Crafting in this game is infuriating

Zero explanation given for specialist actions, overpriced materials, obfuscated paths for equipment upgrades, even the currency used is named after an obvious and blatant abuse of worker's rights (scrip), I should have known this was for suckers and not bothered.

Where is the fun in gambling that the money or time you invest in a craft will actually finish? Where is the fun in throwing materials at a badly explained system? Where is the fun?

Luckily SHB is making the UI much more user friendly.

And no one ever said that getting into the crafter game was exactly cheap. Spend money to make money after all. That or you can gather what you need yourself.

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Originally Posted by TurtlesAWD

obfuscated paths for equipment upgrades

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You craft the gear, you wear the gear. How is that obfuscated?


Also crafting is not cheap if you do not go out and get your own materials. Plus if you need assistance with crafting rotations, people are more than happy to help.


You ask where is the fun, I say ask the people in the game who literally main crafters, not battle jobs lol. They would not devote themselves to crafting all day if they did not think it was fun/enjoyable (the making money part helps a lot too).

Oh yeah, right, the gear I can craft. The gear that's definitely right there in my crafting list, items that definitely don't require buying any kind of unlock item to even see, an item that if it did exist would definitely tell me which items it is that I'm unlocking the creation of, and definitely wouldn't require using the worst currency to buy. Good thing an item like that doesn't exist or anything and I can just see the progression of gear, right there in the crafted item list.

And of course if an item like that DID exist, it's a good thing the game would tell me about it and not expect me to google things and use exterior resources I couldn't possibly know about in the first place without being a mind reader. Or putting up with people like you condescending at me for having the audacity to start a crafter at any time later than the game's release.

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Originally Posted by TurtlesAWD

Zero explanation given for specialist actions

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From what I understand, most end-game crafting right now doesn’t touch the specialist actions, so I don’t think it’s a huge loss if you don’t use them/don’t know how to properly use them. Most crafting skills necessary to craft are cross-class skills from the other crafters—but, from what I heard, this will be streamlined into “role skills” in a week.

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overpriced materials

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It may be prudent for you to level up your gatherers alongside your crafters if you find yourself hard pressed for gil to buy mats with. Some of the mob drop items you may need to farm, but you can level battle class retainers and send them out every hour for 10 each if they are sufficiently geared. I tend to do that when I’m not actively crafting just to stock up on the things used a lot.

On the subject of retainers, if you level up gatherer retainers, they can also bring you back mats that you have gathered previously. I like to use them for things like logs and ores.

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obfuscated paths for equipment upgrades

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I think the ARR gear could be streamlined a little bit—I think upgrades every 5 levels are enough. It’s been a while since I’ve leveled a crafter from scratch (without Levekits), though, so perhaps I’m misremembering how annoying it could be to keep them geared.

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even the currency used is named after an obvious and blatant abuse of worker's rights (scrip)

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I’ll be honest—I have no idea what you mean by this. When I looked up “scrip”, I mostly found references to company-issued certificates or currency used as substitute for legal tender to spend at company-owned stores. Which would fit into what Red and Yellow Scrips are (you earn them via turning in collectibles to Rowena’s House of Splendors, and then can spend the currency on items offered by the people you turn them in to).

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I should have known this was for suckers and not bothered.

Where is the fun in gambling that the money or time you invest in a craft will actually finish? Where is the fun in throwing materials at a badly explained system? Where is the fun?

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Crafting is something where you have to invest a lot of time and money in it for it to pay off. This includes the gearing and leveling process, the gathering of mats, and the watching of markets to know when and where you can attempt to make a sale and turn a profit. That aspect of it may not be for everyone, though—I don’t have time during the school semesters to stay up-to-date on my listings, but my crafters are extremely handy for making my own gear and/or repairing it (the repair function alone makes it worth to level them, imo). Also nice for making food and pots during raid tiers so I’m not spending money on the MB for them.

Well gear doesnt really have to be streamlined since you can usually just skip tiers when leveling, this certainly works below 50 but also above.
As to expensive material cost, well if you want to make any profit you really do need to gather your own materials, there is no escaping that

-scrip being a symbol of oppression
well Hyomin here the OP is right, being forced to buy at the company shop where you work because you are paid in scrips often at inflated prices sort of binds you to that company because if you wanted to leave you will most likely have no savings at all.
This often was combined to workers living in a company provided house so leaving the company also meant no home

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Originally Posted by Caitlinzulu

Well gear doesnt really have to be streamlined since you can usually just skip tiers when leveling, this certainly works below 50 but also above.

