Cosmic Exploration - Great for DoH, Stressful and Unpleasant for DoL

For reference, here is my background coming into Cosmic Exploration: Historically, a very casual PvE player, huge housing nerd, and a bit of a DoL main (though haven't really gotten into fishing). I haven't played much this expansion and only recently finished up the MSQ and got all of my DoH and DoL other than fishing to low 90s. I spent an *unreasonable* amount of time in the Diadem, thoroughly enjoying optimizing my gathering routes, GP and cordial usage, and determining what to gather for the best gil return on my time. I've been super excited to get into Cosmic Exploration.

The good:
DoH progression feels amazing. I've mainly been a macro crafter in the past, but the design and variety of the recipes makes manually crafting things feel really good with a really pleasant level of skill expression. The mech events are somewhat repetitive but fun and a great way to mix things up for the buff. The red alert events are enjoyable and rewarding once I figured out that there are two zones for the alerts.

The bad:
DoL just feels bad. This does not feel like FFXIV gathering at all. There is no way to engage with the content as a DoL without time trials? Seriously? I was extremely crestfallen when I discovered there were no gathering nodes outside of missions. No timed nodes either. Cordial chugging feels absolutely mandatory and there is zero skill expression. I get that the devs probably didn't want Cosmic Exploration to have a major impact on the economy so there is no resource trading, but they seriously couldn't have added a casual go collect 100 of x and 150 of y research missions without time trials? Or at the very least make the time trial missions refill your GP after you turn them in? There are absolutely some that are going to enjoy the time trial style missions, but (admittedly anecdotally) every gatherer I've talked to is really unhappy with how gathering has been implemented in Cosmic Exploration.

The DoL things are identical to existing DoL levequests, with a stricter timer. Recognized them immediately.

There is a reason that DoL levequest achievement grinders work on fish turn-ins instead.

DoL is just pain, already dropped the content. Basically I want to play the game and relax while doing so and DoL is simply not it in this content. I rather get what I want on the market board instead of touching this content ever again unless they adjust it. :/

Had a "leve" SW of the west zipline station.
At that location, it's a triangle layout, but one side of the triangle is very long.

If I spawned the mission while standing at the middle point, then run to the down point and finally running the long side up to the up point, it was impossible to get a gold ranking. There wasn't enough time to clear it even with unlimited sprinting. The only way to clear it was start at the upper or lower points, the time limit for it was just that tight.

And some locations just suck, like those near lakes where you can't follow the straight line of the triangle, but have to take a longer route. Some of the runs easily takes 15-20 seconds, and when you only got 3 minutes, that's a lot of time spent running.

And the reduce missions are just awful, having to sprint between points spread out very far, get enough collectables and get them reduced and get the items in roughly 1½-2 minutes just ain't fun.

At this point I'm just spamming the chain and chain+boon missions since those are fairly quick and easy.

So I agree with whats been said here thus far, but have my own observations to share.
There simply is not enough time to get through many of the A rank missions with a silver or gold rating in time due to the amount of running or GP involved. Im chugging my hi-cordials and cordials left and right trying to maintain GP or I have to sit in between "leves" in order to recuperate. Thus wasting my time and twiddling my thumbs (unless there is a fate going on if Im lucky).

On top of that, the menus to do Aetherial reduction are clunky and if you get unlucky with GP for collectibles, fighting to get thru the aetherial reduction menus before the time runs out is infuriating.

As for fishing, its tightly timed too in such a way that makes the casual and relaxed fishing content Ive grown to love into a chaos rush hoping I complete the tasks in as fast a time as possible.. It kills the vibe I loved about fishing so much!

DoL is leaving a sour taste in my mouth.

The dailies and critical missions are good though. They've got me up fast on a gatherer.

While I personally enjoy the time challenges, the lack of GP replenishing between them means participating is more of a waiting game than anything else. If you want to get Gold on any of the higher end missions, saving your Cordials for the right moment is key. For Fishers, AA stacks are wiped between missions, so no advanced GP play can be found. It doesn't feel good. Crafters can binge. Gatherers have to slow trickle.

