When is a good time to start Crafting??

I see everyone talking about leveling in the crafting jobs but when is it a good time to start doing that? I'm still working on the MSQ so I wasnt sure when to even worry about crafting. Will the main story lead me in to it or something?

As soon as possible really. I see your a level 34 thaumaturge?
You easily already have access to the crafts, just need to visit the guilds in each of the cities to get started. Ul'Dhah, Gridania and Limsa Lominsa.

If you want to make your own gear, then it's good to get your crafting and gathering classes up to around the level of your main class/job, so the earlier you start the better. (The only caveat being that you'll want retainers before getting too far into crafting or you'll quickly run out of inventory space, and they're unlocked at level 17 in the MSQ.)

However, leveling the crafting classes can take quite a bit of time, and many players don't like taking that much time away from their first class/job while going through the storyline. They prefer to just focus on it until they finish the main scenario, then go back and level additional classes, including crafting. That prevents the crafting from being useful for their first class/job, but it can still be useful for later alt classes.

Which is more important is up to you, so it might be at level 17, level 60, or any time in between.

If you are focussing on your main, just doing daily GC turn-ins will level your crafting classes with a minimum of effort. Should take you no more then 15-30 minutes to collect the ingredients and craft the items for all 8 classes. Also give the ixal beast tribes a look. They give a nice amount of xp. 1-2 hq turn ins will give you a level.

Originally my first class to 50 was carpenter and second was bard. Something similar happend when heavensward hit, I only leveled my brd far enough to get access to area's i needed for leveling my miner/botanist to supply materials for my crafters.

During the levelling of your first class/job, the game provides you all the gear you will need to get through the story.

The benefit of starting crafting now is you will be able to make your own gear, which will be better than the game provided gear and you will have it sooner.
The detriment of starting now is, crafting takes a lot of Gil. Low level DoW/DoM have a difficult time making money (or at least they did when I was levelling up in by-gone era).

I would personally advise to complete getting your first class all the way through the MSQ to lvl60 then start crafting.
You will have a decent amount of Gil (provided you just played with game provided gear) and did not bother with glamour purchases along the way.
You will have access to the daily roulettes which will provide you a good source new income each day.
You will have a retainer or two levelled along with you, they can obtain crafting mats for you or you can sell their returns on the MB.

Levelling crafting takes a large amount of Gil (best guess of 3-5 mil) to get to end game. You can offset many costs by also levelling your gathers along with the crafters.

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Originally Posted by ChameleonMS

crafting takes a lot of Gil

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That depends on your approach to it. If you buy all your stuff then it costs a lot of gil. If you make it yourself, it doesn't cost any gil at all, and in fact can be a significant source of earning extra gil as you go. Doing it yourself costs a lot of time instead, though.

You get to choose your priorities in terms of how much gil you're willing to spend compared to how much time you're willing to spend. People who start crafting early tend not to have a lot of gil (since, as you mentioned, it's a lot harder to come by at low levels), so they're more likely to advance crafting by gathering and making stuff themselves rather than buying their materials (let alone buying finished turn-in items).

The result is that for people who start early, it's generally a time-sink, whereas for people who start late it's more likely to be a gil-sink. It's certainly one or the other.

On a wim I decided to level the crafting jobs on my alt. They are currently at lvl 24-30. I bought all the materials i needed from either fc house vendor or other npc vendors. With the occasional marketboard purchase trown in.
From selling all the crafted items i made 1m. So its not so bad. Things only tend to get more expensive when you level past that; At least if you dont gather the stuf yourself.
Just keep an eye on the marketboard and learn how the prices fluctuate so you can buy them when the prices are low.

You can get a min and a botanist retainer to gather the majority of the materials you need at higher levels though, it does require you to level them yourself as wel though.

I do have to admit I cheat somewhat in getting my ingredients by letting my mains retainers gather most of the higher level ingredients.

When is a good time to level crafting? When you find it interesting and are not averse to either spending a large amount of gil for crafting material, or are willing to become a gatherer as well.

If you feel overwhelmed with story, it makes for a nice break.

Don't force yourself to craft, though. It it feels like a second job, it is a second job. Work at a pace you find fun.

