Overmelding & NPC Melders - Impossible to find people to take meld requests

So, I finally managed to get a full set of HQ i290 accessories for my miner, and now I want to do some overmelding on them. The only problem is it seems virtually impossible to find people willing to take meld requests. I don't have LTW to 70 yet, so I can't do them myself. I've tried doing searches for 70 LTWs to no avail, I've even tried throwing out a couple shouts in Kugane during peak hours, and the only response I get is from trolls who don't even have LTW unlocked and/or leveled.

At this point, I'm basically out of luck unless I spend an exorbitant amount of time leveling LTW myself. It seems like with how easy it is to get materia now, that the NPC melders should be able to do overmelds. I'd be perfectly fine with paying the few hundred gil per attempt if it means just not having to potentially spend days trying to find someone who's even able/willing to take meld requests.

The most likely reason you cant find someone right now is because people who would normally take requests dont have their crafters up yet or are still to busy with other things - I would normally gladly take any request for melding, but my ltw is only 68 yet. SB just came out, people still have more important things to do than leveling crafters; and even if they have them leveled they're still to busy with all the other new stuff to take meld-requests.

As a crafter I was already not thrilled about the NPC-melder - melding was a form of income for me and theres also that achievment for melding 5.000 Materia... being able to do such melds also feels like a reward for leveling your crafters, so, no, the NPC doesnt has to do that...
In a few weeks it should be easy to find people to meld stuff again.

(Little sidenote: Have you tried asking the 430 people in your FC...?)

It'd help if crafting didn't have such ridiculous brick walls when it came to try to leveling them.

Right now, I'm stuck on ~57-58 myself because I can't do the leves (because the items are too hard to make and I simply don't have the umpteen hours to gather ludicrous materials to make the single items for leves), and there doesn't appear to be any way to level other than Moogles.

Being that I wasn't 60 during Heavensward, and thus never got Scrip gear I don't know how I'm going to get to 62, I really don't. Sure I can get the Lv61 clothes but that won't do much for me until I can get the 62 tools.

The lv60 quested gear is out, because all the quests require HQ synths which is pretty much impossible because, again, no scrip gear.

The brick walls between expansions are just simply ridiculous. The stats on the starter items of the expansion are tuned assuming you are wearing the best endgame stuff of the previous expansion and there's no catchups. At least with Battlecraft gear, you can buy Lv60 items and you WILL survive battle with lv60 enemies and you can go into the Lv61 dungeon to get dungeon gear.

You can't, however, buy Lv60 crafting gear from SB to get into Lv60 crafting. Nope. You gotta get to 61 and then 62 for tools. And even then, NQ won't get you anything. It'll still be hard as balls to actually craft anything.

There are a few things you can do beside moogles:

1) GC-turn ins - one per day, shittone of exp
2) Red Scrips - you'll be able to buy decent level 60 tools for them aswell, to get you through Stormblood. Same with gear, actually. Red scrips turn ins grant less exp than leves do, but you're always not required to hit 100% HQ, making it easier.
3) Dont do the current leves, do the ones one tier below - they're still giving out good exp and you can HQ them more easly. Been doing that all the way through SB - if non of the new leves is attractive, I'll stick with the old ones.

Crafting IS time consuming yes - but I wouldnt dare to speak of a true "brick wall" here.

GC turn in is 25% for one bonus (star or hq), and roughly 50% of a level for 2. I've been using daily GCs to level DoH/DoL since I started.. never grinded leves.

If you were on Balmung, I'd be glad to charge you 10k per meld attempt.

in 2.5 bored crafters would /shout melding for tips. I would cheerfully meld for my FC.

But right now I haven't a single craft to 62.