I like them, they actually need you to check which skills make sense and which don't for which objective (e.g. when only chains count or only Gatherer's Boon things.) Yes, the A class tasks are hard, but every other gathering in this is already a faceroll with three clicks as soon as your gear is half decent, so I'm fine if this needs a braincell or focus.

Only thing I dislike is having to wait for GP to get back inbetween missions. This takes forever when you save your cordials for the missions themselves.

Edit: Btw, crafter tasks also have timers, just not in the beginning.

Yeah, playing gatherers feels weirdly stressful in Cosmic Exploration compared to crafters. I think some good changes would be getting a gold rating on a mission should guarantee a Revisit proc, and gatherers should get a strong GP regeneration buff while at base camp.

They should probably consider adding enhanced GP regen in while in Cosmic Exploration zones or have special Cosmic Cordial to help cause i see it as the biggest problem right now

GP should definitely be replenished after each mission so you don't have to spend so much time between them just standing there staring into space (literally).

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

The dailies and critical missions are good though. They've got me up fast on a gatherer.

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Probably a dumb question but where do I find the dailies? Other than the repeatable regular quests I've only come across the mech "fates" and critical alerts.

They could also pull a page from Eureka, and scatter Loporrits through out the map who will cast a long lasting GP regen buff on you if you stand near them.

i stop doing gathering, time limit are too tight, the idling while waiting GP and Cordial CD just show how poor DoL is implement in Cosmic Exploration

Crafting feel easier, more comfortable, but one issue my 90 crafter have easier time crafting than my 9X crafter, it seem the sync is not well tune if you are not at the 10/50/90/100 level

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Originally Posted by Misutoraru

i stop doing gathering, time limit are too tight, the idling while waiting GP and Cordial CD just show how poor DoL is implement in Cosmic Exploration

Crafting feel easier, more comfortable, but one issue my 90 crafter have easier time crafting than my 9X crafter, it seem the sync is not well tune if you are not at the 10/50/90/100 level

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Have you tried eating food and taking the crafter medicine to help with that? Also being a specialist helps a bit as well.

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Originally Posted by Loggos

Probably a dumb question but where do I find the dailies? Other than the repeatable regular quests I've only come across the mech "fates" and critical alerts.

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"Steller Successes" - it's the third button along the top, not far from the missions.

There is a "Standard" tab next to the "Daily" tab. That seems to be like achievements, except they give giant rewards if you complete them.

if only there was an ability called Revisit for gatherers that for some reason is disabled in this content, if only it was introduced in the very same expansion that cosmic exploration was released in, if only...

Agreed on DoL being considerably more frustrating and "artificial difficultly". Between the spread out nodes, extra menu shit like collectibles and reductions, heavy reliance on rng factors, and the lack of GP regeneration options, it's really unfun and doesn't feel that it was well thought out compared to DoH.

Also a special place in hell for the Class A Crafting missions that require Fishing for mats.

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Originally Posted by Rhapsydian

For reference, here is my background coming into Cosmic Exploration: Historically, a very casual PvE player, huge housing nerd, and a bit of a DoL main (though haven't really gotten into fishing). I haven't played much this expansion and only recently finished up the MSQ and got all of my DoH and DoL other than fishing to low 90s. I spent an *unreasonable* amount of time in the Diadem, thoroughly enjoying optimizing my gathering routes, GP and cordial usage, and determining what to gather for the best gil return on my time. I've been super excited to get into Cosmic Exploration.

The good:
DoH progression feels amazing. I've mainly been a macro crafter in the past, but the design and variety of the recipes makes manually crafting things feel really good with a really pleasant level of skill expression. The mech events are somewhat repetitive but fun and a great way to mix things up for the buff. The red alert events are enjoyable and rewarding once I figured out that there are two zones for the alerts.

