Viability of single job crafting

I’ve always been put off by the fact that you have to level all crafting classes, the inventory space alone would be a nightmare, but I’d still like to dip my toe into crafting in some kind of meaningful way.
I’ve heard that Culinarian is somewhat self-sufficient, that while the higher level cross-class skills can make it easier and give you higher HQ chances and such, that they’re not essential. In addition, CUL uses mostly base materials, and I’ve got all three gatherers going so I’m good on that front.
(Also, that new Tonberry knife from Valentione’s day looks pretty cool too)

So what do you guys think? Is Culinarian on its own ‘worth it’? In the sense that I won’t just be throwing my time down the drain?
Can I get to ‘end-game’ meals easily enough and make a bit on money, even if I just end up using most of the food myself?

Obviously the main draw back is that I wont be able to craft my own crafting gear, so it'll cost me gil to gear it up, but if I can mostly offset that with selling food anyway I'd be happy to pay for the gear.

You can get all the gear you’d need with Scrips pretty easily with collectible turn-ins and Custom Deliveries.
CUL is also much more dependant on gathering rather than materials made by other crafters, so that’s no big deal.

HQing items on the other hand may be slightly more difficult without a few level 50 cross-class skills like comfort zone, but it is not impossible.

You can 100% focus on CUL and make end-game food if you do desire, through the use of scrip gear.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

the inventory space alone would be a nightmare

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One point to consider. At almost every level range your crafters can all be using the same equipment for all slots except main hand and off hand. So its potentially 1 extra set of gear with the proper tools for each class.

Your main barrier will be HQ'ing items, especially 4 star which tend to use a lot of low level mats and are hard to get a good starting quality on. Making HQ endgame food will be much harder on a pure-Cul with scrip gear than a omni-crafter with penta-melded Onishi. Perhaps impossible.

You will need a few skills, you pretty much can't craft endgame without at least Ingenuity I for example.

Also, I've personally never found food a very profitable market compared to things like gear, resui's, ingots and such. People seem to sell food at such tiny profit margins. I'm sure you can make gil with it, but i've always seen Cul as my least useful crafter.

Things to note about going Monocrafting as opposed to Omnicrafting:

• You lose out on cross-class skills, which come in useful for end-game crafts (Which is where the real gil is made)
• Leveling up a class is more annoying, because a lot of low-mid level crafts require items made by other tradeskills.
• You won't be able to make a full set of BiS crafting gear yourself, nor will you be able to meld it yourself (As to meld it requires a high enough level on the relevant tradeskill for that type of item, I.e. Goldsmith for jewellery or Leatherworker for a pair of Leather boots)
• You limit your capacity to earn gil, not only by making it necessary to spend it in order to do things like obtain materials from other tradeskills, but also in acquiring gear (Unless you simply settle for Yellow Scrip gear, which is notably worse than Penta-Melded crafted gear)

Meanwhile, the drawbacks from Omnicrafting aren't particularly severe. Like, the space issue, is not too big a deal, since you pretty much just use the same equipment across all tradeskills aside from your Primary and Secondary (Admittedly this is where the most annoying space shortage comes from, if you're Omni-Battle Class too your Armoury Chest will be chock-a-block with Primaries...) - So long as you keep them all fairly close in level, you'll only really need 1 set of gear at a time.

You don't even have to put in too much extra effort either, because a lot of classes use similar materials (Such as Blacksmith and Armourer both using the same metals) as well as of course, many cross-class item requirements (Weaver wants a bunch of Leather made by Leatherworkers. Leatherworkers want Cloth from Weavers. Carpenters want Oils and Glues from Alchemists and sometimes Gems from Goldsmiths or metals from Blacksmith/Armourer etc)

That said, it is possible to Monocraft.

I mean, Yellow Scrip gear is pretty easy to attain and you can supplement your leveling with Beast Tribe quests. So you can end up making some high level foods to eat and try and sell some too. If you wish to try and go level 1 class first to see if you like crafting that's plenty viable.

It's just, if you really wanna make the fat stacks and/or craft the highest tier stuff, Omnicrafting is very important, even if you only focus primarily on a single tradeskill, it's still nice to have access to self-crafting any material you need as well as getting your gear and melds done.

