just started mining, any tips?

I just started mining (and eventually all gathring classes so I could fund my own crating classes) and I'm just wondering if anyone has any tips on what to look out for etc

Get some movies and a second monitor/nearby TV. Its a looooong rode. Also do your daily GC turn ins(under timers) and HQ them, its the best XP/effort gathering has giving decent base XP and +50% bonus XP if you turn in HQs. If you use leves for gathering, only do piety and benevolence if possible. While only 2 are offered at a time, they refresh when you complete a leve so you can just do the piety/benevolence leve and hope it refreshes into another one. These are the two leve types that can give a +25% bonus and that's the best you'll get with these. The general opinion is save your leves for crafts where they're much more efficient since you basically use 5+ leves per level in the final stretch and it isn't great at low levels either. Gathering is a good candidate for your rested XP though.

Gathering books are ok until the 30s where the XP to level starts to go past 120k(total XP you get in a book 40k bonus = 80k base). If you're gathering for a craft, you can do that but if you're gathering for XP, find the highest level thing you have a 100% hit rate for and spam that, the chain XP is worth it even if it feels slower. Unlike crafting, where you can skimp on your gear a bit and get good XP, with gathering you need so much XP to level and get so little from gathering that top of the line gear is basically needed to get respectable XP/hour. Lastly, try to only gather things with HQ% and use your skills on +attempt nodes(duh).

Put the pickaxe down, go to the AH, buy whatever you were gonna mine and craft instead. Too many bots to make a decent living mining anymore.

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Originally Posted by Laryndra

Put the pickaxe down, go to the AH, buy whatever you were gonna mine and craft instead. Too many bots to make a decent living mining anymore.

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Well although the number of bots is pretty sickening (really makes me wonder if Square gives two shits because they do it right out in the open for days on end) I think there is still money to be made. I sell ore regularly and it doesn't take that long to get some and put it on the market. The higher end stuff seems to sell pretty quick too. There are going to be alot more crafters than miners I think just because of the sheer pain in the ass of getting all the way to 50.

I got my minor up to 45 (from 30 from 1.0)...whats this about Grand Company? I can turn stuff in for exp? Is it really better then leves? I've just been spamming leves to no end lmao.

you can turn in 10 HQ matts to GC for some XP and seals, its like one more leve a day...

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Originally Posted by Selyndria

Well although the number of bots is pretty sickening (really makes me wonder if Square gives two shits because they do it right out in the open for days on end) I think there is still money to be made. I sell ore regularly and it doesn't take that long to get some and put it on the market. The higher end stuff seems to sell pretty quick too. There are going to be alot more crafters than miners I think just because of the sheer pain in the ass of getting all the way to 50.

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The problem with this logic is a miner pulls up 4x the amount of ore required to level a crafter. The sheer number of bots + players will far outweigh people who pick up crafts. Most people that DO pick up crafts level one or two, not all eight. On my server, darksteel is under 1k each. I can take 6 of this ore, 2 spruce (12k) and turn it into a 120k item.. AKA --> Crafting >>>>>>>gathering.

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Originally Posted by Laryndra

The problem with this logic is a miner pulls up 4x the amount of ore required to level a crafter.

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first, my primary purpose of gathering is to be a self-sustainable crafter. originally, I wanted to keep all my yields so I could proceed to lvl crafts. do you mean that we will most likely end up having too much excess materials? does this apply even if I do GC supplies/leves, or is this only the case if I mine my exp all the way? and finally, is it reallys illy to simply mine for my EXP all the way til 50?

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Originally Posted by Shuon

first, my primary purpose of gathering is to be a self-sustainable crafter. originally, I wanted to keep all my yields so I could proceed to lvl crafts. do you mean that we will most likely end up having too much excess materials? does this apply even if I do GC supplies/leves, or is this only the case if I mine my exp all the way? and finally, is it reallys illy to simply mine for my EXP all the way til 50?

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Doing leves as a gatherer is a waste of leveallowances. I would HIGHLY suggest against doing that. Save them for your crafting job. The leve allowances for gathering are only SLIGHTLY faster than just grinding it out. Also, you can self-sustain crafting by leveling it and selling HQ items along the way, then buy the mats for the next tier. Ect.

The sad truth is, if you're adamant about gathering to self sustain.. You'd have a better go of it just gathering shards, and selling Shards for gil and then buying materials you need.. Than puling up ore and stuff.

Mine out as many crystal shards as you can until you get bored beyond your skull. Levels 1-10 would be a decent start. You'll thank me later for it - levelling any profession requires lots and lots of crystals.

Also - see what you can mine, and what sells well on your market if you don't need the mats yourself. Where things are an expensive buy off a vendor, you can make a nice supply of cash selling them for cheaper than vendors do.

Grinding isn't really all that bad of an option for EXP, yes leves are technically way more. But if you keep you Gathering/Perception as high as possible you can get around 200-300k~ an hour above 30. Less than that under 30, but still a good amount when compared to the TNL's.

Before you go and grind out that level on the new tier, look up all the uses of the materials (I use GamerEscape) if your goal is sustainability. You'll also want to look into what Leves you intend to do on your crafters. Many materials, you will find, may only need a stack of 40 to never run out (Danburite for a small group of jewelery) or you may choose not to gather any at all (Maiden Artichoke is ONLY used for Stuffed Artichoke recipe).

Triple turn-ins require 3 items to complete and can be repeated two times without using another allowance. 9X the materials but 3X the EXP & Gil. So aim to gather up materials that can be used to make those items (IE Walnut Lumber and Iron Bar can both be gathered and the resulting item would be a candidate; Walnut Lumber and Iron Bar and Crab Oil requires monster drops). Leve item-rewards rotate. Aim for useful materials or large quantities of shards (about 50) to save mining time later.

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Originally Posted by Laryndra

Doing leves as a gatherer is a waste of leveallowances. I would HIGHLY suggest against doing that. Save them for your crafting job. The leve allowances for gathering are only SLIGHTLY faster than just grinding it out. Also, you can self-sustain crafting by leveling it and selling HQ items along the way, then buy the mats for the next tier. Ect.

The sad truth is, if you're adamant about gathering to self sustain.. You'd have a better go of it just gathering shards, and selling Shards for gil and then buying materials you need.. Than puling up ore and stuff.

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If you go the route of farming shards for gil, make sure to get both Botany and Mining up to 20 first. That lets you spend 400 GP to farm 15 of any kind of shard out of the same node (with an extra gathering attempt proc).