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I was more so just referring to how much gear there is from ARR in terms of crafting/gathering (and all jobs really). It might be what’s confusing for the OP, so some of the more “unnecessary gear” could stand to be addressed. But I doubt this is a priority.

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-scrip being a symbol of oppression
well Hyomin here the OP is right, being forced to buy at the company shop where you work because you are paid in scrips often at inflated prices sort of binds you to that company because if you wanted to leave you will most likely have no savings at all.
This often was combined to workers living in a company provided house so leaving the company also meant no home

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I mean, I guess. But I hardly think that’s what the developers were intending when they named them Crafter’s and Gatherer’s scrips...so it seems a bit of a reach to really bring that up in a complaint about the crafting system.

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Originally Posted by TurtlesAWD

Zero explanation given for specialist actions, overpriced materials, obfuscated paths for equipment upgrades, even the currency used is named after an obvious and blatant abuse of worker's rights (scrip), I should have known this was for suckers and not bothered.

Where is the fun in gambling that the money or time you invest in a craft will actually finish? Where is the fun in throwing materials at a badly explained system? Where is the fun?

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Zero explanation given for specialist actions - Doesn't the game explain in the tooltips? Also you can get some cheap ore from an npc and test them out. As others have said, pretty much no endgame rotation uses them, only cross class skills. The only benefit right now to specialism is being able to craft a small handful of items earlier than non-specialists because the recipe is simply locked behind the requirement.

overpriced materials - Materials are free if you choose to farm or gather them. Also let's face it, what do we need gil for in this game?

obfuscated paths for equipment upgrades - Yes, they could streamline the levels that gear is needed at for levels <50, but to do that, they would need to also streamline the recipes. I kind of like the steady progression of improvement rather than the single bursts every 5 levels. Also if you don't glamour, you get to see some weird combinations!

even the currency used is named after an obvious and blatant abuse of worker's rights (scrip) - Never came to my mind and I can see why some might be a bit uneasy, but be happy in the knowledge you actually have zero requirement to use scrips to get to endgame. You can do it all by being self sufficient.

Where is the fun? - For me, crafting is fun. It's a time consuming minigame in the game where I am still actively playing the game as opposed to other games that merely say, get the materials, get instant craft.

It all boils down to the fact that not everything has to be fun for everyone. I don't find the stress of savage raids fun, but I'm not going to dump all over it because I don't like it.

The worst speed bump for the crafting/gathering I hit in the game was that initial 50-52 point for the gatherers. I didn't really have to spend any actual gil on crafting gear since you can get good stuff with Grand Company seals (I wore that stuff for so long), Beast Tribe currency, scrips, and through the job quests. Certain things I think could be initially explained better, but taking some time to sit down and read through all the tool tips should solve that and I don't think I've ever used specialist actions on my level 70s (although to be fair, I've been leveling crafters more so I can make housing stuff and non HQ glamour).

It definitely isn't for everyone, especially if you want to gather everything yourself as well, but generally there's always a way to keep costs down if you know all the resources open to you.

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Originally Posted by JowyAtreides

It all boils down to the fact that not everything has to be fun for everyone. I don't find the stress of savage raids fun, but I'm not going to dump all over it because I don't like it.

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Do savage raids try to trick you into wasting your resources you could be using on better content?

Do other players try to trick you with this "spend money to make money" pyramid-scheme nonsense to deceive you into buying their overpriced garbage on the market boards?

I'll be honest, the reason I got into crafting was self sufficiency under the premise that if I can make my own stuff I never have to interact with e-capitalism, which is easily the most obnoxious part of almost every MMO.

Probably better to just not buy, make, or use items at all.

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Originally Posted by TurtlesAWD

Do savage raids try to trick you into wasting your resources you could be using on better content?

Do other players try to trick you with this "spend money to make money" puramid-scheme nonsense to deceive you into buying their overpriced garbage on the market boards?

I'll be honest, the reason I got into crafting was self sufficiency under the premise that if I can make my own stuff I never have to interact with e-capitalism, which is easily the most obnoxious part of almost every MMO.

Probably better to just not buy, make, or use items at all.

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How are you being tricked? I don’t understand how a lack of understanding with regards to how crafting works equates to you being schemed. It’s just ignorance, which is not inherently bad. Plenty of people don’t understand the innermost workings of every system in this game—I had to have a lot of the crafting stuff explained to me by crafter friends when I started. But I never thought I was being “tricked”.

The ‘spend money to make money’ is true for any sort of business endeavor in the real world. In order to be profitable, you have to make investments first. That’s just the way it is. It’s similar in this game—you don’t become a billionaire or trillionaire overnight.

