Plz Send Help

Hey all!

Quick backstory on me here: longtime player here. All I’ve ever really done in this game has been on war/magic classes. And spent most of my time raiding. Dabbled a smidge into crafting and gathering back in the day in ARR. But I only leveled a botanist just high enough to dig up maps in Heavensward and haven’t really done anything on that side in years. Recently started getting into, just reached max level on botanist yesterday and plan on doing some crafting a little later.

So my question is, where do I even start? I did a tiny bit just to try figure out this “new” concept of collectables and stuff but for the most part I’m kind of at a loss of where to begin. Just spent the vast majority of my saved Gil on melding out my tanking accessories so I’m only sitting on probably a million Gil at this point and until I can start building that back up I can’t really just buy a crafted set of gear. Any and all tips you could give me would be much appreciated!

It depends on what you want to get out of gathering.

If the goal is to make it easier to dabble in crafting later on, then the next step is to level miner up. You can get away with skipping fisher, as most fish are useless and there are enough non-fish CUL recipes to get by(though if you enjoy fishing do that too). But miner is another story, as far too many recipes require a hard or soft metal(especially when looking at BSM/ARM/GSM who make items used by many other classes) or some other mineral to skip the class. You can use leves along with GC turn ins to get miner up quickly(plus any old gear you might still have lying around) so that when youre ready to craft you have the ability to get everything yourself.

If the goal is to make money, you're in good shape now. Gathering is the easiest way to make gil in game. Do a little research at the market board to see how your server sits, and go out and get some of the things that sell well and often. And the key is the combination of a good sales price, and a lot of people buying. You dont want to have a stack of wood that someone buys once a month for 1 mil, you want to find a stack that sells once an hour for 25k(these numbers are just examples of course). Some mats people prefer HQ, some they only need NQ. This is what your market research wants to uncover. And if you want to get advanced, figure out how many a crafter is likely to want at a time and you can sell in smaller "perfectly sized" stacks and often charge a little more. If the suit of armor i want to make(but am too lazy to go mining up the ore for) requires 20 ore, i might very well pay more so that i dont have any left over when im done. This money can in turn be used to upgrade your gathering equipment(or whatever else), opening up more materials you can go after(making more money, for better upgrades, etc).

If the goal is to be the best gatherer you can, then you will need to learn collectables. At its most basic, you're using appraisal skills(most stick to impulsive and methodical) to raise your quality, then collecting the item(s) to turn in. Kinda like how crafters build up quality, then finish the production. Learn how Utmost Caution, Discerning Eye and Single Mind interact with each other and with your appraisals to get the most out of them. The easiest way is to practice. Look at Rowena's menu, and see what kinda collectables she's after for BOT. Go for one of the common materials(zelkova or something), and just spend some time practicing with the skills until you can get high enough to turn in(we use common mats to practice because theyre always there, timed node mats pay better but you dont want to "practice" on something that wont respawn for an hour). Once youre comfortable with this, do the quests needed to unlock Custom Deliveries. Later on you can use these for your crafters, but for now you can do 12 weekly turnins which should net you a decent haul of red and yellow gathering scrips. These can be used to upgrade your gear, or to make a quick buck if youre broke.

If none of these are your goal, then... what is? Let us know, and we can give you some guideposts in the right direction.

Starting off I’m just looking to make some Gil. I used to have a lot of ways to make Gil but they’ve become far less profitable in past years and I feel like I really should get into crafting and gathering.

Will starting off with just super basic gear allow me to do enough to make some decent gil until I can get some crafted gear?

Eventually I’d like to have a really solid gatherer that I can pretty much do anything with but for starters I’m just looking to get some income flowing.

If you just want to make gil, that’s easy.

Take up crafting, the long and slow way of making everything at least once and only doing a Leve that you’ve made an item for. Sell everything not being used for a Leve, or for yourself (if there’s an item that’s both needed by a Leve, and that you want to use, make two! - four if its a Triple Leve).

Using Leves too much causes a gil drain. Making stuff and putting it on the board creates an income. Starting in the low-mid 20’s, you’ll be able to HQ fairly reliably, using entirely NQ mats, though this does entail having HQ gear and keeping it up to date.

Crafting(the long term goal) will make you more money, but for now just gathering can make you some easy money. A set of vendor/quest gear is more then enough to tackle any normal node(id have to look up the stats to say that for sure about the hidden ones). Beyond that, its really just as simple as looking at what sells and going out to get some. For instance, my server sold out of rainbow cotton recently. The first people to put them back on the board made a lot more then the "normal" rate, as some lazy/rushed crafters were desperate to finish their work. And its not always high level stuff that makes money. There are always people leveling up their crafters who need low and mid level mats, and a surprising amount of high level recipes mix in a couple low level ingredients. The classic example of this(though on many servers its been done by too many people and has lost its impact) is alumen. Alumen is a level 18ish reagent that miners can dig up near Camp Drybone. Its used to tan every type of leather from aldgoat(lvl 15ish) up until i think raptor(lvl 45ish). So any beginning miner who noticed this had a chance to make a good stable income while leveling up and getting access to higher level materials.

So yeah, the first thing id say to do is spend 5-10 mins looking at prices and how often things sell on the board(you can also ask any crafting friends what they buy the most). It all starts from there.

Thanks guys!

This definitely gives me a good place to start with everything. I appreciate all the help!

Good "markets" to get into when you start crafting to try and make gil are glamours and housing, since you don't need to worry about HQing the item. Once you learn more on crafting, you can start trying to sell things like armor, which doesn't sell well if it's not HQ. Also dyes, but that's more like a slow trickle of gil.