Crafting HQ - Levelling

I've levelled a few DoM and DoW classes, and now I'm trying my hand at DoL/ DoH. I already have FSH up to 50, WVR up to 30 and various other classes at 10 - 20.

I've been looking at various levelling guides (both for DoH and DoL), and I'm not sure what I should be doing, quality wise. Do I want to be making only HQ items from the start for DoH? Thus, should I only be interested in getting HQ materials from gathering, and ignore the NQ stuff? Or do you only aim for HQ from a certain level onwards? I read I should be turning in HQ for WVR but I'm struggling making them and it seems to take forever.

For crafting you get the bulk of your bonus exp from adding quality. Getting the bar to 15% will add most of the bonus exp, but only if you started at 0. In this way, using HQ ingredients actually impairs you from exp gains while crafting (you don't get credit for quality that you didn't add), but almost ensures that the final product is HQ, which is much more important.

While leveling (to 50) it will be difficult to HQ everything. The level 50 CRP ability is the most important ability in producing HQ items (Byregot's Blessing). It adds a ton of quality scaling with the number of inner quiet stacks that you have, allowing you to make up usually the last half of the quality in a single step (paired with Great Strides and steady hand).

In any case, gather the things you need and make a few 'test' items with only NQ ingredients to see what amount of quality you can reliably add. Once you've figured that out, use only the amount of HQ ingredients necessary to fill the gaps. This is only necessary for items that you will turn in somewhere or sell. If you're crafting components (like cloth), it's probably best to keep your HQ threads that will be needed in final products, unless you have a lot or can definitely use 1 HQ thread and ensure 1 HQ cloth. Of course, some gathered items are only used for components, so use them as you like/ deem necessary.

For mass producing components (threads and cloth mostly) I find that macros are very helpful. They're a bit stiff in that you can't use tricks of the trade and such appropriately, but will help you to output a lot of product quickly while gaining decent exp (quick synth gives the same exp as if you added no quality -- low). Using a macro likely won't ensure 100% HQ rate, but that's fine. Even a 15% rate is good as you only do this for components. For actual products you'll craft manually and use the HQ components that came from your crafting session before. NQ components are still useful, and once you've leveled sufficiently past them will be almost no different from HQ as far as quality gains are concerned.

When leveling through crafting grinds I would recommend using NQ materials for the grind. For leve and GC hand-ins though, that is when sometimes best to use HQ materials to help you produce HQ hand-in items if struggle to produce HQ with NQ materials.

A leveling guide broken down into 5 chapters filled with exping tips and tricks as well as combos that work for your exp as you move through the level ranges.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcNeKh8s0xs

The general path to take pre-50 is to quicksyth stuff sold at vendors up to lv15 for all classes, get cul to 37 for steady hands II, then crp to 50 for BB which is essential for HQing.
As for how to do this?
I would probably just buy mats off the market board and quick synth a LOT of stuff up to level 25 or even 30, then try to resell things on the MB. Use xp scrolls from your GC to help. Afterwards, see if a friend is willing to help you craft the leve items, make sure you give them a tip.

Crafting is an investment, if you are not prepared to sink millions into it, stick to gathering for now and sell favor mats for 2 weeks to build up a sizable bank.

The most efficient way to level crafting in my opinion is roughly as follows:

1) Levels 1-15 grind materials bought from venders, do as much quality as possible (and get each class to 15 so you have lots of cross-class skills to work with).
2) Every day do your GC daily (star ones are worth triple XP).
3) Do your beast tribe dailies as they give good XP with free materials.
4) Do levels with your favorite class HQ what you can but NQ is still good XP.
5) Grind core ingredients: bars, wood, leather, cloth, etc. Sell the excess or keep for later.
6) Do recipe book completion for extra XP (good for alchemy and cooking where less viable grind items exist).
*) Buy engineering manuals from GC vender and use FC XP buffs when you can.
*) Try to HQ everything (for the bonus XP for attempting) but don't worry about actually successfully HQing items till you are higher level.

Personally I didn't do much for best tribe but some people really like it. Also I have done LOTS of ingredient grinding since I knew I would use the materials later in all kinds of projects. But selling the bars/cloth/etc back can really cut losses.

As mentionned in the previous answers, getting all crafts at lvl 15 (for cross skills) is a great start.
Alchemist 15 : Tricks of Trades (ToT)
Culinarian 15 : Hasty Touch
Carpenter 50 : Byregot's blessing.


Those 3 skills will be your best friends forever.
There are a few things which are worth reminding. CP are your most useful stat. The more CP you have, the more moves you can make and the more options become available to you. Keep your gear up-to-date.

Some words about gathering :

Miner will help you greatly if you dedicate to Goldsmith / Armorer / Blacksmith
Botanist will help greatly if you dedicate to Culinarian / Carpenter / Weaver
Alchemist's and leatherworker's raw materials can be gathered from mobs (wings, fangs, skins..)

Fisher, well...The fishes can be used in a few culinarian recipes (less than 15, out of many hundreds of recipes) and a few alchemist recipes. It's definitely not the mot urgent gatherer to have.

In my opinion, the easiest crafters are the ones which use botanist's items, as they are easily obtainable even in HQ. And as you need Hasty Touch and Byregot's blessing, I think it should be your first choice.

When you level up carpenter and culinarian (especially CUL), you don't need every mat in HQ. You should have some fun and try with full-HQ mats, and when you realize it's easy, remove one and use an NQ instead, and when that gets still too easy, remove another. That will improve your "intuition" and knowledge of skills, and will perfect your rotation along the way to 50.

About the auto-synth and the outside help from friends, why not, but I'm not too sure this is a reasonable idea. The whole point in levelling is to learn. You don't want to reach 50 or even 60, and realize that you do not know your skills at all. Nobody wants a fighter who levelled up exclusively through fates, as it's likely he can't master his skills. It's the same for crafters, IMO.

One other thing is if plan to have multiple crafting classes, try to standardize the shortcut bars so they match on each class plus make sure they are up to date on them all. It is very annoying to switch to another crafting class and either realize forgot to add a cross class skill to the shortcut bar despite having it unlocked if start crafting something or switching to another crafting class and turns out the skills on shortcut bar are differently positioned and click on wrong one out of habit of grinding something on another class just prior.