Worth investing in alt? (For other specialisms)

So I'm at the point in the game where I've reached 3* requirements + 3 specialist classes (WVR/LTW/GSM) and I was wondering whether it's worth investing in an alt? Particularly to avoid buying materials (e.g. Luminous - and whatever else they decide for upcoming patch)

Those that have invested in an alt, has it been worth it thus far? and will it be worth it with upcoming patch and possibly next expansion?

Probably not worth it if you're leveling a whole new character through the story and gearing up their crafters from scratch (and worse, melding them *shudder*) JUST for that.

I have an alt character with crafting leveled and a couple specialists I didn't have, but it was really just a "I have this character anyway so I may as well", thing. Having to get alchemy, carpenter, and cul up for the cross class abilities and then melding stuff all over again was really annoying.

An ALT does give "additional daily limits" for things such as Beast Tribe items or Roulette bonuses. The benefit of an ALT is only realised with significant spare time.

It's time consuming to have an alt, but more inventory if you love crafting. You can work at over time.

My wife and I have enjoyed leveling our two (each) alts. If you don't enjoy it, you may be better off spending the time making gil, and then buying whatever you can't make yourself.

Imo it makes sense when you need more inventory space and retainers for selling things, but it will never pay off as a way to get 3 more specializations. Going for an alt for more specializations means you still need to bring most if not all of the crafters to 50, 3 to 60, then spend 25+ mil worth to fully gear and overmeld at least your three specializations, and you'd have to regear twice as many characters as new patches occur. The only way you could recoup the cost and make more profit this way is if you craft an insane amount.. I am guessing like 5+ hours a day every day.

A better way is to simply befriend other crafters who can make the things you lack. You spend less time making ingredients and finished products blocked by specialization requirements, and allocate that time to making the ingredients and finished products that you are able to make, and the end result would be very similar amount of labor to profit ratio.

I have some friends who make me luminous fiber, I get it at 10-30% lower than marketboard prices. On Cactuar server, many of the alchemists doing luminous fiber have to gather their own because they can often LOSE money by buying the raw ingredients instead of the finished HQ luminous fibers from the marketboard. Because of this, it often makes it pointless to have alchemist specialization without gatherers on my server. Just FYI so you check mb on your server to see if it is even worth going alchemist specialist without gatherers.

If you are doing it to save gil, ask yourself a question - if you spent the time to level and meld the alt crafting, wouldn't you make more gil with less effort?

I would suggest finding an eternal bond partner with different specialists, even if you have to power leve them, it's a better option than the alt in my opinion.

If you enjoy being self-sufficient and have time on your hands, I say go for it.

If you absolutely can't stand the idea of ever buying something off the Marketboards, then yeah, it's worthwhile.

Otherwise, no. If there's something you want that you can't make because it's a specialization you don't have, make some stuff that you DO specialize in, sell it, and use the money to buy the item you want.

What I've started doing is hoarding Soul of the Crafter tokens. If I want to make gear/items from a specific specialist, I simply use one to switch and eventually switch back if I ever have the need.

If your primary concern is being able to effectively turn a profit and make gil by crafting, then it likely isn't worth it for you, unless you're such a prolific crafter that you are singlehandedly meeting your entire server's demand for crafted goods under your chosen three specializations.
However if you're more about self-sufficiency than profitability, and you'd rather put yourself in a situation where you can easily get every craftable item that you'd want even without having a massive stockpile of gil, it can be very worth the time and effort you'll put into it.

If you want to make more gil: Just craft more.
If you want to never even need gil: Make some alts, and cover every specialization yourself.

I say this all the time:

Nobody looks twice at the guy who levels every single battle class in the game to 60, but the moment someone suggests leveling 1 alt to omnicraft everyone thinks he's crazy.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by PROBOUND

I say this all the time:

Nobody looks twice at the guy who levels every single battle class in the game to 60, but the moment someone suggests leveling 1 alt to omnicraft everyone thinks he's crazy.

---

Leveling alt characters is an entirely different thing than leveling other classes, regardless of Department. Also,

1) No one thinks leveling every DoH and DoL class to 60 is crazy.
2) I don't know many people who leveled a battle-class alt to 60, on the same server anyway.
3) Your first L60 class provides numerous advantages for leveling your other battle classes, but it can be a pain for one of your characters help another - you can't even mail things between them.

That said, I have three characters, two of which are L60 omnicrafters and have L60 battle classes, and the other of which is only up to Level 54 or so in DoM/DoH. My wife has done the same, although her "alt-alt" is further along. But no ones called us crazy. Because of that, anyway.