The bad:
DoL just feels bad. This does not feel like FFXIV gathering at all. There is no way to engage with the content as a DoL without time trials? Seriously? I was extremely crestfallen when I discovered there were no gathering nodes outside of missions. No timed nodes either. Cordial chugging feels absolutely mandatory and there is zero skill expression. I get that the devs probably didn't want Cosmic Exploration to have a major impact on the economy so there is no resource trading, but they seriously couldn't have added a casual go collect 100 of x and 150 of y research missions without time trials? Or at the very least make the time trial missions refill your GP after you turn them in? There are absolutely some that are going to enjoy the time trial style missions, but (admittedly anecdotally) every gatherer I've talked to is really unhappy with how gathering has been implemented in Cosmic Exploration.

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I agree. It's so bad on console too for thinks like "desynth the collectable to get the item"

The amount of menus I need to touch pad through to even get to desynth is mind blowing. Not to mention the report / desynth menu auto locks so I have to use my touch pad and scroll my finger along to the touch pad so I can press circle to remove it (on ps5) wastes time aswell. Just so I can see the screen.

Running between missions is abit of a pain too if ot decides I can't repeat the one I just did.

I don't mind the fates and red alerts they seem OK, it's just the amount of menus in the missions that makes me roll my eyes.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

They could also pull a page from Eureka, and scatter Loporrits through out the map who will cast a long lasting GP regen buff on you if you stand near them.

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Really cute idea, actually.

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Originally Posted by CidHeiral

GP should definitely be replenished after each mission so you don't have to spend so much time between them just standing there staring into space (literally).

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But there's so much of it to look at! :O

Shh! Can you here it? In the distance!

I think it might be this guy right here. xD

That sounds like a you problem, and I'm not trying to be a dick. But through a bit of trial and error, you can do B's non stop without having to replenish GP. Just figure out a better rotation.

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Originally Posted by Rhapsydian

For reference, here is my background coming into Cosmic Exploration: Historically, a very casual PvE player, huge housing nerd, and a bit of a DoL main (though haven't really gotten into fishing). I haven't played much this expansion and only recently finished up the MSQ and got all of my DoH and DoL other than fishing to low 90s. I spent an *unreasonable* amount of time in the Diadem, thoroughly enjoying optimizing my gathering routes, GP and cordial usage, and determining what to gather for the best gil return on my time. I've been super excited to get into Cosmic Exploration.

The good:
DoH progression feels amazing. I've mainly been a macro crafter in the past, but the design and variety of the recipes makes manually crafting things feel really good with a really pleasant level of skill expression. The mech events are somewhat repetitive but fun and a great way to mix things up for the buff. The red alert events are enjoyable and rewarding once I figured out that there are two zones for the alerts.

The bad:
DoL just feels bad. This does not feel like FFXIV gathering at all. There is no way to engage with the content as a DoL without time trials? Seriously? I was extremely crestfallen when I discovered there were no gathering nodes outside of missions. No timed nodes either. Cordial chugging feels absolutely mandatory and there is zero skill expression. I get that the devs probably didn't want Cosmic Exploration to have a major impact on the economy so there is no resource trading, but they seriously couldn't have added a casual go collect 100 of x and 150 of y research missions without time trials? Or at the very least make the time trial missions refill your GP after you turn them in? There are absolutely some that are going to enjoy the time trial style missions, but (admittedly anecdotally) every gatherer I've talked to is really unhappy with how gathering has been implemented in Cosmic Exploration.

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OMG yes please REFILL THE GP BAR ONCE A MISSION IS OVER so I dont have to stand there like a spare part waiting to do another A rank. Imagine if crafters had to wait minutes between each craft of an expert recipe xD

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Originally Posted by hydralus

Really cute idea, actually.

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That would be cute! But really anything to make GP replenish faster, if not a complete restore on completion of the mission. I’m sitting there so long waiting either for GP or my cordial timer, then by the time I start the next mission, a mech ops pops in the middle of it and then I’m late to that and only get half credit!

