How important is crafting?

Newbie here. I've searched high and low in every forum, fansite and wiki and literally every guide out there about crafting is for high-end, 2 star/3star min-max or contains outdated information. (I might have missed something though!)

There seems to be nothing out there for new-entrants about the crafting and every discussion I've seen about low-end crafting invariably ends up with a ton of posts saying 'everything to 15, culinary to 37, max all, spend gil, have fun!' but nothing of any real substance in regards to these queries:


a) How important is crafting for those who are not going to be investing billions of gil or spending all day macro-crafting?

b) Can we get by without it?

I get the feeling dungeon loot is superior to crafted goods at the moment. Is it an optional hobby craft that can be a very powerful self-sufficiency tool? Or should everyone be taking it asap, even if its just to grind to 50 and wear that sweet moogle hat that does something.

c) If gear is obtainable quicker and easier via other means, what does crafting bring that is vital for a new player somewhere down the line? I've seen talk of materia melding, but is that something that is important at any point outside of crafting? Do you need to craft to materia meld?

d) Disregarding gear itself, what else does crafting bring to the table?

e) Is it viable for players to just pick up one or two things and casually progress through them? Say for example, I'm a strange type of guy who doesn't mind fishing as a 'break' from defying the laws of physics and making big numbers pop up. Would it be sustainable for me to buy equipment and whatnot to progress in fishing without gimping myself or destroying the bank balance?

Say, I decide to add a crafting class to that, let's say I go for Culinary because it seems to tie into fishing. Can I casually fry eggs and make chicken nuggets all day long without so much as being murdered financially due to gear requirements or reliance on other crafting classes?

Or in the end is it TL:DR Level everything to 15, culinary to 37, spend gil, max to 50, enjoy? (I hope it isn't!)

a) its not
b) yes
Dungeon gear is comparable to hq crafted gear, aetherial gear will have one other random stat
c) if you don't craft you cannot meld, would have to ask someone to do it for you, probably at a price. Melding gear is really only useful after lvl 50, in my opinion.
d) extra income
e) sure, but all DoH and DoL do tie in together, or you will spend some gil only doing one.
Chicken nuggets all day every day. You will spend gil, how much depends on what you hope to accomplish. I have all crafts and gatherers to 50, spent alot, but made way more than I spent selling stuff.

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Originally Posted by RVallant

a) How important is crafting for those who are not going to be investing billions of gil or spending all day macro-crafting?

b) Can we get by without it?

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You are certainly going to want crafted goods at times. Whether that means crafting them yourself or buying them from other crafters is entirely up to you. Many players don't get into crafting at all and simply buy all their gear.

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Originally Posted by RVallant

I get the feeling dungeon loot is superior to crafted goods at the moment.

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The better dungeon drops are superior once you get them, but in the meantime, you're still going to need gear to wear. While leveling, it's likely that at least your first class will outlevel the good dungeon drops before accumulating a full set, so even at levels that have dungeon drops, you'll still need to start with crafted gear until RNG works in your favor and you get the loot drops. Also, there are somewhat large gaps between good dungeon dropped sets, and for those intervening levels, the best gear in game is crafted.

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Originally Posted by RVallant

I've seen talk of materia melding, but is that something that is important at any point outside of crafting? Do you need to craft to materia meld?

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You have to craft to be able to meld materia yourself, but anyone can create materia, even if they don't craft, and so long as you have both the materia and some gear you want it added to, you can ask another crafter to do actually meld them together for you. (It's considered polite to tip them for doing so, but since it only takes a moment and they don't need to provide the materials, that's typically a fairly minor cost.)

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Originally Posted by RVallant

d) Disregarding gear itself, what else does crafting bring to the table?

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Consumables, particularly the food that Culinarians make, is another big one. There's also an assortment of stuff for decorating houses, and a few other miscellaneous items, but gear and food are the main categories.

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Originally Posted by RVallant

e) Is it viable for players to just pick up one or two things and casually progress through them? Say for example, I'm a strange type of guy who doesn't mind fishing as a 'break' from defying the laws of physics and making big numbers pop up. Would it be sustainable for me to buy equipment and whatnot to progress in fishing without gimping myself or destroying the bank balance?

