Just returned to the game. Crafting and gathering questions!

Hello,

Over the weekend I started a new job on a different server to the one I've played on in the past. The last time I played was just at the start of HW.

I'm now thinking about crafting and gathering? Is it a must? Back when the game came out, I was selling loads of crafting materials because I guess the other players needed these. Can I just gather without crafting? I know all jobs can be leveled.

Also, Materia? Can other players craft this for me? Its not something I got into last time. I enjoy gathering more than crafting. Like fishing, mining etc.

Or should I put crafting/gathering on the back burner and focus on leveling the main job first? At the moment I'm working towards the Summoner.


Thank you

I think you can get by without crafting, and rely upon gathering and selling your collected materials.
Materia can be acquired yourself, by breaking down 100% spiritbonded items.
Not sure about buying, since I am new myself and havent really dabbled in this yet.
But i assume this is possible to just grab from the marketboard.

As far as your levelling question; I guess this is up to taste really.
Whatever you like to focus on, since both are levelled independantly.

I would level a DoW/M first, personally. You unlock the levequests very early in the HW msq, but there are beast tribe quests in the Churning Mists that are a successor to the Ixali quests of ARR which will prove very useful for leveling up crafting professions cheaply and without allowances, but you have to clear out most of Churning Mists first to get to them.

Thank you both for the replies and help!

Crafting and gathering are still very much optional content in the game. You can level adventuring classes up to the highest level and complete the hardest fights without ever even opening the crafting or gathering windows(i was going to say without even visiting their guilds, but a couple of them are visited during the storyline on various fetch quests). You could choose to level up just gathering, and sell your wares on the MB for profit. Most people who take up gathering do so to make crafting easier by getting some of their own materials, but profit is certainly a viable motive.

As for materia, it isnt "crafted" exactly. Some equipment can be converted to materia after it gets to 100% spiritbond. If you look at the item description, there's an entry that says whether or not the item is "Convertible" - thats how you know if it can be changed. Theres a quest in central thanalan at about level 19 that gives you the ability to do these materia conversions. If you were asking if other people can put materia into your gear for you(or whether you have to do this for yourself), then the answer to that is yes. Other players as well as some NPCs in town can attach materia for you if you dont want to level up crafters to do this for yourself. I would also point out, materia isnt really needed right now for anything short of some end-game tasks. So it isnt something to worry about for awhile yet.

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Or should I put crafting/gathering on the back burner and focus on leveling the main job first?

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Thats something only you can decide. You do have to complete the ARR - patch 2.55 storyline to get into ishgard and the HW areas, so at some point your gathering leveling will be stymied because you wouldnt be able to get to the new areas. But really, aside from access a high level adventuring class only offers small benefits to leveling up a gatherer. So id say do whatever is most fun.

You don't need to lv a crafter you can just stick to a gatherer and sell what you gather. You will want to have a job that is higher lv than your gatherer because to gather in the new areas you need to unlock them through the msq.

Materia you can get from various sources easiest would be to grab them off the MB and you can meld them using the meld npc's in the cities.

You should do whatever you enjoy. Just be cautious about levelling a Disciple of the Hand past roughly Level 25 as it can turn into a bit of a moneysink afterwards if you don't know what you're doing.

While I agree with most of the replies, let me add something to that. In ARR crafting/gathering was a thing, in fact it was such huge trend that everybody tried leveling it, but only a handful probably made it all the way to even "endgame" gearing. Not sure what else to call that lol.

Then HW came around and to be quite honest, while still a lot of people tried to level these classes as quick as possible, myself included, after SE than added the specialization lots of people got turned off by it, or ended up leveling alts so you didn't have to rely on the extreme pricing via market boards. Then SE dropped the specialization again and made lots of recipes available to people that didn't have anything specialized.

Diadem was added, made things just worse, than that got dropped and now it's being redone, not to mention the blue/red scrips yada yada. I think my point is, HW's crafting system is so much of a hassle and not even necessary anymore, or at least not as it used to be in ARR.

However I would recommend, since SE added more exp to the Ixal beast dailies (1-50), as well as moogle dailies (50-60), as well as the leve quests and turn ins, that you should grab a couple of professions. I would go so far by saying if not even all, you can level gathering and crafting quite quickly compared to the old times.

And the reason I suggest that is, we do not know what the expansion brings. Maybe crafting/gathering becomes a thing again just like ARR was, maybe only the first 2 weeks will be great and a quick money maker (same as HW hit), maybe it's just a waste of time, nobody actually knows, but you would hate yourself if the new expansion would make crafting/gathering mandatory and you than would have to speed level that. But that's just my 2cent.