Like I said in the other thread, I was really hoping for some sort of Diadem-esque gathering loop. I hate the timed leves. Just let me have turn-ins to earn my credits so I can do my endless looping. I don’t mind grinding by any means, but I don’t want it to feel so frantic. They should have had a handful of mats to stock up on a nice relaxing gathering loop and had the leves as an alternative for people who enjoy that format. I’d totally be ok with the leves giving more credits in that scenario, but I’m more likely to keep participating in a grind I can do at my own pace without feeling rushed by a timer. With the timed format I’m just doing a mission, waiting for the mech op or red alert to pop, then another mission… I feel like I’d be accomplishing more if I just had a loop.

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Originally Posted by MathiasHellsing

That sounds like a you problem, and I'm not trying to be a dick. But through a bit of trial and error, you can do B's non stop without having to replenish GP. Just figure out a better rotation.

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That's nice but nobody has a problem with the Class B missions.

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Originally Posted by SkankyRoe

That's nice but nobody has a problem with the Class B missions.

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Can I ask you what A ranks you are struggling with, almost all of them are actually hyper consistent

I'm an omnicrafter/harvester on main, I get it and understand etc.

What has me confused is the whole "not high enough level" I ran into on an alt's mining leveling. I had the correct gear on, both sides, however it was not high enough. I needed 72. I gained a level, put on another new piece, hit 72 but then was given 79 instantly as the new "not high enough" level. EDIT: ILVL not level, apologies

I don't understand. Are we supposed to do these in HQ gear? If so, they WHY are NQ gear sold at the moonbase vendor? No matter how high you are NQ wise, it's still going to be too low according to the Cosmic Exploration.

My daughter's toon is in HQ L96 gear, both sides, even she ran into that "too low" factor doing missions set to her level.

It's making leveling my new alt's mining rather difficult. After failing 11 missions due to just not being fast enough or bad spots in terrain I went back to usual leveling of leves back down. In the time it took to run leves and story quests, I had over 12 levels gained.

Am I wrong in assuming that you were supposed to be able TO level in the Cosmic Exploration? Or am I mistaken in that this is just something to keep end game DoH/DoL's busy until the next expac?

DoH is too slow.

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Originally Posted by Khryseis_Astra

That would be cute! But really anything to make GP replenish faster, if not a complete restore on completion of the mission. I’m sitting there so long waiting either for GP or my cordial timer, then by the time I start the next mission, a mech ops pops in the middle of it and then I’m late to that and only get half credit!

Like I said in the other thread, I was really hoping for some sort of Diadem-esque gathering loop. I hate the timed leves. Just let me have turn-ins to earn my credits so I can do my endless looping. I don’t mind grinding by any means, but I don’t want it to feel so frantic. They should have had a handful of mats to stock up on a nice relaxing gathering loop and had the leves as an alternative for people who enjoy that format. I’d totally be ok with the leves giving more credits in that scenario, but I’m more likely to keep participating in a grind I can do at my own pace without feeling rushed by a timer. With the timed format I’m just doing a mission, waiting for the mech op or red alert to pop, then another mission… I feel like I’d be accomplishing more if I just had a loop.

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I'm with you on the frantic feel. Like most others I grinded out the 9/9/9 research rank B because it's very easy and the timer's quite forgiving. While I don't mind the 'locking in' concept, I suppose a hybrid method would be desirable where you could do the not-leves or gather materials in a loop as a slower but less frantic option. Maybe their next iteration could include something like that.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Can I ask you what A ranks you are struggling with, almost all of them are actually hyper consistent

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The ones that rely on rng in the form of Gatherer's Boon procs and Aetherial Reduction amounts. These missions aren't difficult, I'm just getting screwed over by the rng. I've had consistently terrible luck with both, as well as with the mission pool almost constantly giving me only those types of missions.

lol DoL is easier! I'm gonna max out my DoLs first, i'm not sure maybe people are not reading the leve objectives properly?