P.S. my alts are C'mel Silverbane and Sharlotte Silverbane

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Silverbane

snip

---

You probably missed the 100+ threads of people complaining about needing alts/specializations to omincraft in the past year then?

At the end of the day, my point is that if OP is trying to take crafting seriously and be 100% self sufficient, leveling an alt should be his priority. I apologize if my analogy derailed you from that.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by PROBOUND

You probably missed the 100+ threads of people complaining about needing alts/specializations to omincraft in the past year then?

At the end of the day, my point is that if OP is trying to take crafting seriously and be 100% self sufficient, leveling an alt should be his priority. I apologize if my analogy derailed you from that.

---

The complaints stemmed from crafting having a restriction when there is barely any restriction on doing all battle classes on the same character. At most, your alts will be slightly less geared due to weekly currency lockout, which really isn't a big deal overall.

But I do see your point. I would still say just purchasing other spec items or having someone craft for you is much more profitable than leveling and re-gearing/re-melding a second character.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by PROBOUND

You probably missed the 100+ threads of people complaining about needing alts/specializations to omincraft in the past year then?

---

No, I probably didn't. You must have missed the de-specialling of most recipes that SE provides after one or two patch cycles.

I don't have an alt-alt because of specialization - my wife and my mains and alts cover that with room to spare. I have an alt-alt to overcome certain present and probable-future per-character limitations.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Silverbane

No, I probably didn't. You must have missed the de-specialling of most recipes that SE provides after one or two patch cycles.

I don't have an alt-alt because of specialization - my wife and my mains and alts cover that with room to spare. I have an alt-alt to overcome certain present and probable-future per-character limitations.

---

What kind of current per-character limitations exist that don't correspond to weekly lockouts / crafter specializations?

I have 1 alt to cover the 2 specs that my friend and I don't have on our mains. The amount of money I have saved from making my own Luminous Fibers -- no regrets. It only cost me time to get my alt up to speed (I have airships, moogles, and SBing to get materia), which I have enough of to justify her.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sayboar

What kind of current per-character limitations exist that don't correspond to weekly lockouts / crafter specializations?

---

- Beast tribes (9 Grade IV crafting materia, or 36 Grade IV combat materia, is better than the 3/12 you can manage on a single character)

- Leve allowances (not tremendously useful currently, but would have been helpful in the days of Lucis tools)

- Extra maps, if you can be bothered to level DoL classes more than once

- If you're really dedicated and have DoL leveled on multiple characters, you can hit timed gathering nodes twice each cycle, or have max GP to hit two nodes that pop at the same time

- One-off rewards, like the Grade V DoH/DoL materia you get from the Moogle quests

- If you're farming uncapped tomestones to buy items that are transferable between characters (like Eikon materials), you get a full set of roulette bonuses every day for each character you have

- Doubles or triples the amount of inventory space you have (for tradable items) as long as you have a way to pass items back and forth


I doubt that anyone ever makes full use of everything that alt(s) enable you to do, but there are a lot of possibilities that open up once you have an extra character or two.

If your goal is just more specialists I would first consider the fact that the restrictions on specialists may change significantly in 4.0 with the increase of the level cap and/or addition of new scrips.

Also ask yourself, are you using crafting red scrips for anything atm ? If the answer is no, then you can use red scrips to start stock piling souls of the crafter. Eventually you'll have enough of these saved where you can change specialists whenever you need to. Also consider the pattern that SE has been following where every new specialist recipe that is added becomes non specialist in the next subsequent patch. In other words, you don't need specialists if you just wait.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Crater

stuffs

---

Ooh, thank you for taking the time to outline it for me ^_^

I have two alts because I just love crafting things myself.

So for those who are interested in leveling crafting alts here is my suggestion:

1. Do a couple main story quests a day
2. Do your grand company turn ins (Even turn in NQ, I would buy anything off the mb under 10k)
a. You can do leves to expedite the leveling.
3. Ixal dailies till 50
4. Moogle dailies till 60
5. Any raw mats you need quick synthed do it on the alt with an engineering manual and food buff going.
6. Challenge logs! Really easy and good bonuses!

That will get you there without much fuss.

As for the melding, you get most of the V's you need from the moogles. For the IV's you have ixal, red scrip, airships and spirit bonding.

Also if you level your gatherers too, you can level their retainers as BTN/MINER/DoW. Then for each alt you have free ventures! Gear them up and get mats incoming constantly and you can focus on crafting. The extra retainers is the real advantage of crafting alts. xD So while you are leveling them with GC turn ins spend your seals on ventures (coins) and things like borax etc. Anyways hope that helps! :D