If it wasnt clear from my post, I'm not looking to become a career-crafter.

CUL doesnt use any materials from other crafters.

And by inventory space, I dont mean gear which would be in the armory chest, I mean the actual inventory thats already 90% full of potions, food, bait, materials and currency tokens.

You mention Ingenuity I.
What class is that and from what level?
Any other level 15 skills that are worthwhile at endgame?
I could probably stretch to leveling some others to 15 or so for their first cross role skills, but I'm not sure I'd go much further than that.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

You mention Ingenuity I.
What class is that and from what level?
Any other level 15 skills that are worthwhile at endgame?
I could probably stretch to leveling some others to 15 or so for their first cross role skills, but I'm not sure I'd go much further than that.

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Ingenuity I is from Blacksmith (BSM) level 15.

CUL is certainly a class that can stand alone just fine. However...

(1) You should at least get "All-15" status, as it takes minimal effort of about 1 day to do them all. But the benefit is gigantic... Skills like Waste Not (LTW 15) and Trick of the Trade (ALC 15) are wonderful to have, and will contribute significantly in assisting your CUL leveling from lvl 1 to 65 (At lvl 65, you will have Manip2, which can replace Waste Not). And as Liam mentioned above, Ingenuity (BSM 15) will also be extremely powerful when you try to take on difficult crafts. Other lv 15 skills like Manipulation, Rumination, Rapid Syn etc are all useful too. To achieve all-15, you just need to buy very cheap materials from Guild Suppliers and/or City Traders and/or FC house material supplier NPCs, and then easily go through some crafting log.

(2) Keep in mind that CUL is probably the one class that uses the largest variety of mats. So it will still fill up a lot of inventory space. But I do agree with you that this is a lot better than taking up all 8 classes if you're concerned about inventory.

Thanks Caimie, I guess I'll get them all to 15 then at some point.
Although I contest that it's easy to get there. I managed to get CUL to level 25 in two days, so I don't think getting 7 other classes half that far can be done in less time... but it'll be a decent investment over a week or so, maybe two weeks between other stuff.

you most certainly could get all the crafters to 15 in one day if you desired, the xp boosts we have available now make it very easy.

as camie said just go to the guild vender or better still the fc goods vender and they can supply you with all the mats you need to get to level 20+ recipes done which is more than enough xp to hit level 15. the only thing you would need to have is the shards on hand. also a lot of those early crafts sell quickly for small ammounts so its basically only the time it takes that it will cost you.

another option i would suggest even if you dont intend to be an omnicrafter just do your daily fc turn ins even if its nq vender bought.. after about 6 months or so youll be past level 50 on all crafters with about a 10-15min daily task.

Standing at the counter in the crafting guild(next to the supplier merchant), buying the mats as you need them, making one each of all the low level recipes(for the first time crafting bonus), and stopping for class quests you can knock out the first 15 levels in under an hour per class. Equip any bonus exp equipment you have(friendship circlet, ala mhigan ear, new ring, etc), use any food/FC/manual buffs you have... it really isnt hard to start. Things slow down once you get into the mid levels, but the low ones fly by.

This is just my opinion, but I could not stand leveling culinarian. I really love Weaver as my main crafter, have a few others to 70 and others for the cross-class skills.
I could not wait to be done with culinarian.. The amazing material bloat, eating everything you make (as in throwing it away) on the way up... I just hated everything about it.

I would think (again this is just my opinion) that if someone took CUL as their first foray into crafting, they would get disillusioned with crafting in general.

To get any craft to 15 just do every recipe once. The guild shop sells everything you need, except the cooking guild doesn't stock fish, you buy fish at the hyaline just off the aftcastle. The guild quests provide more than enough shards. Check with the local levemete before you dispose of the stuff you crafted, some of it will be levequest fodder.

Maybe 1/2 hour / class including checking in with the levemete.

As others have said, there are benefits to leveling multiple crafts vs just the one. Also, you can levels all of them an not be a "career crafter"

Having access to be able to craft your own things, is a convenience, being able to meld your own gear, having a use for some of those random materials you get/gathering materials you collect.

Honestly, i leveled everything, and yes, its a bit of a time investment, but eventually most people lean that way, as this game can be monotonous at times, so some variety is nice.

