macros and a good movie to watch while pressing the two buttons I needed for anything made it an actual relaxing experience.

I'm going to have to wait until beast tribe quests to level more, it's still way too difficult for me.

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Originally Posted by Maeka

There's no point in getting the 61 or 63 HQ set when I'm going to replace it at 65.

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I don't get it.... what's the point of getting gear at 65 then if you are just going to replace it at 70? If you had just got the weapons at 62/63 and melded cheap gathering into them and accessories you would be level 70 by now in both gatherers, and the weapons and melds would of payed for themselves 10+ times. You really shot yourself in the foot on that one, all those missed gathering attempts....ouch.

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Originally Posted by Maeka

What about players who are just now arriving at Level 60?

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Yea, you are expected to do some gearing up. The expansion just came out two months ago idk why you would expect to just waltz back, do a few moogle quests and then get a free set of gear to carry you to 70. The level 61 recipes are only slightly harder than the level 59 recipes, and much easier than level 60 4 star crafts, it's not a huge jump in difficulty it just seems like it cause you did nothing but moogle quest and have trash gear. You may not want to bother with crafting... by the time you get 70 on your crafters 3 or 4 star is gonna be out and you will likely have aneurysm when you see the effort required, but if you tough it out then please meld CP into everything. Not 1 CP or 2 CP, meld all the CP you can and then eat CP food. If you want to shoot yourself in the other foot go ahead and ignore CP and blame everything on broken RNG.

You will see more complain from crafter if all these difficulty (that isn't really hard in the first place if you did some planning) is removed.

Why do you think crafter can earn gil? Its due to the difficulty to level them.

I'm a bit confused at the trend of your posts.

One post tries to prove RNG is a lie, then this post trying to say this patch is difficult and grindy. When people give you help or tips it's completely ignored or shunned. It seems you're willing to make it difficult for yourself when help is offered. :/

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Originally Posted by QT_Melon

I'm a bit confused at the trend of your posts.

One post tries to prove RNG is a lie, then this post trying to say this patch is difficult and grindy. When people give you help or tips it's completely ignored or shunned. It seems you're willing to make it difficult for yourself when help is offered. :/

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The RNG thread really doesn't have anything to do with this, the terrible RNG in XIV has been something that has annoyed me from day one to be honest. In fact, it was even MORE annoying earlier levels when you have fewer tools to deal with it.


As far as this thread, I appreciate help and advice, I am only speaking my mind in why I don't like the sudden spikes of difficulty. To reply to the last post on Page #5, where someone said "But this expansion JUST came out!"

See, the same thing happens (but even worse!) when you go from Vanilla to Heavensward. You go from being able to struggle but craft Lv50 stuff.... and then you smack face-first into a brick wall where you can barely craft basic materials at 1% HQ, using up some 7-8 Synth steps just to finish the recipe. It doesn't get much better even when you get 51+51 NQ gear either, in fact IIRC, the first tools are actually 52.

Now, obviously, I'm past that stage, but I feel that it is not a very good situation for anybody who is now freshly arriving at the Lv50 range. I feel that the tools and gear from HW should be changed to be Lv50 to give them a leg up a little easier so that they can do something other than Moogles. Why do you think everybody uses moogles to get from 50-60? Because everything else is just too ridiculously hard.

Now I WILL admit that now that I've been able to get some scrip tools, Stormblood is not quite as harsh as Vanilla-> HW was on both Gathering and Crafting, so I commend SE for lightening it up some, and Moogles are nowhere near as annoying as Ixals. So they did seem to learn at least a little from the past, and that's nice to see.

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Originally Posted by Maeka

So you're looking at what, gathering at least 10 different materials and doing 12, 14, maybe 16 synths for ONE turn-in? You're talking a whole RL hour or more trying to procure all of these materials (or pay the absolutely ridiculous prices on MB for them).

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I always keep finished materials stocked up on my retainers to avoid this hassle.

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Originally Posted by Maeka

Because everything else is just too ridiculously hard.

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They can't balance stuff around you cause you are bad and ignore gear/melds. I went straight from vanilla to HW without ever gearing up at 50, moogle quests weren't around yet. I do remember a pretty big jump in difficulty and thinking there was NO WAY i'd be able to hq stuff like I could pre 50, but I also remember being around level 53, hq'n things like a boss cause I learned how to play. I like the difficulty, and I don't mind the gear grind at all, i'm a little disappointed that iron works carried most of us to 70 and there wasn't any need to stop and gear up. A lot of us are rather bothered by how easy stormblood crafting was and still is, if I was in the process of leveling my crafters and they just nerfed it into easy mode I think i'd be very annoyed.