Rather than restoring all GP and effectively making them "Crafter but running", I'd rather have more ways to restore GPs such as:

1. Triggering Gatherer's Boon doubles or triples GP regeneration.
2. Getting node integrities that you don't need? Convert them to restore GP.
3. Separate the diff kinds of Cordials CDs. Give a reason for the orange cordials to be used even when you have the Hi-Cordials and Watered Cordials.
4. Add an action—permanent or in CE only—to gain yields/GP the longer you chain a node. Combine this with suggestion #1 suddenly you open up more ways to ‘keep the gears oiled and running’.
5. Some weather interacting with resources etc.

Other than that, I'm one of those players who does DoL first over DoH. Suffice to say I wish the discrepancies between the research pts pace you get between the two sub-roles are adjusted because comparing myself with a friend who played around similar amount of hours but starts with DoH first just shows that doing Specialist DoH > Other DoH > DoL are far superior than the opposite.

I'm also fine to have some of these A ranks being "Hi come to me fully loaded and maybe I'll give you gold rate, tee-hee!" and I hope they make more of those.

Lastly, I think some wording correction is needed for Researchingway in Cosmic Research Information window because "By expanding your research into other specialities, you can increase your overall efficiency!" doesn't really tell that you have to FINISH them in order for the 'armory bonus' to take effect.

EDIT: Please do away with the gathering animation lock or at least improve them. As a high ping player, put me side by side with low ping player then have us both quick gather 4 times in a row, you'll see me finishing 5-7 seconds later because this lock seems to be ping dependent. Pair this with the DoL cosmic missions' tight timing, I've gotten into few occasions where I missed gold rating from missing those precious few seconds. It's just annoying.

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Originally Posted by Rein_eon_Osborne

Lastly, I think some wording correction is needed for Researchingway in Cosmic Research Information window because "By expanding your research into other specialities, you can increase your overall efficiency!" doesn't really tell that you have to FINISH them in order for the 'armory bonus' to take effect.

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I would imagine (not got there yet, cos I decided to do all the DOH first, maybe a mistake) that the intention from SE behind that line is 'oh hey, you know those missions for MIN/BTN where you collect some stuff, then craft it using a DOL? Yeh they give rank 4 research to both the gatherer you use for it, and the crafter!'

But the bonus to Research speed given by finishing a tool completely outweighs that (if said nuance even exists)

I will say 2 minute time limit is very rough... X____x

It would be nice if the timer started when you interact with the first node, not when you initiate the mission.

Hate the DOL timers and the gather node lights and descriptions are hard to see on the bright moon. Passing now, won't go back after spending a cpl hrs.

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Originally Posted by LGraf1

I'm an omnicrafter/harvester on main, I get it and understand etc.

What has me confused is the whole "not high enough level" I ran into on an alt's mining leveling. I had the correct gear on, both sides, however it was not high enough. I needed 72. I gained a level, put on another new piece, hit 72 but then was given 79 instantly as the new "not high enough" level. EDIT: ILVL not level, apologies

I don't understand. Are we supposed to do these in HQ gear? If so, they WHY are NQ gear sold at the moonbase vendor? No matter how high you are NQ wise, it's still going to be too low according to the Cosmic Exploration.

My daughter's toon is in HQ L96 gear, both sides, even she ran into that "too low" factor doing missions set to her level.

It's making leveling my new alt's mining rather difficult. After failing 11 missions due to just not being fast enough or bad spots in terrain I went back to usual leveling of leves back down. In the time it took to run leves and story quests, I had over 12 levels gained.

Am I wrong in assuming that you were supposed to be able TO level in the Cosmic Exploration? Or am I mistaken in that this is just something to keep end game DoH/DoL's busy until the next expac?

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The warning telling you to buy from the base vendor is completely nonsensical, yes. I had it pop up on FSH at 91 or 92 while wearing scrip gear and 90 HQ accessories, but the vendor gear will only start narrowly edging it out at 97.

I was having a very hard time progressing through tool upgrades as a DoL until I radically changed my approach. On my experience, Stellar Missions with high RNG (such as hitting Gatherer's Boon, which wasn't working very well for me even with 70% chance) to get you to higher ratings are a waste of time and GP. Instead, it is the mission I initially despised that has been the most reliable and helpful at the end of the day: the Aetherial Reduction/Aethersand one. There's a collectability bonus for having enough Gathering and you can easily hit Gold with just a couple of nodes using the role action and ~700 GP alone (or less if you're lucky).