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That's certainly viable. You'd need to buy gear and fishing tackle, but could then sell fish, so can come out ahead overall. (You'd likely want to learn enough about Culinarian recipes to know which fish are useful.)

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Originally Posted by RVallant

Say, I decide to add a crafting class to that, let's say I go for Culinary because it seems to tie into fishing. Can I casually fry eggs and make chicken nuggets all day long without so much as being murdered financially due to gear requirements or reliance on other crafting classes?

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Culinarian is one of the more self-sufficient of them in not needing many materials made by other crafting classes (well, some items from Alchemist, but only on a few recipes). It's dependent on two of the gathering classes, though: Botanist and Fisherman, so I'd recommend trying both of those if you plan to be a cook. You'd spend a lot on all the Botanist-gathered ingredients if the only DoL you're pursuing is Fisherman.

It varies by which class you're interested in, though, as some of them have more dependencies than others. If you were interested in something like Weaver, for instance, you'd find it requires a fair amount of leather, so is expensive to level without also leveling Leatherworker. I recommend anyone interested in either of those to level them together.

i only leveled craftin for these reason

1. making my own gear to spiritbind when farmin materia its a million times cheaper lol
2. being able to melp materia myself sometimes its a hassle finding some1 to do it for ya
3. making my own furniture for my house some furniture is insanely expensive

but crafting isnt really needed u dont miss out on anything if dont wanna level crafters but its 1 of the better ways to make fast gil

Not at all /thread

a. It's not. Crafting is something you generally either dive into for the enjoyment of it or for making a fortune.

b. Absolutely. You might be buying accessories from other players while levelling just because of the rarity of finding them from dungeons/quests, but otherwise dungeon drops and NPC-sold gear is "good enough" 99.99% of the time when heading to level 50. Once you surpass level 50, crafted gear with materia slapped into it can be just as good as many otherwise best-in-slot pieces, but you'll be shelling out big bucks for that and can get perfectly good gear from dungeon drops, tomestones, etc.

c. In terms of gear, crafted gear is dyeable and meldable, and if you get HQ gear, it's also stronger than it should be at a given level (Often stronger than the next upgrade or two would be). Post-50, the customization afforded via meldable gear can afford you strengths you can't necessarily replicate with other gear (Ruby Rings melded with Vitality materia offer physical classes notably more HP than dropped/tomestone STR rings, for instance). If you want to meld, you'll either need the craft at 50 yourself or will need to find someone who does.

d. Food and potions provide some serious stat boosts down the line which are incredibly valuable to raiders or any content that's challenging you, really. Furnishings for personal housing (or for selling to those who have it). The ability to make your own glamour prisms and vanity gear. Etc. etc.

e. Yep. You can totally do it. I took CUL and FSH to 50 before I touched any of the other crafter/gatherer classes. NPC-purchased gear will get you through (barring accessories again, since NPCs don't sell those, but you can grab those from players off the market board). It definitely helps for crafting though to have all of the classes to 15 simply for the variety of extra actions (Tricks of the Trade and Hasty Touch being by far the most useful).

Thanks for the answers. :)

I'm curious about crafting to maintain gear, but I'm seriously worried that the interdependency is going to be a pain in the butt. Also, managing 8 classes plus the DOL and the Conjurer sounds overwhelming. I just dinged 10 now, still wary of grabbing anything so far, can imagine it would take a while if I picked up everything. O_o

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Originally Posted by RVallant

Thanks for the answers. :)

I'm curious about crafting to maintain gear, but I'm seriously worried that the interdependency is going to be a pain in the butt. Also, managing 8 classes plus the DOL and the Conjurer sounds overwhelming. I just dinged 10 now, still wary of grabbing anything so far, can imagine it would take a while if I picked up everything. O_o

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correct me if im wrong but pretty sure the only classes dependent on crafting gear are the crafting/gathering classes DoW/DoM theres far better gears available through coil/dungeons etc crafted gear dont come close imo

It depends on your play style.