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Originally Posted by Ziggyzapps

i'm a little disappointed that iron works carried most of us to 70 and there wasn't any need to stop and gear up.

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Even if you don't have ironwork (like me), it's really easy to get to 70 by using 61 NPC gear this patch.

OP nailed down why I don't craft seriously to a t. I used Ixal and purchased leve items/daily hand-ins to get to 50. I used moogle beast tribe quests to get to 60. Have not and will not touch anything crafting related until a crafting beast tribe is introduced. Why? Because a single craft would have me spend hours on end just to get the materials alone. And no, the market is out of the question as the prices for the most used stuff is still high on my server. Those materials are for making materials which make materials which might be for other materials. You see where this is going? If you don't have too much time on your hands then you have to sacrifice a massive portion of the game to craft and gather materials for said crafts.

They can alleviate this by reducing amount of materials needed for crafts but I doubt the dev. team would do that since changing the recipes would take an enormous amount of time. Time they could be using on something better, larger and more prominent.

If it takes you hours to gather enough mats for one craft, either you are looking exclusively at mob-dropped mats en masse, or you are doing something horribly wrong.

Between retainers, the marketboard that you disparage as being too expensive, and simply going out and gathering your own mining/botany materials, it won't take more than a few minuts of *your* time to gather the materials for most crafts. Some, you will have to engage in some forethought (ok, I'm going to make this, that, and something else, requiring in total 21 Gazelle hides, better send the retainer out for some three times in a row) but you can use that time while the retainer is out gathering stuff for you, to go do the combat stuff you want so much to do.

Lets look at a fairly obnoxious recipe : Serge Poncho.
1 Twinsilk, 3 Dawn Serge, 1 Worsted Yarn, 3 Manzasiri Hair. Broken down, that is 12 Twincoons, 13 Effervescent Water, 20 Halgai Mane, 23 Manzasiri Hair, 10 Rock Salt. Of those, you are looking at (depending on retainer ilevel) 5 Ventures worth of combat drops, three node visits for Twincoons, 4 node visits for Effervescent Water, and a trip to a vendor for Rock Salt. You can easily send the retainer out on those Ventures while you are doing other stuff, so engage in a little forethought, and you've got your materials with less than ten minutes of your own time actually spent upon it, and plenty of time spent on other things.

Many other recipes are easier, far far easier. Algae Salt, takes 5 Gem algae. You get 20 from your Botany retainer, or you can make the recipe once after depleting one node and getting one from the next node. Or the Stiperstone Grinding Wheel, which uses 8 Larch Logs (two nodes), 1 High Steel Ingot (1 bought Iron Ore and two nodes worth of mined materials), and 2 Stiperstone (half a node).

Suggesting it takes hours on end to do one craft is an extreme misrepresentation of the state of crafting in this game. To do many crafts, of course it is, just as it takes hours on end to do many runs of any given Extreme for primal mounts.

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Originally Posted by Roth_Trailfinder

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As I'm typing this, I want to do a Koppranickel Index because it's starred (Red Scrip turn-in).

I need...

2 Mythrite Nuggets (5 sand, 1 mythril ore)
1 Amphithere Leather (3 Skins, 1 Dark Chestnut Log)
1 Koppranickel Ink (3 Sand, 1 Deepeye Tears, 1 Moth Scales)
1 Beech Lumber (5? Logs)
2 Koppranickel Nuggets (5 Sand, 1 Copper Ore)

So they got me going to Western Highlands, Churning Mists, Forelands, Southern Thanalaan, Fringes, Peaks, and a vendor that sells copper ore. There are also 5 mob drops in there.

Isn't that kind of ridiculous? To get this junk it will take me a couple hours most likely if I didn't already have a few from opening chests and such.

I mean, if you gather the exact materials you need every craft, yes, it's going to take you a long time. This is why you should keep a stock of the most common materials, if you're going to craft a lot.

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Originally Posted by Elamys

I mean, if you gather the exact materials you need every craft, yes, it's going to take you a long time. This is why you should keep a stock of the most common materials, if you're going to craft a lot.

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Which takes a ludicrous amount of room on yourself/retainers, lol. I suppose it gives players incentives to buy the extra retainers, but yeesh. That's a pretty ham-fisted way to get us to pay for extra retainers...

