Why no MSQ gear equivalent for DoH/DoL?

This has been bothering me more and more as I think about it.

So clearly the devs decided to make HW hard enough for people who had already been decently geared so they don't just utterly annihilate their way though HW content.

To compensate for newer 50s they decided to throw just oodles and oodles of high ilvl gear at 50s to make sure they are adequately equipped (even HQ crafted gear making crafting 50-53 utterly worthless!)


But they also took the same approach to crafting and gathering. People keep saying here that making some of the items is similar to 4 star level 50 items.

Gathering (especially the collectables stuff, you know, the things they added so that bot/fish/min can actually level at a decent pace) requires massive gathering/perception. And crafting the first set of rainbow items (not the cloth) requires ~1.5 times the difficulty of the 1 star set. The holy rainbow set is 2.5 times harder. And that's all before you can actually get the new 53 gear that makes most of the pre 3.0 stuff worthless.

But there's nothing to help new gatherers/crafters reach these difficulties (let alone with any reasonable chance at HQ) without grinding the basic mats like thread to 53 and buying (or extremely poorly crafting) the 53 gear.

To do the level 53 botany quest, a nearly full one star set of botany gear with the level 52 hatchet and 43 (highest without quests) scythe can't even gather the HQ mats needed. I needed to buy the 53 scythe (the reward from the 53 quest) just to reach a perception level required to then go ahead and gather it to complete the quest, which seems utterly backwards.

To make ramie thread with full weaver 1 star, the mythrite 52 needle, and militia spinning wheel, it takes 7 careful 2's.


tl;dr

For a game that threw boosted ilvl gear at the expense of crafters so that everyone can start at around the same footing in the expansion, the lack of similar opportunities for fresh 50 crafters and gatherers is appalling, especially when combined with the fact that they've stated they want to allow someone to specialize in certain crafts without having to hit 50 everything.

/end rant

There is an entire set of forager gear between 1star and hw gear. You are just skipping a step

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Originally Posted by Rath

There is an entire set of forager gear between 1star and hw gear. You are just skipping a step

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-The point


-You


You're given Forager equivalent gear to send you on your merry way into HW so you don't have to sit and grind forever at old 50 content to enter HW. The entire argument is that forager or similarly leveled gear should be given similarly for crafters to bypass the exact same thing for exactly the same reason, because not everyone has been 50 for over a year.

Yeah, the thing is that they put gear for fight people all over story quests and on vendors all over the place, but it's not as easy to get that stuff as a grafter or gatherer.

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Originally Posted by Hanmerreborn

first post

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If I saw it right the lvl 53 quest s give the new lvl 53 crafting and gathering gear.

But yeah i get your Point i'm still at getting all the mats i Need for my first crafting session but it already Looks like hell (and as it will only bring me to lvl 51 i have to do the whole Thing two more times before getting new Equipment.... oh well)

I kinda wish they had eased the trip from fresh 50 crafter/gatherer with HQ 1 star gear to 51+ crafter/gather gear. Instead its a harsh curve. Sure 4 star peeps will have no trouble, but I was just making my way to 2 stars just weeks before HW dropped. Yes I was slow.

Either way now I have to either spend mils of gill to just get into HW crafting or somehow gather enough stuff to make NQ gear... which sadly at 51... is not nearly as strong as my 1 Star HQ Crafter gear which I made myself. Oo

My gathering is even in a more sorry state. Though far easier to level so ... slowly and eventually I can get their gear through the questlines. (also 51 level is still just a point or two better than 1 Star HQ Gatherer gear.)

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Originally Posted by Tam_Hawkins

If I saw it right the lvl 53 quest s give the new lvl 53 crafting and gathering gear.

But yeah i get your Point i'm still at getting all the mats i Need for my first crafting session but it already Looks like hell (and as it will only bring me to lvl 51 i have to do the whole Thing two more times before getting new Equipment.... oh well)

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Ya I'm not even trying the 53 quest. I can barely hit 10-15% HQ on similar gear using HQ mats with my current gear (and I was able to get the 53 chest and boots thankfully pretty cheap), let alone dropping the 300k or so for all the holy water required (yes it goes for that much on my server) to more than likely fail the quest.