If that is what you think, then you can think it. However, as someone who leveled all crafters and gatherers manually and only used levekits made by friends for one or two of them from 1 to 50, I found myself to be fairly self-sufficient and didn’t have to purchase much in terms of materials from the Market Board. Even to this day when I craft, I’m pretty self sufficient. It may take more time, but I’m not spending too much money so it evens out for me. I’m fairly frugal when it comes to spending habits. But I don’t craft for profit—I craft purely for the repair option, the overmelding, and to make things for my friends and my alts.

Worth is subjective to the individual. If you don’t find crafting worth it, then by all means: don’t do it. But plenty of others have found ways to make it profitable, so what they are saying has fairly decent merit whether you want to acknowledge it or not.

The trick is when it encourages you to invest time and money into it when it knows full well it's going to roadblock you with zero guidance tens of levels later, failing to explain any of what you actually need to know within either the in-game tutorials or the quests provided - those quests being a part of the pyramid-scheme structure where each deceived crafter, after wasting their time and money, needs to justify it to themselves and thus resells items for those quests to other wannabe crafters - just as victims of a pyramid scheme must perpetuate it by finding new victims to recoup their own losses.

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Originally Posted by TurtlesAWD

The trick is when it encourages you to invest time and money into it when it knows full well it's going to roadblock you with zero guidance tens of levels later, failing to explain any of what you actually need to know within either the in-game tutorials or the quests provided - those quests being a part of the pyramid-scheme structure where each deceived crafter, after wasting their time and money, needs to justify it to themselves and thus resells items for those quests to other wannabe crafters - just as victims of a pyramid scheme must perpetuate it by finding new victims to recoup their own losses.

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Sorry, I disagree. I fail to see how any of this defines crafting as a pyramid scheme. As I said prior, in any business endeavor made in real life, one has to invest first and hope to turn profits later. That’s just simple business 101. If you are wanting to craft for profit (i.e., make a business out of it), you’re going to have to invest time and gil into it first to get it off the ground. Even so, you can still be self-sufficient if you take the time to level gatherers, and utilize your retainers when it comes to fetching you materials (seriously, the battle class retainers are really useful for this). It seems more like you don’t really want to do that, and would rather everything be instant gratification. That’s not how this works, unfortunately, so perhaps crafting isn’t for you. And that’s fine.


This game doesn’t do any sort of explaining for any of the jobs outside of reading your tooltips and attempting to piece together the information manually—which is a flaw, I will grant you that; but you can simply just ask you friends that may craft, or go online and research/ask questions. There are plenty of omnicrafters on this forum and the FFXIV subreddit who would give you the answers you seek if you just ask for them.

This thread is confusing the hell of me, you're a fully leveled omnicrafter and gatherer. The hard part is behind you. I don't get why you waited until you got this far to complain about crafting being some kind of scam. I literally don't get what you're referring to exactly, but I'd assume you're not happy about having to buy master crafting books with scrips, and then also that you have to buy the mats to craft your gear or something? Or is it that the game doesn't tell you crafting rotations for HQing top tiered gear or something? Because the game does nudge you in the correct way all the way through but it doesn't hold your hand, especially not for something as competitive as crafting can be.

It's very common for invested crafters to spends severals tens of millions on new gear and melding each time they're released, and hundreds of millions on materials to craft and sell crafted goods that eventually will have you needing to store gil on retainers because you realize there's a gil cap and it's not very high by the time you've actually gotten to that point.

There's no scam here though. Crafters even make money each other, I buy tons of alchemics and food for example because I don't feel like crafting them when my time is better spent on something more lucrative for me. But everyone finds that one thing, or whatever it is, on their own. The game doesn't tell you what to make to become rich nor should it. The game also doesn't tell you the best order to use crafting skills to keep your costs down by hitting higher overall quality from your rotations which translates to needing fewer HQ mats. Some actually love that part of crafting, having to figure out the one puzzle you get every few patches that just becomes the same old sebutton sequence with near 0 vartiety. And once you've learned that you're set for months and months. The game shouldn't provide you with that sort of information if that's what you meant with not understanding specialist skills? Tool tips already take care of that. and really, it only takes like a few hours before someone posts new crafting rotations on crafter update patches, the crafting community is sort of its own community after all and they share rotations and crap.

Did I miss anything? Becuase I feel like you're just extremely bitter over something you really didn't enjoy doing anyway. Did you expect it to become fun after a certain point or something? Because it's the same shit you've been doing just to level everything up lol. And yeah, crafting is a constant gilsink, but if you're investing your gil into the right things (which are 100% your responsilibity to discover) then what you get out of it can easily be order of magnitude greater than what you put in. But it comes with some stuff that sucks too, like having to deal with keeping your wares priced to sell beause every crafter knows that the undercut game is a crafter's endgame lol. If you have two stocked retainer, thats not too bad, but if you have several more it can be the most dreading thing of your day but still a necessary evil to reap the rewards of being a crafter.