Of course, you'll still have to complete other Stellar Missions in between until it becomes available again. But you consistently get a lot more Analysis Exp this way than focusing on missions that spend all your GP and can barely get you to Silver unless you're extremely lucky. In general, my impression is that the missions are lacking balance and haven't been thoroughly tested (as many have already mentioned). It's by far the most buggy state a new FFXIV content has launched on — being reward wrong grades during missions, Spongoi not disappearing after being broken during Mech Ops and other stuff. Tools aside, the rewards are not very interesting. It's not all bad, but I do think there's a lot of room for improvement and I hope the next planets are more interesting.

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Originally Posted by Rsmeers

I was having a very hard time progressing through tool upgrades as a DoL until I radically changed my approach. On my experience, Stellar Missions with high RNG (such as hitting Gatherer's Boon, which wasn't working very well for me even with 70% chance) to get you to higher ratings are a waste of time and GP. Instead, it is the mission I initially despised that has been the most reliable and helpful at the end of the day: the Aetherial Reduction/Aethersand one. There's a collectability bonus for having enough Gathering and you can easily hit Gold with just a couple of nodes using the role action and ~700 GP alone (or less if you're lucky).

Of course, you'll still have to complete other Stellar Missions in between until it becomes available again. But you consistently get a lot more Analysis Exp this way than focusing on missions that spend all your GP and can barely get you to Silver unless you're extremely lucky. In general, my impression is that the missions are lacking balance and haven't been thoroughly tested (as many have already mentioned). It's by far the most buggy state a new FFXIV content has launched with — being reward wrong grades during missions, Spongoi not disappearing after being broken during Mech Ops and other stuff. It's not all bad, but I do think there's a lot of room for improvement and I hope the next planets are more interesting.

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There might be a breakpoint you are just missing on the gatherers boon one. I am mid tier pentamelded (mostly using materia from island sanctuary so no 11’s or 12’s) and for me all gatherer boon missions when they spawn 6 nodes 2 will be 100% if I use pioneers gift 1+2 and the other 4 will be 90% if I use pioneers gift 1+2. If you use nophica’s/nald’thal’s tidings on the 2 that are 100% chances then you basically gold that mission 100% of the time even with bad luck on the 90%

If you are only getting 70% you may just be missing a breakpoint you may be able to hit easily with really cheap food and those missions don’t need a lot of GP so if you use food to fall over the breakpoint line with low GP it shouldn’t negatively affect you

Absolute pain and suffering! I just did my first Class-A Aetherial Reduction mission on Miner; the first time I completed one was a Class-B mission, and I successfully got gold on that one with no problem. This Class-A mission, however, is an absolute travesty. How is one simply supposed to get the Silver or Gold ratings in only three minutes?

The mission is called A-2: Alchemical Refinement Materials. You have 3 minutes to collect as many collectables as possible and reduce them to make up at least 25 Aetherial dust. If you get the bare minimum of 25, that doesn't even reward you with Silver, you need more than that! You have to sit down and manually reduce all the collectables you gathered, which eats up a lot of the mission time. You sit there praying to the RNG lords that you receive loads of aetherial dust, it is horrendously ridiculous.

Square Enix should change the time limit and/or possibly skip the aetherial reduction step or make it so you can reduce multiple collectables at once.

After completing all 8 DoH relics to level 9, concocting the best macros for specialist and non-specialist crafters and figuring out different methods to work on the progress and quality, DoL Stellar Missions feel like an absolute nightmare. The only gathering job in Cosmic Exploration I genuinely like is fisher. I've learned a lot in just the first 6 levels of the fisher relic - and I've yet to try the A-class missions for those.

Please Square Enix, if you're reading - make changes to the Miner and Botanist Class-A missions. Some of the timings are too strict and rely on a lot of RNG instead of skill to get the higher ratings.