Unbalanced Experience

This isn't so much a complaining threat as it is a genuine question.

I'm currently trying to level all my crafters to 60, because I wanted a change of pace. I already had WVR and LTH at 50 so why not? But the more research and reading I do the less and less excited I am to do it.

It seems almost impossible to catch up. And I realize that this seems to only be true for crafting bc battle classes have a thousand and one systems to help you catch up. I got my AST to 212 (which is pretty much enough to do any content in the game right now mins savage) and I got my MCH to 210 as well (all the way from 170 lol). It was great to catch up and be able to play the new content.

But when it comes to crafting it seems like there's no system in place to help you catch up. If you havent been crafting since the game out good luck catching up. I'll keep trying but the question is, why? How come there's not as much (if any) help with catching up to crafting?

EDIT: Just fyi I'm talking not so much about leveling, I think leveling DoH and DoL is easier. I'm talking about gearing up and catching up to the the relevant crafting scene

I personally found that leveling DoH, not to mention DoL, was much faster and easier that the battle classes. Granted, if you want to get the very best gear and craft the very top recipies, that's quite a lot of work but everything else, including getting the master books, is really fast now.

Every patch they usually make old crafting content a lot easier to do. Red and Blue Scrips are faster to cap, Favors take 1/3rd the time. Lucis main hand difficulty was nerfed, old crafting materials that used to cost 200k are now 200gil, old recipes no longer require specialists. They keep making it easier to catch up.

Sadly there's still a weekly cap on Red Scrip so that'll probably be the 2 star Masterbook wall most people reach at the moment.

I believe thread starter is talking about gear-wise rather than leveling-wise due to mentioning item levels of battle classes.

And yes, as someone that began playing shortly after HW was released, the gear hurdle to craft items from pre-HW to post-HW was pretty insane. I couldn't even think about being able to HQ Heavensward recipes myself until I hit 55, which is when you can purchase new HW crafting gear for relatively cheap that should last you until you cap. Gathering classes had the same issue for me.

I would argue there's another hurdle to craft 1/2/3-star items once you cap, although that has much more to do with the scarcity of the crafting materials (such as demimateria III requiring a higher level of desynthesis in specific classes, etc.) and melding being a requirement rather than anything else.

I found leveling the classes themselves rather easy due to grand company turn-ins, although that method takes time. It becomes even easier when you can consistently HQ items with minimal effort once you get all crafters to the point where you get all the good cross class skills, such as Byregot's Brow from CRP especially.

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Originally Posted by SaitoHikari

I believe thread starter is talking about gear-wise rather than leveling-wise due to mentioning item levels of battle classes.

I would argue there's another hurdle to craft 1/2/3-star items once you cap, although that has much more to do with the scarcity of the crafting materials (such as demimateria III requiring a higher level of desynthesis in specific classes, etc.) and melding being a requirement rather than anything else.

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Yeah. Sorry if I wasn't clear. The leveling I find pretty easy. I've been power leveling and what not. I have everyone at 30 rn. I mean more of the gear.
But maybe it's like Andrea said. Its about concentrating on leveling up and then catching up. It's just all this talk of gear and stars has me confused and scared by how could I possibly catch up

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Originally Posted by Cynthis

I personally found that leveling DoH, not to mention DoL, was much faster and easier that the battle classes. Granted, if you want to get the very best gear and craft the very top recipies, that's quite a lot of work but everything else, including getting the master books, is really fast now.

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Easier because the HQ bonus through allowances. Take away them and all you have is a few dailies, given crafting doesn't even give you a bonus for crafting everything in each level catalog.

And leveling up now is easy, with the Brand New Ring you get through the mentor training you get 30% exp under 30, add a mog hat or helmet of light you get 20% under 10, throw some food bonus and FC bonus you get an additional 10 I think? So starting out you can up to 60% until level 10. Crafting gets now where this much starting out and only picks up until you get allowances.

If you have gil, gearing is easy. You can completely skip red scrip*gear altogether. Meld the 150 set and you'll have the stats to craft yourself 170 sets that have better stats than any of the red scrip great once melded.

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Originally Posted by SnugglesD

If you have gil, gearing is easy. You can completely skip red scrip*gear altogether. Meld the 150 set and you'll have the stats to craft yourself 170 sets that have better stats than any of the red scrip great once melded.

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i170 sets are made using items obtained from Red Crafting Scrips and Red Gathering Scrips. Technically its still Red Scrip gear as the mats to make them are on a weekly lockout. Not to mention these 60+ pieces of gear would cost like 200mil+ (depending on server) if you don't farm these mats yourself.

Can someone enlighten me how to craft those Astral Birch accessories (Or at least, the Astral Birch Lumber)? My carpenter only capped at 2 star requirement with CP around 415 (With baked onion soup). Also is there possible to make it HQ with only NQ material?

