<Guide> How to Build a Longer Shovel (Crafting 1-50)

Introduction
This is a follow-up of the previous guide, How to Dig a Deeper Hole in which I explained tactics which could be used to streamline the leveling process of what is usually a very tedious and long grind. While some aspects of this guide will be direct reflections of the Gathering guide due to the lack of instanced content for Disciples of the Hand/Land, there are a lot more tools and strategies at your disposal when leveling a crafting class. It is highly recommended that you have at least finished the 2.0 main scenario quests before attempting to level a crafting class up to 50.

Material Acquisition
While the vendors near your class trainer can normally supplement you with all of the materials needed 'til around level 20, there will come a time where materials will gradually become more difficult to obtain without having delved into other Disciples of the Hand or Land classes. Here are the options available to any Crafting class looking for their materials:

• Market Board: The market board is the most easily accessed resource that not only provides quick results, but also helps keep the gil flowing through the hands of the players in the economy. Unfortunately, multiple item listings suffer from either extremely high demand which ultimately leads to price gouging or extremely low demand which normally makes items so cheap that you vendor them for the same amount. If you do choose to use the Market Board, be sure that the item is not readily available from an NPC.
• Farming yourself: It's important that if you plan to gather a particular item yourself that you make sure that the area where you're gathering it is both possible for the class you need to use to gather it, and that you make sure to weigh the amount of time spent gathering this item versus the current price on the Market Board. One can quickly lose themselves to gathering the components needed for a certain schematic only to lament that the hours they spent outside of the class they were trying to level could have been accomplished for small amount of gil at the Market Board.
• Beast Tribes: There's always an alternative to buying some of the more general components on the Market Board. If you have already grinded out the reputations of the beast tribes or are willing to put in the minimal work needed to just unlock their vendors, you can potentially gain access to an expanded list of materials which can supplement you into the lv45-50 range. Always be sure to check the Market Board against the prices through since a lot of players don't take these vendors into consideration when putting up items for sale.
  • Amalj'aa: This vendor is located at the Ring of Ash in Southern Thanalan and sells Iron, Steel, and Mythril components for Blacksmithing and Armorsmithing.
  • Sylphs: This vendor is located at Little Solace in East Shroud and uniquely sells Wildfowl Feathers, Linen Yarn, Undyed Linen, and Undyed Velveteen.
  • Kobolds: This vendor is located at the 789th Order Dig in Outer La Noscea. While his purpose is a little odd, this vendor is the only NPC to sell Vitriol, Bomb Ash, Aldgoat Horns, Scalekin Blood, and Blue Landtrap Leaves.
  • Sahagin: This vendor is located at Novv's Nursery in Western La Noscea and uniquely sells Night Milk, Midland Basil, Sun Lemons, Olive Oil, and Smooth Butter. He also sells Sunset Wheat Flour which is only matched by an obscure merchant in Gridania.
  • Ixal: This vendor is located at Ehcatl in North Shroud and sells Maple, Ash, Elm, and Yew components for Carpentry.

Finding Field Gear
As with most gear, you can easily find gear for your class' particular level by picking up a Leve in a major city and then traveling to the destination and looking at the Merchant and Mender's shop. Additionally, Crafters can sometimes create their own gear, allowing them to obtain HQ versions of the items without having to pay a hefty price for them on the Market Board. Even furthermore, once you learn to place materia in your gear, you can do so to increase it's potency and effectively lengthen the amount of time that it is relevant. While it is not as imperative to constantly upgrade your gear as with Gathering classes, you do have to focus in on accessories since CP is a valuable resource that even in small extra quantities can greatly affect your capacity to create HQ items.

Experience and You
There are several valid ways to go about leveling up a crafting class effectively, and each one has it's merits and flaws. In fact, players may find it more beneficial to do a mix of the methods in order to prioritize success without having to spend a large sum of money in order to do so. Before I go into this listing though, we should cover the basics of what can be used to increase your experience gain.