You can start at any time. Crafting and gathering is done rather well in this game and outside of a few cases you can generally obtain the materials needed for gear at the level those materials are needed. So, someone can use level 20 gathering points and fight level 20 monsters to get materials used in level 20 recipes to make level 20 gear. If you're making everything yourself and being self-sufficient, there's little reason not to start right away.

That said, crafting is a time-consuming deal, especially as it helps to have all your crafters and gatherers leveling up together due to the immense amount of overlap. This does mean you'll be devoting less time to your initial main job and unlocking other things you may want, such as endgame weeklies.

When we do start with the crafting and such... do we NEED all of the crafting classes, or can we just take the ones we like?

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Originally Posted by Zadocfish

When we do start with the crafting and such... do we NEED all of the crafting classes, or can we just take the ones we like?

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Short answer: Yes, you need all of them.

Long answer: Crafting in this game is most profitable if you are able to make High Quality (HQ) versions of the different recipes. In some cases only HQ is acceptable, such as with various quest requirements, relic components, etc. So being able to reliably make HQ equipment is very important. In order to achieve this, you need to have access to certain skills which can only be learned by specific crafting jobs. Each crafting job has unique skills, and you'll need many of them in order to produce a crafting rotation that enables you to reliably produce HQ items. Some of them you could arguably do without, but in fact most of them are useful in the right situation. So leveling every job is recommended in order to have access to the full array of crafting skills. When you reach level 60, you'll gain access to specialist actions which can only be used by specialist crafters ( you can only choose 3 crafters to specialize in). So you may be thinking you can just level the 3 crafts you plan to specialize in, but in fact, the specialist actions are mostly unreliable as they rely heavily on the condition of the craft which is decided by RNG. When you're trying to make HQ as reliable as possible, you want to minimize RNG as much as possible which means that the specialist actions in general are not viable options. This means that you'll continue to rely on your skills learned from all the crafting classes even after becoming a specialist.

All that said, before you go and start leveling up every crafter to 60, you should decide if it's really worth it for you. Crafting in this game is primarily used as a way to make money first, but also has added benefits such as being able to repair your own gear, and meld your own materia (which will become very important in 3.2). If you find that you don't really need money for very many things, then it's entirely acceptable to just level the relevant crafters you need to meld and repair up to level 50 and stop there. If you're fine with having someone meld your materia for you and using the repair NPC, then feel free to ignore crafting entirely.

Sweet. I mostly just wanted to be able to craft my own gear that's as good or better than the bought stuff; min/maxing doesn't interest me that much. Thank you!

As you level up most of the very best gear will come out of dungeons, either directly(greens and pinks in chests) or via items you get that you trade in for gear(often blues - this happens more in higher level dungeons then lower ones). The stuff you can buy off npc merchants/get from quests is often the lowest quality. By crafting you can find a middle ground by making higher quality versions of the items that are sold(and as some items arent sold at all, doing intermediary upgrades if needed). You also get a big advantage gearing any classes you level later, as your crafting would likely already be high enough to make most everything you need. Crafting can also turn profitable if you want it to. If making money becomes your goal, it will help a lot to be able to gather your own ingredients(for instance, leveling miner to get the metal AND armorer to make the gear).

But i do feel i need to clear up one misconception. It is not at all required to level any classes other then the ones you like. You get bonuses and advantages(cross class skills and making your own parts) for leveling multiples, but if you dont mind working a little harder(using more hq mats, failing and retrying sometimes) you can get as far as you want to go on just a single class.

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Originally Posted by Frizze

But i do feel i need to clear up one misconception. It is not at all required to level any classes other then the ones you like. You get bonuses and advantages(cross class skills and making your own parts) for leveling multiples, but if you dont mind working a little harder(using more hq mats, failing and retrying sometimes) you can get as far as you want to go on just a single class.

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It is certainly not required, but many people end up leveling all the crafting/gathering classes anyway. Main reason for that is that so many recipes require materials crafted/gathered by some other class.
Sure, you can try buying those from the MB, but that tends to become expensive - and sometimes the items you need are not even available for purchase.

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Originally Posted by MistakeNot

It is certainly not required, but many people end up leveling all the crafting/gathering classes anyway. Main reason for that is that so many recipes require materials crafted/gathered by some other class.
Sure, you can try buying those from the MB, but that tends to become expensive - and sometimes the items you need are not even available for purchase.

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My thought is if you need to buy half the mats anyway, you may as well just buy the finished item as it is.

