Did Stormblood make leveling crafting any easier?

Just getting back to the game, and on the grind to level my crafting again. Normal method involves tons of grinding, and leves. Was anything new released that helps me get to 60 and beyond?

Uhm well if its a different area of XP you want to get to 60 then the Moogle beast tribe is there for the 50-60 Range. The Ixali beast tribe for the 1-50. 60-70? The old way. Craft it, Leve it, Grand Company turn it in.

I'm pretty lazy and slow so I don't grind a million leves to get to 70. I have most classes to 65 and a few at 66 and this has been a month of work. If I add a bit of effort I'm sure a week or so and I can reach 70 with them all.

That said. I expect a new Beast Tribe way of leveling mid way through the expac.

Yes and no - there are collecetables now. They give less exp than leves, but are unlimited (they change daily though). You'll also get the special script-currency from them that you can trade for exp-boni, special mats and gear.
To get crafters to 50 there are Ixal-dailies. To get them to 60 there are the moogles - beyond 60 its mainly still leves though.

Few other things to notice though:
- daily GC-turn ins are giving tones of exp - even without a star a HQ-turn in can easly be 1/4 or even a 1/3 of a level
- use exp-boni that you can get for red scrips (or from your GC)
- Crafter-quests are giving a lot of exp - around 2 millions per quest, so make sure you do them before you hit level 70!

Other than that: With SB each crafter got at least one really easy leve that only involves deliviring some base-mats instead of a fully finished product. All crafetrs get those leves pretty early on aswell.
You'll still need tones of leves (unless you go the collectable way - which I would mainly recommend for cul, not so much for other crafters, maybe...) but all in all I felt crafting and leveling crafters wasnt to bad in SB. I made a lot of the items I needed for leves and kept them in stacks, ready to be turned in when my leves refilled. Took me about a week (with full leves at the start though) to get all crafters to 70.

Little word of advice: In case you want to level gatheres aswell, dont waste any leves on them! Collectables might be questionable on crafters but they're great to level gatherers!

Oh ya Collectibles too! ... I suck at doing those with my crafters. I leveled like mad with Gathers doing collectibles. Save for fishing... fishing makes me cranky when it comes to collectibles.

The best thing about levelling with collectables (Red Scrip) is you have to do them anyways to get your Master Book Vs. Additionally, you can exchange 400 Red Scrip for a grade V crafting materia. You need a bunch of those for overmelding anyways, unless you want to do a bunch of spiritbonding.

I just did leves on my crafters, didn't touch collectibles. Crafting the items is ridiculously easy.

I actually believe that I had to craft less HQ items doing leves than doing collectibles, BUT, I didn't do leves for the 40 durability turnins, I did finished products, whichever one was easiest. The only one I did 40 duras for was the area of weaver that requires steppe serge.

For 60-70 I did something that many consider to be heresy : I did the crafting log. I also did each crafting Leve once.

It was easy enough, just time consuming. On the plus side, I did make a decent amount of gil doing it, as I was selling everything that I was not going to hand in for a Leve.

I firmly believe that they are going to add in a third award for the I Made That _____! Achievements, somewhen down the line, and this way I"m basically ready to get it when it comes along.

Crafting is fast to level as long as you can keep up with gear and know rotations. If people wanted they can just do daily turns and craft 60-65 with a few xp buffers and leves and hit 70 at a reasonable rate. Just depends how fast you want to level.

I found it easier than it was before SB, yes.

I did collectibles :) this method can be a tad annoying because the hand ins you should be focusing change everyday (everyday there's classes with hand ins with a star, that's the one with higher scrip/exp payoff), so it can be tricky as you can't plan ahead which mats to stockpile - as opposed to leves, where you can decide which ones are the most favorable to you and plan accordingly.

Nice bonuses of this method: you get absolutely insane amounts of scrips, with which you can purchase exp boosts, Master Crafter books AND materia (so this will save you some massive gil sink), desynth stuff if you need that, etc.

NOTE: usually everyday there's more than one starred craft so I picked the one cheapest to craft.

I did some leves 60-63, because not all my crafters had decent MH/OH and CP and had to rely on some cheap leve hand ins until I could equip something better.

Daily GC hand ins are also amazing - much like collectibles, they change everyday and might have stars. A starred HQ hand in can land you a MASSIVE chunk of exp, so they're always worth doing. On days I didn't feel like crafting them I bought NQ off vendors just for the starred hand ins.

Also important is to not put off doing your class quests. They give very nice exp for the price of nothing (unlike ARR and HW the mats you need to finish the quest are given to you by the NPCs), as well as gear and tools - and most importantly skills that will make your crafting a lot easier :)

EDIT: Since you weren't crafting by the end of HW you might have some issues at 50-51 and 60-61, for these levels leves work nicely until you can equip better gear

Crafting is brain dead easy now.