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Originally Posted by Maeka

got me going to Western Highlands, Churning Mists, Forelands, Southern Thanalaan, Fringes, Peaks, and a vendor that sells copper ore. There are also 5 mob drops in there.

Isn't that kind of ridiculous? To get this junk it will take me a couple hours most likely if I didn't already have a few from opening chests and such.

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Are you walking between each zone?

Should take you maybe seven minutes, ten minutes at most, to gather the mining and botany items (assuming you've got them leveled high enough and know which vendor to go to for the stuff you can buy). The majority of that time, by the way, is travel, not actually gathering. The rest is not that much, as far as mob drops go. The obnoxious recipe I spoke of in my post is MUCH worse than this, taking 23 mob drops as opposed to 5, and drops that are less common at that, which is why I said use a retainer to get them and plan ahead for figuring that you are going to need them in the first place.

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Originally Posted by Maeka

Which takes a ludicrous amount of room on yourself/retainers, lol. I suppose it gives players incentives to buy the extra retainers, but yeesh. That's a pretty ham-fisted way to get us to pay for extra retainers...

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All of my crafting materials are on a total of 3 retainers, all of whom have plenty of empty space, and honestly, I keep a lot of materials I don't really need. With 2 free retainers you won't be able to hoard a ton, but you can hold onto enough that you don't have to go running around for every single craft. If you are going to be a dedicated crafter/gatherer, that's a bit of a price you have to pay for efficiency. But you don't NEED to buy additional retainers, if you're careful about what you keep.

One of the things you want to do is look at what are commonly used in a craft. Let's say Koppranickel (either sands or ore). If GSM, ARM, BSM use it, then it's wise to keep it around It may also help you save time by thinking this way: Make the base item that can be used for another item. For Koppranickel you can start making nuggets or high steel ones from the same mat, since a housing vendor usually sells the iron/copper ores. That way instead of keeping Koppranickel sands, you only have to worry about the ores.

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Originally Posted by Maeka

As I'm typing this, I want to do a Koppranickel Index because it's starred (Red Scrip turn-in).

I need...

2 Mythrite Nuggets (5 sand, 1 mythril ore)
1 Amphithere Leather (3 Skins, 1 Dark Chestnut Log)
1 Koppranickel Ink (3 Sand, 1 Deepeye Tears, 1 Moth Scales)
1 Beech Lumber (5? Logs)
2 Koppranickel Nuggets (5 Sand, 1 Copper Ore)

So they got me going to Western Highlands, Churning Mists, Forelands, Southern Thanalaan, Fringes, Peaks, and a vendor that sells copper ore. There are also 5 mob drops in there.

Isn't that kind of ridiculous? To get this junk it will take me a couple hours most likely if I didn't already have a few from opening chests and such.

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The Vath beast tribe sells most of the HW ore nuggets(all of the lower ones, he stops at adamantium), so if you did the non-crafty beast tribes you can just buy the mythrite for like 2100ish each. Dark Chestnut Log spawns a 15 second flight from vath tribe. Thats one trip to forelands and at most 3 mins spent. Amp skins are often cheap on the MB, otherwise a short visit to CM for a few kills. Lets say 10 mins(honestly my estimate would be less then 5). Deepeye tear prices can fluctuate, but as you only need 1 for an ink the flight from falcons nest to their spawn area and a few kills is still a short trip. We'll use 10 mins again, but this should be like 3. Quick port over to the fringes, beech logs arent that far from Oriens. And you only need 4, so one node worth. 3 mins. Fly/port to Rhalgrs reach, and zone over to peaks. Moths are near the zone in, so kill a couple for a scale. Fly up to the KP sand area, and you need 1-3 nodes worth of sand to finish your shopping list. Its 4 per nugget and 3 for the ink(kings yield 2 plus an accuracy boost would be 12 or 15 sand, depending on if you picked a 4 or 5 swing node). This visit probly takes 5-10 mins. Finally teleport to your home town, and do the craft and turn in there(each town has a vendor with your copper). Thats like 35 mins if you use the bad time estimates, though my personal guess is i could do it all in 12-15 without using the market board. And since this is a scrip turn in, you could spend a little more time in each combat area and hit a few more nodes to make extras without doubling or tripling the time easily. If im making 8 turn ins, i dont want to spend 15 mins on each of them(2 hours to gather mats and probly another hour to make everything? ugh, no thanks). But i can skip some, some will use the same mats so i can just hit more nodes when im out, and i try to do a couple solo treasure maps a week and use the mats they drop to skip some of these steps.