• Rested Exp: Take advantage of Inns and sanctuaries whenever you're not playing, as Rested experience grants a flat 50% bonus to all experience gained through crafting.
• Food: Not only is food essential for the stat bonuses, but another flat 3% bonus to all experience can be gained.
• Free Company: Free Companies, if they're a high enough rank, can activate an action which increases all Crafting experience by 10%
• Grand Company: Grand Companies sell Company-issue Engineering Manuals, which can grant a 50% gathering boost for 3 hours (up to 40,000 experience).
• Friendship Circlet: If you recruit a friend or are recruited yourself, you'll find yourself in the possession of a Friendship Circlet. This item takes up the head slot, and increases all experience that a class would earn by 20% while they are level 25 and below.
• HQ: When attempting to craft an item, it's important that you strive to increase the quality as high as you can without failing to meet the progress needed to complete the item. Not only are you rewarded for the effort with extra experience even if you fail to make a HQ, but if it succeeds, then it counts towards the Challenge Log, "Crafting up a Storm."
• Check the item level: Not every item is made equal, and when creating items it's important to compare the item's difficulty to the amount of materials required to make it. More difficult items will result in a higher base experience, but may require more exotic and expensive items.
• Quick Synthesis: Don't use this ever when trying to level up your crafting class. You are better off buying the materials off the market board if you're not willing to create them, and a lack of shards can become a very real thing if you use this feature. The only exception might be an extreme case where the creation of a VERY low difficulty material is needed for a much higher level one, but even then, this feature should not be used for mass production.

DIY: Do it Yourself
Regrettably the slowest path towards leveling, and utilizes extra experience gained through crafting new recipes, the Challenge log, supply and provisioning missions and the occasional leve in order to sustain itself. This method will require you to consistently keep up your gear and have a valid method for obtaining materials consistently. While being able to create your own HQ items for leves can be a great boon as you can create large amounts ahead of time and sell off the excess when you're done, it can quickly become a chore that takes up hours of your time.

Leve it to Beaver
This method stands in direct opposite of the DIY method in that you end up spending very little time for a much greater reward at the cost of tremendous amounts of gil and Leve allowances. In order to understand this method, one must inspect Tradecraft Leves in general:

• Constancy: This leve is your basic ordinary turn-in for the Disciple of the Hand. The turn in is relatively close to the issuer and if the player turns in a HQ item, then they will get a 100% experience & gil bonus. Constancy shows a male Roegadyn blacksmith forging a sword.
• Ingenuity: This leve is similar to Constancy except it can only be accepted in one of the major cities and will require the player to travel to a location in order to deliver the item(s). In exchange for this travel, the base experience and gil reward is increased by 50%. If the player turns in an HQ item, then they will get a 100% experience & gil bonus. Beware of stockpiling turn-ins for these as teleportation costs can become expensive, and loading screens can negate any advantage you would have over a Constancy leve. Ingenuity details a woman in a yellow dress handing bread to an elderly woman.
• Charity: This leve is the backbone of the "Leve it to Beaver" method, as it will always require 3 items and the turn in will always be near the issuer. If the player turns in an HQ item, then they will get a 100% bonus and can then repeat the same request up to 2 more times on the same leve. This means, if you turn in 9 HQ items, you will get 600% of the base experience and gil as well as 2 more sets of the item that may or may not be listed in the reward. Additionally, you can stock up these items for several go arounds, allowing you to gain experience in minutes what would take the DIY method days to achieve. Charity depicts an old woman in a purple vest spinning a thread on a wheel while a woman in a yellow dress cups her hands together in the background.

While the cost of this method is staggering to say the least, one can argue that when compared to all of the money spent on gear, materials and the time spent grinding out items, that this method is better in the long run economically. The reason being that the less time you spend paying out to level crafting, the more time you have to start turning a profit on the class and playing more end-game content which can produce much more gil/hour than a leveling crafter can.

Ixal Daily Quests
The Ixal daily beast quests are unique among the other types of beast dailies in that they require the use of Disciple of the Hand classes in order to complete. Additionally, the release of Heavensward has increased the daily allowance of Beast dailies from 6 to 12. This means that if you can do 3 full rank sets of beast dailies as well as their supply mission and 2 of another rank set. The amount of levels these quests give you scale with the level of the crafting class that you turn them in with and they can be completed with a seperate crafting class, allowing you to do the requirements with a lv50 crafter and then turn it in on the crafting class that you're trying to level. The only drawback is that there's a limit per day that you can do these quests, and if you choose to go purely down this route, then you are basically limited to short leveling spurts every day. On the other hand, this grants you a copious amount of gil as well as being able to save the gil you would normally spend on materials and gear.

Conclusion
While getting to lv50 as a Crafter is just half the battle (this goes double now that the level cap is 60), you can be sure that optimizing the leveling process will speak volumes in the effectiveness of how soon and how well you can play the end game. In the end, I would suggest a mixed range of the methods listed would definitely be the best way to go, unless of course you have an insane amount of money to spend with little time to do so.

Am I missing something? Got your own tips for leveling up Crafting that isn't on this guide? Let me know in the comments below and I'll add you & your advice to the category it fits under or under the conclusion if it doesn't necessarily fit a category.

Gathering 1-50 guide