Between Leves, GC turn ins, Custom deliveries, Moogle, Ixali and Catfish beats tribes and just general crafting, they will level faster than you realize.

Cooking uses the largest variety of ingredients, many of which you need to gather by killing or fishing.

Personally i also don't see the benefit if really only leveling one craft. Its not a game where you have limited options, so may as well dabble in all a little bit.

As its been said, space isn't a problem if you keep all similar levels, which isn't hard to do, the Only real item slot that becomes a concern is main hand weapons. And even that isn't a problem unless you have a ton of extra weapons laying around.

You mentioned having inventory packed, what are you holding on to?
I have all jobs ranging from 50-70, i have very full/near capped Armory chest, and 4 retainers, but my inventory sits at about 1/2.

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Crafting can be seen as much more difficult before all Disciples of Hand (DoH) classes are level 50 and can utilize every cross-class skill available between all classes. Disciples of War and Magic previously had a similar cross-class skill system, but level requirements were alleviated in Stormblood with the introduction of role actions. Are there plans to simplify the DoH classes in a similar way?

We are aware of the hurdles to newer players when it comes to crafting, and specifically the problem surrounding the dependency on multiple actions across the various crafting classes. As we head towards the release of Shadowbringers, we do plan to reevaluate both how these crafter actions are acquired alongside overall class balance. We hope future adjustments will be able to help alleviate some of the issues we currently see.

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I don't think leveling a single crafter is very viable, especially if it's something like CUL where your main source of revenue would be HQing endgame food. You're simply going to be missing too many critical abilities to do much of anything. If you're really determined to level one and only one crafter, I would focus on something that can make basic materials, which will allow you to profit by buying raw DoL mats off the MB, crafting them into ingots or lumber or whatever, and reposting them for a profit. Additionally, a lot of DoH classes have glamour, pets, or other things for which HQ really doesn't matter and still have a decent sale rate and profit margin, but can be easily crafted nonetheless.

If your only obstacle to leveling all of them is materials, realize that you can level them through beast tribes, which will not require any materials of your own. You'd just need gear, but if you level them all evenly, they can share a set of gear every step of the way. Especially after you get them to 50 and can begin doing the moogle quests, the beast tribe quests are very standardized and easy even for people without tons of abilities. You can just slowly work on your DoH by doing a few dailies every day.

I'd be glad they made DoH role actions too, personally. I know I'm in the minority here but I never liked the concept of omnicraft. Sure, you're entirely self reliant, but some of us simply don't touch classes/jobs we're not interested in, and Im certainly not interested in Leatherworker, Goldsmith, Alchemy, or Culinarian and would rather avoid having those 3 altogether.

CUL is arguably the most independent of the eight crafters since outside of tools and gear, 80-90% of your mats are gathered. This class also has the most amount of cross skills that the other ones frequently use, which means you can take along more skills since it has so many important ones innately. However, it also provides the least amount of benefit when it comes to self-sufficiency. Making your own food is awesome, but you typically take along one preferred food for each role you play in the game. Profitable endgame food will be extremely difficult, if not impossible to make without the cross skills from the other DoH classes such as ingenuity and Manipulation.

To be honest, getting all 8 crafters leveled is probably one of the easiest things to do. Assuming you don't burn up leve allowances on other things you should be maxed out; those in combination with GC turn-ins (especially on starred items), custom deliveries, beast tribes, weekly bonuses, and finally Rowena's Splendors will have you cruising through the leveling process. There is also the benefit of being able to repair your own tools and gear. For CUL you need ARM, BSM, WVR and LTW leveled for the left side alone. GSM and CRP will be needed for accessories so you're already looking at 7 of 8 classes. Might as well toss ALC in there as well. When it comes to gil, you can make a killing off of making leveling sets of all types, and probably more than you would make crafting endgame food recipes.

So to sum up, while the road to endgame crafting is a steep hill to climb, the actual leveling process of it gives the least amount of resistance. Having all eight leveled will grant the most amount of benefits in the long run.

Instead of leveling culinarian alone, I would suggest at least combining it with alchemist (also gathering-reliant) and botanist, which will get you the majority of ingredients you need.

I tried solo-leveling alchemist on my alt, but was quickly frustrated by how often I'd need a single item and could only buy large stacks of it on the marketboard.