In closing, I find it hard to just dismiss your complaints with what seems like a very logical answer by just suggesting that if you don't like craft then don't craft. But you already did all of the crafting to get all of the skills you need at your disposal. If you didn't llike it or didn't see any signs of how it mich benefit you in the process of getting everything to 70, I think you qould have said "F this shit" a long time ago. So I guess I don't really know what elsee I could say lol. You can look at it like the WoW south park episode and ask what you're supposed to do now that you're an omnicrafter and we could just tell you "What do you mean? Now you can finally play" lol. I mean you're already there so unless you really have a vendetta or something with crafting and the game's economy, you might as well find out how it could benefit you now that you have it. Or just write it off as a huge waste of time, but I can't seem to think of a scenario of it taking someone that long to get to that conclusioon. Either way, happy trails whichever trails you decide to follow :3

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Originally Posted by TurtlesAWD

Or putting up with people like you condescending at me for having the audacity to start a crafter at any time later than the game's release.

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Holy crap man. Calm down. It's just a game. If you don't like crafting you aren't obligated to do it if it makes you feel this negative. :/

also this game is an MMO. you are expected to turn to your community if you have questions also. chances are there is someone around who will help you. although with your attitude i would probably be more inclined to blacklist you instead of help you. =p

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Originally Posted by Arthem

This thread is confusing the hell of me, you're a fully leveled omnicrafter and gatherer. The hard part is behind you. I don't get why you waited until you got this far to complain about crafting being some kind of scam. I literally don't get what you're referring to exactly, but I'd assume you're not happy about having to buy master crafting books with scrips, and then also that you have to buy the mats to craft your gear or something? Or is it that the game doesn't tell you crafting rotations for HQing top tiered gear or something? Because the game does nudge you in the correct way all the way through but it doesn't hold your hand, especially not for something as competitive as crafting can be.

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This is exactly it. The OP have spent 2 pages on the forum complaining on things that are not well-defined. I don't even know what he/she was referring to, so I can't put up a response, LOL!

Plus, like you said, he/she has already reached endgame before this complaint. So if he/she has been doing something wrong, it's probably too late to remedy anyway. If it's not fun, then why level everything to 70 in the first place? LOL! I guess some people just like to torture themselves? ;););)

I was going to refer him/her to my crafting guide. But the more I read, the more I think it won't be of any help to him/her at all...

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Originally Posted by Caitlinzulu

Well gear doesnt really have to be streamlined since you can usually just skip tiers when leveling, this certainly works below 50 but also above.
As to expensive material cost, well if you want to make any profit you really do need to gather your own materials, there is no escaping that

-scrip being a symbol of oppression
well Hyomin here the OP is right, being forced to buy at the company shop where you work because you are paid in scrips often at inflated prices sort of binds you to that company because if you wanted to leave you will most likely have no savings at all.
This often was combined to workers living in a company provided house so leaving the company also meant no home

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You should probably step away from crafting for a bit if it is causing you to think this outrageously.

Crafting in FFXIV is not for the faint hearted. It's definitely not easy at times. I'm not trying to be mean but do you have any idea how many hours I spent googling, watching youtube videos, reading guides, scanning the forums just to figure out some things. Honestly I spent way too much time....and I still suck at crafting compared to a lot of people. But I finally made it to the end game. I don't have it full of materia yet but it's good enough to craft anything I need plus I stopped so I could save materia for the expansion. I'm still working on materia and figure I'll be doing that for all eternity lol.

I spent a LOT of time just to make it this far and I'm super lazy about it. So many people dedicated so much more time than I can imagine figuring all of thise out for "slow" crafters like me. It was hard, frustrating and I nearly quit a few times but i kept at it and learned more and more as I went and the sense of accomplishment once I finally made it to the end was enormous even if I did have to lean on a lot of other people to get there.

There's so many great guides out there, so many good videos...you just have to dedicate yourself a bit. It's not easy to get the latest HQ gear although if all you want is to craft normal quality gear then it's super easy to level up. You don't have to craft everything...just pick what's easiest to make and keep doing it to level. Do levequests, do those turn in's at your guild company, etc. And most importantly if you haven't read it yet then please read Caimie's guide to crafting: http://ffxivrealm.com/guides/ff14-ad...e-tsukino.194/

Even if a lot of things change the basics and fundamentals in that guide are still important. I can't even explain how much that guide helped me out.

