Best way to bridge the gap?

Hello,

I'm currently a level 50 miner looking to increase Gathering stats. I have four pieces of i55 gear, and before buying the rest I decided to be sure the rest of the gear would be enough - and its not!

My gathering stat is at 288 - but I need it to be over 400 (i think 420).
I think if I upgraded the rest of the gear to i55 and popped 4 gatherers gurdon II (pardon the spelling) I'd still only get to around 330 because the jewelery is all +GP not +Gathering.

For those who are already past this - how did you bridge the gap? Is there a best way to do this?

HQ i55 items with Materia attached, Materia is the only way to gather the items needed to upgrade your tool and hat.

Even with fully-melded gear, you cannot reach the 408 Gathering you need to access the highest level nodes. The most gathering you can get with your quested main-hand and a fully melded set of ilvl 55 mining gear and the best accessories is 382. Even eating the best gathering food will only give you 24 more, putting you at 406 Gathering - two agonizingly small points away.

So, how do you reach the 408 Gathering you need? You need to acquire the Forager's Dolabra (mining) or Forager's Hatchet (botany). To do this, you need to acquire 60 HQ of a specific item (Umbral Rock for miners, Fragrant Log for botanists). Before you can gather these, though (and they can't be bought on the market boards - you MUST gather them yourself!), you still need at least 370 Gathering - as well as 332 Perception (need at least that much Perception to even have a chance to gather HQ).

This means you will need to meld your gear quite a bit. A full set of unmelded HQ mining or botanist equipment will put you at 323 Gathering and 321 Perception, so you'll need to meld at least 67 Gathering and 11 Perception onto your gear. Melding GP is helpful as well; if you can get up to 600 GP, it will leave you a lot of freedom to use your gatherer job abilities to help gather HQ items more efficiently. The Materia meld caps for Disciples of the Land thread can help you figure out how much materia you can get onto each piece of gear.

Once you have high enough stats, you'll be able to gather Umbral Rocks or Fragrant Logs. These come from unspoiled nodes, so you'll only be able to gather them once per game day. Use your job abilities to improve your chances of getting HQ items. You'll need 60 of them to get your Dolabra or Hatchet, so it's going to take you a while. Once you get it, though, it will boost your Gathering by another 31 points. Since your equipment will already be melded, this should put you in range of the highest difficulty nodes - or close enough that food will take you the rest of the way.

Once you get into the swing of gathering Umbral Rocks or Fragrant Logs, you might want to consider gathering an additional 30 of them in order to purchase a Forager's Hat. This headpiece is a bit better than even a fully melded gatherer's headpiece, and can be used by any of the three Gathering classes.

So, to sum up, here's progression for a gatherer:
- level to 50
- acquire a full set of HQ gatherer's gear
- meld that gatherer's gear until you can access the 370 gathering nodes while also having at least 332 perception
- gather 60 HQ token items, or 90 if you want the hat as well
- acquire the Forager's tool
- now you can access the 408 gathering nodes.