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Originally Posted by Urthdigger

My thought is if you need to buy half the mats anyway, you may as well just buy the finished item as it is.

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Yup. The mats for the high-end recipes these days often cost more than the finished item. While I'm stuck in the mid-50s for crafting, I also know I can produce anything someone from 1-50 requires as an HQ item ... mostly for other crafters. :)

MistakeNot and others, i was never implying that leveling multiple/all the classes isnt advantageous. Cross class skills are a big help in finishing harder recipes, a big help in HQing recipes. An armorer being able to make his own leather for the padding(as an example) is at a big advantage both in terms of time and money saved. I couldnt say that it isnt helpful in good conscience, as im almost done leveling all my crafters and gatherers to 60(3 crafters in the high 50s to finish as of this writing, fishing recently hit 51 as last gatherer). I was just arguing against Zetsumei saying you need them all. The OP was asking when was a good time to pick up crafting, and whether he had to commit to doing all 480 levels worth of it. If they like crafting, most people do seem to eventually end up picking up everything. But you can certainly start small, and expand if/when you decide you need those extra advantages.

Start when you feel like it. Crafting can be very overwhelming and it will take a lot of time to get anywhere, especially if you are just starting out and therefore have neither money not seals nor leveled retainers to speed up the process.

People talk about crafting gear for the class you are leveling, but tbh the best gear comes from dungeons and later on raids and tome trade-ins, so unless you are hellbent on never entering any content more than once, crafting or buying any gear while leveling up is likely not needed.

If you enjoy it though, there is no reason to wait and not get started right away.

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Originally Posted by MistakeNot

Main reason for that is that so many recipes require materials crafted/gathered by some other class.
Sure, you can try buying those from the MB, but that tends to become expensive - and sometimes the items you need are not even available for purchase.

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Some are more important than others in this respect, though. Culinarian, for instance, although it provides a couple of extremely useful cross-class skills, is hardly ever useful for providing materials to other classes, nor does it need materials from other crafting classes very often. On the other hand, I wouldn't want to try leveling either Leatherworker or Weaver without the other due to the amount of leather used in WVR recipes and cloth or thread used in LTW recipes. Armorer and Blacksmith produce many of the same intermediate materials, so if you have one of them, you'll only rarely need materials from the other.

If you want to try out crafting, but don't want to level multiple crafting classes, Culinarian might be a good bet. Either that or Alchemist. Both will need a lot of gathered materials, but not much in the way of materials crafted by other DoH classes.

If you want to try several DoH classes and make most of your gear, but find leveling 8 of them at a time too much, a combo of Weaver, Leatherworker, and Armourer can give you a broad enough range to make most of the materials you'll need. (Most =/= all. There will occasionally be recipes requiring an item or two from Goldsmith or something, but not as often.) It's also a good combo if you're interested in glamour, as it covers all your left-side equipment except for weapons. You'd be able to make, repair, glamour, and meld your most visible gear. You'd still be missing some of the good cross-class skills, though, which would make creating HQ items more difficult.

Your best bet is still to go for all 8, as well as all 3 gatherers. That gives you all the cross-class skills you'll want and access to all the materials you'll need. The only downside is that that's a lot of classes to level.

You can start crafting whenever you feel like it.
I didn't craft a single thing back in ARR until most of my crafts were 50 from turning in items to my grand company every day. lol

And likewise for gathering, I didn't fish a damn thing until I leveled my fishing to 60 via means other than fishing. (leves and GC turn-ins)

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Originally Posted by Atoli

People talk about crafting gear for the class you are leveling, but tbh the best gear comes from dungeons and later on raids and tome trade-ins, so unless you are hellbent on never entering any content more than once, crafting or buying any gear while leveling up is likely not needed.

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While it's true that better gear technically can come from dungeons, it comes only when you happen to get lucky on what drops. While leveling, you're very unlikely to get a full set of green dungeon gear to drop for you before out-leveling it.

Maybe you'll get one piece of a green dungeon set on-level if you're lucky (or in extremely rare cases, maybe two), but you'll still need another source for the rest of your gear. Crafting (if you can HQ the items) lets you have the good gear as soon as you reach its level. That will be the best gear available until a green item drops for you, which might not happen for a long time. In most cases, it won't happen until after you've leveled up through another tier or two at least of crafted gear.