Crafting & Gathering Quality of Life

I'd like to start a thread that hopefully will be a place for anyone putting time and effort into what has become a large (and sometimes monstrous) part of the game, Crafting & Gathering.

Feel free to add any Quality of Life suggestions to this thread. I would however like to keep this a place for suggestions rather than a place to gripe and moan about how hard your life (in game or irl) is because of crafting (not that I really expect this sentence to actually prevent that but hey a guy can dream).

I'll post my suggestions below.

A couple of my suggestions on Gathering:
1. A materials bag (or materials collection) - Inventory space is a big enough issue for most players with random mat drops from mobs in dungeons and open world. Add to that well over 200 crafting mats available from fishing, botany and mining things get a little absurd trying to manage personal and retainer inventory.

My suggestion is to create a system similar to that in Guild Wars II, in which all crafting materials were stored in an entirely separate "inventory". This "inventory" had individual slots for each material and was reasonably easy to navigate. It was designed to free a players inventory from the burden of carrying hundreds of materials. Yes it gets to be a bit of a big screen but it's already half implemented with the various gathering logs all that needs to be done is for them to now track the individual stacks held by the player.I think this could be a huge QoL adjustment and would ease some of the intimidation of crafting and gathering that might hold people back.


2. I found this on another thread and I apologize but I couldn't find the author of the original suggestion however I give all credit to that individual who first thought of this. Give gatherer's the ability to break down Clusters and Crystals to Crystals and Shards respectively. This might be more of a crafter's area of expertise but either way sometimes you just need 5 more crystals or 20 more shards and all you have are clusters. Sure I could spend 20 min porting to Bentbranch to gather wind crystals or Black Brush for lightning shards but it's not providing anything more than a time sink. And while a time sink may be the goal, the unintended consequences are that it takes time away from other aspects of the game I enjoy and therefore creates an unnecessary conflict between 2 otherwise enjoyable parts of the game.

3. If the devs take nothing else from this post or thread please for the love of all things Eorzean, please put in a Fisher's Tackle Box. THALL'S BALLS! There's simply too many bait and lure options that are used for fishing to keep in your inventory unless you focus solely on fishing. And Hydaelyn forbid you get rid of your Crawfish Balls or Goby Balls, because you'll probably need them to catch something to mooch to catch a 1✪ or better. While i appreciate the variety the inventory space requirements get frustrating.

1. Again found this in another thread and agree wholeheartedly. A crafting Queue. Simply put allow me to select the next 5-20 recipes I wish to craft (assuming of course I have the materials for all recipes) and place them in a queue. When I begin crafting I start with the first recipe, complete it and immediately begin crafting the 2nd. The process continues as such until all recipes in the queue are completed successfully or failed. CP would of course be restored between each recipe and all buffs would be reset as they currently do but you do away with the clunky time between each consecutive craft session. For example as I was working on my second Novus weapon I needed to create a rather large inventory of Spirit Bonding gear. 5 sets of accessories consisting of 1 choker, 1 set of earrings, 1 braclet and 2 rings. that's 25 individual items. It would be really nice to be able to get into a groove crafting multiple items in a row without having to needlessly click "Synthesize" between each one and then scrolling between item 1 and item 2 when they might be 10+ lines below. It's a little thing sure but it would be so very nice.

2. Better Sort Functionality - Please let me sort crafting recipes by the stats on a given item or if it's a "part". For example, Dew Thread would be classified under "Part" whereas Spinnel Ring would be classified under Dexterity or Critical Hit Rate. Additionally Shark Fin Soup would be searchable under Craftsmanship or CP (Exp Bonus is unnecessary as all food seems to provide that) whereas La Noscean Leek would be classified under "Part" (or ingredient if you want to be picky about it).

Honestly, the whole recipe selection interface could use an overhaul but I'd be very happy with more useful sort functionality.

3. A Glamour crafting heading for all those lovely glam pieces that have no stats but look oh so pretty. Sometimes you're just looking to make something beautiful and you don't want to search through all that functional junk to get there. We already separate housing and beast tribe why not just put all Glamour focused gear (again, those containing no useful stats) like the Minstrel's Spectacles (they have negligible Def and Mag Def) in a tab dedicated to glamours.

4. Please allow melding when not on the required job. I can already desynth goldsmithing items when I'm a monk or a bard why cant I attach materia while I'm on my BLM? Yes I suppose there are possibly some RP reasons or something but honestly why make me switch jobs just to show an already generic and fully used animation that holds no actual bearing on the success or failure of the meld. I could understand if I were actually having to interact with the process like crafting but it's just a couple of selection clicks and a recycled animation. Just like desynth if you have the required job to the required level why should it matter if I'm holding said tool and wearing said gear. Nowhere does it say it requires Craftsmanship 278 or Control 192 or any other such requirements so why do I need to change jobs for a simple action, it seems needlessly long winded. Additionally let me right click on a materia and choose what to meld it to just like I would with a piece of gear.

That's all for now I'm sure I'll have more but it's late and I have to work tomorrow as a real life culinarian and I honestly have no idea where to farm the necessary shards for the ever growing list of recipes I have to craft tomorrow... Anyone know what lvl Mature Trees or Lush Vegitation has Rocky Ford Cantaloupe for this ridiculous fruit platter I have to make? Anybody?