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Originally Posted by Caimie_Tsukino

I was going to refer him/her to my crafting guide. But the more I read, the more I think it won't be of any help to him/her at all...

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Speaking of which, I expect you to have it fully updated by tomorrow morning!

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Originally Posted by TurtlesAWD

Zero explanation given for specialist actions, overpriced materials, obfuscated paths for equipment upgrades, even the currency used is named after an obvious and blatant abuse of worker's rights (scrip), I should have known this was for suckers and not bothered.

Where is the fun in gambling that the money or time you invest in a craft will actually finish? Where is the fun in throwing materials at a badly explained system? Where is the fun?

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The specialist actions have tooltips, you craft equipment upgrades, and scrips are just a currency for making collectibles. You don't have to spend any gil to get to 70. Level your gatherers and all of the crafters if you don't want to buy mats. The MB prices aren't even really expensive outside of master recipes.

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Originally Posted by Windsun33

Speaking of which, I expect you to have it fully updated by tomorrow morning!

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Bah... When I saw those changes, I was like "Damn, all those previously documented things have to change now... tough work."

Anyway, I'll be on a business trip to mainland China from 7/7/19 to 20/7/19. So I won't have access to the game anyway... which is really sad.
Seems like my time in China would be a nice time to just update the old guides. But I do wanna EXPERIENCE the changes first hand before making changes to the guides, so I know exactly what impact the changes will make. Well, I do have about 1 week to play before the trip. Sadly, I have some important events with my job during that week as well, which means I can only play at late night before bed. :(

I think by the time I get back, everybody will be all-80 DoH already... Luckily, I'm rather loaded, so it's ok to miss the express train of gil in the first few weeks.

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Originally Posted by TurtlesAWD

Zero explanation given for specialist actions, overpriced materials, obfuscated paths for equipment upgrades, even the currency used is named after an obvious and blatant abuse of worker's rights (scrip), I should have known this was for suckers and not bothered.

Where is the fun in gambling that the money or time you invest in a craft will actually finish? Where is the fun in throwing materials at a badly explained system? Where is the fun?

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The craft in this game is fun enough to spend days/weeks/months, some only do that with only 1 fight job lvlMax.

As with everything in this game, there is our gaming experience, and guides made by the community to craft more effectively and even without, there are tools to perform optimal cycle tests. And like everything in this game, low level, it's not very fun, but high level yes.

The materials are expensive if you buy them at the MB, but if you harvest them yourself it just costs your time.

You must surely make the mistake of beginners to lvl 1 craft job alone, except in FFXIV all trades are related, it is necessary to lvl all craft job together 5 by 5 levels (crafting & gathering). There are, of course, unspecified components, but Yoshi-P loves community support, and there are a lot of tools and database create by the community of player, very well done.

Ex: Garland DB tools, FFXIV Clock, FF14 Angler, etc.


But if you find it too hard to read the tooltips and read guides, leave that to those who love. The craft is a correct science in this game, there is only randomness when you know how to manage between the durability and the% of success.

If you have skills that are 70% successful, you still have talents that increase by 30% to reach 100%
Then you have skills that have less success rate, but that increases the quality of your craft more strongly.

Unless you do shit, you never lose a component, but just the ability to craft the HQ.

If you are going to Shenzhen you can probably get game access, but might be slow over a VPN. Shanghai etc.. not so much. Hong Kong is obviously no problem, except some connections are slow. From what I have seen, South Korea and Taiwan have the best connections, but that won't help you much.

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Originally Posted by Caimie_Tsukino

Bah... When I saw those changes, I was like "Damn, all those previously documented things have to change now... tough work."

Anyway, I'll be on a business trip to mainland China from 7/7/19 to 20/7/19. So I won't have access to the game anyway... which is really sad.
Seems like my time in China would be a nice time to just update the old guides. But I do wanna EXPERIENCE the changes first hand before making changes to the guides, so I know exactly what impact the changes will make. Well, I do have about 1 week to play before the trip. Sadly, I have some important events with my job during that week as well, which means I can only play at late night before bed. :(

I think by the time I get back, everybody will be all-80 DoH already... Luckily, I'm rather loaded, so it's ok to miss the express train of gil in the first few weeks.

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Really looking forward to your updated guides...your guides have helped me so much over the years.

@OP: If you need help, ask in a way that is not abrasive. Plenty of people here are very friendly with giving out knowledge.

Anyone on Balmung / Crystal can send me a tell anytime and I'll be glad to help or at least point you in the right direction.

Crafters and gatherers go hand in hand. If you're a crafter you need to be a gatherer as well or have a friend who is willing to do it for you. Otherwise you'll have a real tough time with the mats.