For adventuring classes, crafting is useful to give yourself new equipment while leveling. The dungeon drops are better but then you have to rely on running the dungeons repeatedly to get the drops.
For crafting/gathering classes, there are no equipment drops so the only way to get high quality equipment is to make it yourself or buy it from the market board (made by another player). The level 55 equipment is also not available from NPCs so it has to be crafted.

Post-50 the crafted adventuring gear is always behind what is available with tomestones (crafted 110 vs poetics 120/130 right now) but can give you a boost while earning enough tomestones for that gear. The main use for crafting at that point (for me) is making glamour prisms, making housing items, and repairs.
Glamour prisms - glamour is available once you hit 50 with an adventuring class. You need a separate prism for each item you want to glamour. The type of prism you need is based on the level and type of the gear image you want to project. The completed prisms usually sell anywhere from 5k-20k depending on the server. The recipes themselves are use easy level 25 components though, so it is easy to make them yourself as a crafter.
Housing items - like 90% of the items for houses are crafted. Some of them are ridiculously difficult too.
Repairs - if you have an appropriately leveled crafting class you can repair your gear whenever you want. It is very nice being able to repair gear in the middle of a dungeon.

If you get into crafting you are going to want either botanist, miner, or both just to gather the elemental shards you will need.
Fishing is awesome (I think) but doesn't really tie much into the other classes. There are relatively few uses for fish.

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Post-50 the crafted adventuring gear is always behind what is available with tomestones (crafted 110 vs poetics 120/130 right now)

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This isn't necessarily true. For instance, during the last patch, it was possible to meld the i90 Ruby Rings into into better rings for tanks and melee DPS than the actual i110 rings you could get, and they were still being used in the world first Turn 13 clear - hell, they may still be superior. Similarly, the best possible Dragoon helm wasn't either i110 piece - it was their melded, crafted i90 helm. The i110 gear with melds is likely better than i120 if you're unable to currently upgrade it.

Anyway, in terms of dependance? No, battle classes aren't 'dependant' on crafted gear at all; you can get by entirely without it. It doesn't mean it's bad though. Pre-50, the best possible gear at any given level is either HQ crafted normal gear, or drops from the most recent dungeon - and if it's an accessory slot you often have to get either a rare drop or get it crafted (Goldsmith takes care of this by itself). Post-50 it's still hella useful for getting over the initial gear hurdle, and if you have good money to your name can outstrip a lot of other easily accessible equipment.

As mentioned though, crafters and gatherers are completely dependant on crafted gear (90% of the level 50 relevant gear for them has to be manually crafted by a player - the other 10% require you to craft/gather the materials to trade in for it yourself!)

Think of it as a side game that you can make a whole game out of. You will NEVER be requirecd to craft to do something that is not directly crafting-related.

It does make pretty gil though. I'll give it that.

I got my first class all the way to 50 and completed the initial story chain before I picked up my first profession. You will be fine without one. Focus on your Conjurer before going into professions.

Many people have already answered for the most part, but I figured I'd chime in a bit anyway:

For me, crafting is more of a helpful bonus than a necessity. When I got everything to 50 I found, very conveniently, that I could repair all my gear on the fly, even in dungeons. Very useful:D

Additionally, self melding or crafting gear is useful, but not crucial. You can always pay someone to get something..and the price to buy something straight off the market board is usually not so inflated (exception: endgame/specialty goods and anything that resembles lady's underwear...)

Repairing in dungeons is a nice benefit (you can even repair while in combat!). If you constantly craft new HQ sets once you spiritbond one, you can generate a lot of materia while leveling alt classes/jobs. For leveling, you can take 30~60 minutes a day to do GC supply/provisioning missions (and maybe ixali quests) to gradually level all classes at once, without too much effort. Definitely take up botanist or miner (or both!) at the same time, possibly with the GC dailies, so you can have a retainer take care of shards for you.

Then again, I actually enjoy crafting, so leveling this way was fun for me. I barely bought any mats (gathered my own 99% of the time) and hit 50 on gathering/crafting classes before I hit 50 on my battle job.