The issue with crafting is that everything costs money, but all of the crafters who reached the highest tiers first have all of the moneymaking synths on lockdown. It's very difficult to make enough profit to afford the millions of gil required for 1-star or higher level 60 skill. The moment you find a good money maker another, richer crafter will find and exploit it leaving you in the cold. Vanity is the true endgame, afterall.

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Originally Posted by Eul

Can someone enlighten me how to craft those Astral Birch accessories (Or at least, the Astral Birch Lumber)? My carpenter only capped at 2 star requirement with CP around 415 (With baked onion soup). Also is there possible to make it HQ with only NQ material?

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Meld the lv60 white gear and have it all hq with food will get you the stats. Once you get your i170+ tools getting it hq with all nq materials becomes easier, but it is possible with melded white tools, it's just very rng heavy

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Originally Posted by Galactimus

i170 sets are made using items obtained from Red Crafting Scrips and Red Gathering Scrips. Technically its still Red Scrip gear as the mats to make them are on a weekly lockout. Not to mention these 60+ pieces of gear would cost like 200mil+ (depending on server) if you don't farm these mats yourself.

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Brass spoils from diadem and dungeon drops.

You are correct that gearing your crafting jobs is difficult and time consuming.

Continue to level to 60. Most important, get your botany and miner to 60 as well and start mining and crafting red scrips.

Your weekly allowance of scrips should get you the mats you need to craft 4 pieces (as well as some extra "oids" that you can sell to start buying the materia you'll need).

Alternatively, focus only on gathering to 60. Take all your red scrips and mine the favours. Your 9 weekly favours should net about 180 "NQ" oids and 20 "HQ" oids. which you can sell. On my server, that will sell for at least 8M, which you can use to buy the gear and the materia. If you do that, focus on the Trader's favours because the Matron's (botany) are more difficult to collect (nodes are further apart and therefore you get fewer attempts).

You can do this while you get your crafting classes to 60 and then switch from selling to crafting.

Crafting yourself is faster and it's nice to wear gear with your name as crafter on the piece.

You may want to "bootstrap" the process by first buying a main hand / off hand for blacksmith. You then use your pimped BSM to craft tools for most of the other jobs (like Carpenter that can then craft other off hands).

Either way, it is a long slog.

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Originally Posted by Waeksyn

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Ahhhh. Thanks for this! While it is daunting I feel like some guide is what the game really needs when it comes to crafting and gathering progression.
Thanks so much for this little quick and dirty guide lol I got miner to 60 already so I'll work on BOT as I level the crafters to 60.

Getting a crafter leveled and geared from scratch is actually less time consuming than leveling up your beasttribe rep. No amount of grinding would get your beasttribe capped in a week. However, with just the 9 red scripts each from gatherers and crafters able to be gained in a single week, you can make a full set of gear for a single crafter job (close to, if not more than enough).

I was someone that didn't even do the gatherer scripts in the beginning because I don't like to gather... I was of a mind that: "No way! You can't make me gather!" But, I gave up on just trying to purchase the script materials straight out (its expensive...very expensive) and just broke down and farmed my gatherer red scripts each week. It's actually very easy and not really that time consuming, unless you decide to just sit around and wait for nodes.

The materia is the only expensive thing. But even that, did you know you can just farm diadem for that stuff now? Or you can spiritbond crafting gear for them (which is what i do). I rarely just straight out buy crafting materia. And yet, I sell 3 stars on my server, but like, even that isn't the end of it. People seem to think that being a 3 star crafter is the end of your financial problems... It's really just the beginning, they suffer from the same aggressive undercutting and such that selling anything does. If you think getting into a market with a smaller group of people means less undercutting, then someone was lying to you, it is MORE undercutting.... I rarely undercut mine. I'm just not that patient. Some people stand by their retainers all day and just undercut undercut undercut the day away, every few minutes.... I can't do that.

So yea, if you want to be a "end game crafter", money isn't the real barrier. Very few people just buy the mats to make the gear. Its the red script farming that is the boss you have to beat to win. The gear is basically free if you do that. Then you just gradually farm materia and fix it up.

There's no catch up system because the devs don't want to readily enable players to gear up all 8 crafter in the first place. Level them all and consider gearing the classes you pick for specialist first. Don't worry about trying to gear them all, you'll go insane.

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Originally Posted by aesteval

There's no catch up system because the devs don't want to readily enable players to gear up all 8 crafter in the first place. Level them all and consider gearing the classes you pick for specialist first. Don't worry about trying to gear them all, you'll go insane.

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If you have the gil, you can skip red script gear and buy the best gear from the MB.

Crafting is only easy if you're rich. Grinding scrips for the recipe books will take time, and a significant investment of materials for the collectibles and that's just the blue ones. The red scrips often require said recipe books, and many also require ingredients which can only be gained through scrips.

So, yes there's a bit of a wall. Level your gatherers, it'll save you some gil if not time.