What classes are your retainers?

I have the default 2 retainers with the subscription. One is a miner and the other botanist. Im reading around of people using combat retainers to farm materials that are more of a headache to farm, so im curious if this is the standard and if im wasting time with land retainers. Both are capped so im not sure I would want to reset them to a combat class, but maybe ill just buy an extra retainer slot or two.

I’ve had all the retainer types at certain points, and I keep my crafters/gatherers leveled.

In my opinion if you only have two retainers they should both be combat jobs. When you’re a crafter the skins are a bottleneck more often than not, and I don’t want to grind for drops and prefer to use bicolor gemstones for other things than skins, etc.

Miners and botanists can get materials, but you can get the same extremely easily and in much greater quantities, and they require more effort to equip rather than just battle job hand-me-downs.

Fishing has more randomness involved so a fisher retainer might be desirable to some but I just found them to be low value. Their fishing list is very small.

The 18-hour venture materials and regular venture materials for battle jobs tend to sell better than what the gatherers bring back as well.

Just my experience.

And starting over leveling a job is not that big of a deal. It takes maybe 6-8 weeks? They’ll be max level for years after that. :p

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Originally Posted by EorzeaWanderer

And starting over leveling a job is not that big of a deal. It takes maybe 6-8 weeks? They’ll be max level for years after that. :p

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Oh nice thats pretty fast, ill do that then.

Different players make different choices based on their own priorities. I do prefer the combat retainers, though.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by EorzeaWanderer

And starting over leveling a job is not that big of a deal. It takes maybe 6-8 weeks? They’ll be max level for years after that. :p

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It can take longer than that, depending on how much you play. I decided to switch one of my alt's FSH retainers to BTN about 2 months in advance of the expansion. Her retainers have just hit 70 but then I don't always log onto the character daily. Once you hit 60, you stop getting a level almost every 18 hour venture and start needing 3-4 to level.

Even with my main character, retainers that started at 90 have just hit 99 despite using a mix of hour ventures when I'm online then an 18 hour when I'm going to log out. If I had used quick ventures instead of hunting/botany/mining/Fishing one hour ventures they probably would be 100 now but I wanted the materials to supplement what I was getting through my gathering/gemstones.

OK, so this might be overkill, but whatever.

On my main character, I have 10 retainers, 4 combat, 3 miners and gatherers.

I also have a few alts with all of their retainers dedicated to a single role.

1 GNB my main class.. 1 Summoner and 1 Scholar easy classes 6o level for mentor or class coverage.. 1 Fisher 1 Miner 1 Botinist.. cover all the gathering spots too

It really depends to your playstyle. If you prefer hunts and fates or anything combat-related that can let you gather crafting materials then your retainers can be gatherers. If you want to earn gil, you can either have your gatherer retainers farm crystals or combat retainers can farm crafting materials to sell to the marketboard.

I'm a craftaholic and have all 10 retainers doing mining/botany on my main.

Outside of going for a minion I use them strictly for crystal (fire crystals, wind crystals, etc.) farming every 40 minutes. Geared up they can bring back 120 crystals each. That's 1200 crystals per run total and saves me a MINT having to purchase the crystals for crafting. That, and can sell off the extra for a tidy profit.

Cost a bit to gear them up and do some melding on their gear, but getting 120 crystals per run is huge for me.

In order:
1. Paladin
2. Warrior
3. Ninja
4. White Mage
5. Black Mage
6. Bard
7. Miner
8. Botanist
9. Fisher
10. Dragoon

I try to keep a good stock of crafting materials on hand - but I'm also very much a hoarder, so just about all of their inventories are 150+ full.

Battle classes are super useful for harvesting hides and other creature materials.
Gatherer's are good for restocking crafting materials when I'm too lazy to go myself - but I'll typically focus on their 18h ventures to try and get all the exclusive minions. (Love my Quetzal)