Aetherial Reduction: what am I doing wrong?

So, considering the changes that will take place in 3.1 and my renewed interest in end game crafting, I started looking at all the mats that I'll need to craft 2* recipes. Specifically, I decided to start tackling the issue of how to obtain my Aethersands. I read Caimie's guide a few weeks ago and I tried to do everything right: run back and forth to engage 2 nodes to respawn the ephemeral node, follow the optimal rotation (starting with Impulsive and deciding whether to use the other skills depending on whether DE procs) and so on.
I only used said rotation when a hidden mat (furymint or clary sage in my case) appeared and used the "cheap" highland oregano to obtained crystals and clusters.
After around 40 minutes of non-stop gathering I ended up with 15 duskborne ae.s. (useless) and 1 (ONE!) NQ leafborne ae.s. So, considering that chest and legs pieces require 3 sands, possibly HQ, I think that I'm doing something wrong. There has to be a quicker way, right?
Another reason why I think I'm doing something really wrong is that aethersands are relatively cheap, at least on my server (around 150k-200k gil for HQ sands, 10k gil for NQ), so combining this with the fact that I only got one NQ (and some other things that are extremely cheap), the opportunity cost to gather for sands is just too high because gathering from unspoiled nodes would be much more profitable: I gather 40k gil worth of mats from every unspoiled node I gather from, in the 40 minutes I wasted looking for ae.s. I could have gathered stuff worth 200k gil or more. So, unless gatherers on Ragnarok are completely irrational, there must be another way.

What are you guys doing to consistently obtain your aethersands? How many do you get in, say, 1 hour?

I havn't really tried all that hard, since I just gather and don't craft. But I think those sands are about the same value on Cerberus. And I think that the 1 in 40 minutes is kinda normal. I guess the prices could come from that not many craft the gear that uses them? Maybe cause it's not deemed to be profitable enough. But I'm not really sure tho.

I was just gonna post a thread about this.

As patch approaches I decided to go and start getting what I need like leafborne landborne. I SPENT THE WHOLE SATURDAY AND THE WHOLE SUNDAY without a single one of them..... And I mean from 9am on a Saturday morning until 3am Sunday morning. Went to sleep and repeat , 11am on Sunday until 00:23 Monday and not a single bloody drop.

I have millions of duskborne as well as dawnborne from those 2 days but cero leaf or land.....

Before anyone asks, yes I did sage clay and those hidden items too. Managed to do them 8/8 and not a single drop.

This needs addressing. Increase the drop rate by gathering 6/8 to %20 chance to get it.

I just can't believe I had more luck doing atmas back in the day then doing this....

EvinnaReed has recently posted two rotations (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ible-Rotations) that are not in my gathering guide.

7/8 reduction guaranteed credit: EvinnaReed
- Discerning Eye
- Utmost Caution
- Methodical Appraisal
- Single Mind
- Utmost Caution
- Methodical Appraisal
- Methodical Appraisal
- Methodical Appraisal

5/8 - 8/8 reduction depending on procs credit: EvinnaReed
- Discerning Eye
- Utmost Caution
- Impulsive Appraisal
- Single Mind
- Utmost Caution
- Impulsive Appraisal
- Methodical Appraisal
- Methodical Appraisal

I have not tried these myself, but perhaps someone else can verify if they give rise to Leafborne/Landborne at a better rate?

If the 100% 7/8 Purity rotation can give a good rate of Leaf/Landborne, then that would be a better rotation than the 8/8 rotation since the 8/8 requires luck on DE procs from Impuls.

Thanks I'm gonna torture myself once again tomorrow and see if I get anything from it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Caimie_Tsukino

EvinnaReed has recently posted two rotations (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ible-Rotations) that are not in my gathering guide.

7/8 reduction guaranteed credit: EvinnaReed
- Discerning Eye
- Utmost Caution
- Methodical Appraisal
- Single Mind
- Utmost Caution
- Methodical Appraisal
- Methodical Appraisal
- Methodical Appraisal

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After spending hours work on this, I find that the 8/8 gathering rotation shown in the picture below is the best course of action for getting landborne/leafborne. Use the 7/8 rotation if you don't want to rely on procs and have to respawn nodes looking for procs, but it is a slightly less chance of a landborne/leafborne.

http://i.imgur.com/r20AcgT.png