18 hour ventures & lv 50 Retainers

I am not entirely sure the 18 hour ventures are worth it once you acquire level 50. (Rank XIII)

A friend of mine has her botanist retainer over 400 gathering (she gave it her BTN gear). She send it out on an 18 hour venture and it returns with Crawler Cocoons. Three days in a row now.

I could spend an hour on my BTN and come back with more than that... (also 400+ gathering). Specifically, 2-3mins to get a minimum of 15 Cocoons. Not to mention all the other places I can visit in an hour. The pet is nice and all. But once I get it, I have no reason to do 18 hour Venture ever again. (I know about taff. cloth and other items.) I'd rather spend my ventures on Quicks and take 18 stabs in the dark for an item I can sell for gil to 100% buy the item I am looking for.

Should I bother to get my BTN to 383 gathering or should I just keep sending her on Quick Ventures?

I also have a Combat retainer, so I could just send him on the 18 hour ventures... But I am wonder if will have similarly disappointing returns.

As far as I know the high value items from the lvl 50 18 ventures are the same no matter what class your retainer is. So far I've gotten the mindflayer minion, light steel plate, and tafeeta cloth from both my pugilist retainer, and my botanist one.

8 days of rank XIII explorations and only coerul meat and hippogryph skin. Such a waste for me, totally given up on them.

I only send them on 18 hour venutres when I log out for the night, so I'm not too torn up about it. I do agree the "rewards" are meh...except when you get lucky. I've only gotten truly awesome stuff once..
I mostly use my retainers to gather crafting mats for me while I'm logged in and running dungeons/fates/ dailies anyway. I agree the high level gathering requirements are crazy - why would I equip my BTN with better gear than myself? silly.

I figure the 18-hour ventures are primarily for leveling up. Once you have maxed your retainer, it's probably just as productive to send it on 1-hour Quick Explorations, or for specific materials.

Problem is that ventures XI - XIII can't be used (atm) for any leveling as you're unable to run those before actually reaching lvl 50 ...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Isus

I only send them on 18 hour venutres when I log out for the night, so I'm not too torn up about it. I do agree the "rewards" are meh...except when you get lucky. I've only gotten truly awesome stuff once..
I mostly use my retainers to gather crafting mats for me while I'm logged in and running dungeons/fates/ dailies anyway. I agree the high level gathering requirements are crazy - why would I equip my BTN with better gear than myself? silly.

---

Same. My retainers go out and gather the stuff I never get around to gathering while I'm doing other stuff ingame.

It's actually making it pretty ridiculously easy to keep stuff on the market.

I always get crap from the 18 hour ventures, so I gave up on them for the most part.

Specially one of my retainers a paladin 80+ brings me in good stuff, like taffeta cloth, light steel plate, glazenut seeds I guess it could depend on their gear and how high average level they got and i plan on getting paladin and blm to 90 (work in progress)

I got 4 retainers now at 50 and it is like a lotto ticket every day so not a bad thing to add in game :)

I got crafted PLD ilvl 90 and my main is BLM building up with 100+ ilvl so it was relative easy to just give allagan gear to them as lucky I am.

Yeah, I have enough Couerl Meat to reconstruct an entire Couerl at this point. ;_; I wish he'd give me more Hippogryph Skin; at least that's useful. The HQ Trillium and HQ Gold Sand is fairly useless as well. I'd be happier if it'd give me Crawler Cocoons and Darksteel Ore.