I've just been gil farming by selling the remire and rainbow cloth or bolls until i can just buy the HQ pieces and skip it.

But the logic of needing the 53 gear to complete the 53 quest to get 53 gear is also pretty backwards and problematic.

There is a big gear hole between lvl50 and lvl54, at this point all the crafting is designed around 4 stars guys with lvl50 maxed out crafting gear.
I do not think that we need this huge wall when you reach lvl50 also because we are talking about levelling and not about crafting high end gear.

You don't have to do the 53 quest at 53, just keep leveling. For gathering, you don't really need anything beyond 1* gear to do quest leves up till 54. And for crafting, you can just turn in NQ items to the quest leves. You only get half XP, but it's a LOT easier to make NQ items.

Then, there's a vendor with pretty cheap NQ craft/gathering gear for most slots at 55 that you pass along the Main Story. This will up your stats decently and will make the 53 quest easier to deal with.

For Gathering, assuming you have the old AF set, you should be attempting to do the Collectibles at 50 for exp. Leves make a fine supplement to the Collectibles, but the Collectibles are where the exp is at.

For DoH, HQ AF gear should be sufficient. I've leveled my crp to 53 and downgraded my gear to simulate the conditions that a new crafter might be subjected to.
Item: Level 54 Dark Chestnut Lumber using all HQ materials
CRP Level: 53
Gear: HQ I55 gear except for the main hand, which was the level 52 saw.
Craftmanship: 367
Control: 341
CP: 367 with food (However, I used CZ, a level 50 ability, several times to compensate for low CP. Some melds can also be used to increase CP)

With these stats, you can reduce progress down to 26 using rapid synthesis twice. From my test, I built up 8 stacks of IQ and then finished with great strides and advanced touch, yielding 83% HQ. I did not land any touches on good or excellent.
With byregot's blessing, you shouldn't have a problem getting 100%.

I certainly agree with you OP. even doing the quests the cheap way (i bought the HQ stuff), you really only get a few pieces off the quests. thats about 2 total. the rest of the time the gear is horribly deficient, and people just coming into gathering in the new areas should not be forced to farm for ages in the old areas. But...you can do what I did, and in all honesty, its faster and more efficient then farming the old way and using the quests to get gear.

Here's what I did on my Miner. nothing special for gear, a few HQ class specific items (one star stuff, nothing amazing) and NQ jewelry. did leves until i was 51, then headed over to coerthas western highlands and grabbed the copper collectible every time it hit 12 on the eorza clock. did that for a full weekend, and hit 55. ran over to the churning mists (i had a DoW that level by that time....most people should), and buy a full set of lvl 55 NW gear from the moogle vendor in the center of the map. you should be fine at that point, the NQ lvl 55 gear surpasses the 4 start stuff by a mile. from there you can catch up on DoL quests, practice your newfound collectible farming...whatever.

So yeah, the gap is there, but a studious person can push past it with the collectibles and eventually catch up on the gathering gear at 55.

For crafting....that ones a bit odd. i can craft allot of the 51-55 stuff just fine, with some small exceptions. I can't really do any HQ stuff yet, but I don't care much, i just want to be able to turn in the levequests and level up with that. found an issue though....some of the materials for the lvl 51-52 gear is 2 start stuff (like the Crystal glass for the goldmisth to make goggles), it's funny...my new alchemist can craft up to the lvl 55 stuff being smart with skills, but i can't craft the lvl 5 2 star, because my gear doesn't give me enough stats!

They obviously missed that small but important fact when moving past the star ratings...they need to drop the stat requirements from the lvl 50 stuff. I now have a levequest that i can't turn in until i improve my gear, and there's no way in heck im going to spend that kind of time/money to get my stats high enough when i can just level up to 53 and get gear that has those stats already.

Do not underestimate the XP you can get from Collectables. Think of it as a leve in which you don't need to spend an allowance and can do as many times as you can before the daily reset, and the best part of it is that you don't need to hit full HQ, you only need a very doable amount of quality even for the best reward.