What's the best method to leveling Miner? With and Without Leves.

[jcw005]

Early on, it's probably worth it to alternate between levels obtained via leve and levels obtained simply by mining items. It doesn't take too long to do the latter until you are about level 40. Use your gathering log to tell you some of what's available around your level, and then check these items against the marketboard to see which ones are worth investing time in. (Nothing pre-50 will sell for that much, but you can at least save things up for yourself to craft with later.) I leveled entirely with leves from 44-50 over the weekend, and it would have been a nightmare to do otherwise. Here's a few thoughts.

Leves:
Always stick only with evaluation leves; they're the best bang for your allowance buck. If you know what you're doing, you can consistently/always get the 25% bonus, which makes any other leve a waste of allowances.

This is how they work:
All evaluation leves require you to reach a score of 160 per 4 nodes (320 for the 8 node type). There are two items that you can mine, an easy and a hard item. The hard item will have a low % of success, and will always grant 9 evaluation points per success regardless of level. The easy item's score is dependent on the level difference between you and it. If your level is equal to the level you initiate the leve at, then you will receive 7 points per success. +1 gives you 8 points per success, and +2 9 points.

4 Node type:
This is the easiest. Always use Sharp Vision II (+15% to gathering rate) and select the easy item. Have your leves at +1 of your level for the easy 25% evaluation bonus. At six hits per node, and 4 nodes total, you have: 4 * 6 * 8 = 192, or a margin of 4 misses over the 4 nodes. Even when you hit the highest level for that leve, i.e. when your level is equivalent to the leve's +4 setting, you should be getting right around a 100% success rate with Sharp Vision II. At six hits per node, and 4 nodes total, we get: 4 * 6 * 7 = 168 (you have a one-failure leeway which you shouldn't need). Since there are only four nodes, you should have enough GP to do this for each node.

8 Node type:
This one requires a bit more strategy since you won't have enough GP to use Sharp Vision II on each node. As long as you are still below the max leve level, this should be easy enough to achieve. Use Sharp Vision II on normal nodes when possible and select the easy item (for 8 points), and Sharp Vision I on +10% to high-level item nodes, and again, select the easy item. You shouldn't have any problems getting the 25% evaluation bonus.
Once you reach the maximum leve level, your strategy needs to change (and will take a little luck). On +10% to high-level item nodes, now use Sharp Vision II and select the harder, 9-point item. On normal nodes, vary between Sharp Vision I and Sharp Vision II as your GP warrants. You should be able to get the 25% evaluation most of the time, though sometimes your luck can be terrible.

*: Make sure to be upgrading your gear as you go along, in order to keep your gathering up.
**: This uses a lot of GP, but it doesn't really take that long to recover. You gain back 5 on each successful hit as well as 5 GP every Eorzean minute, i.e. 3 seconds of real time. To recover 500 GP entirely from scratch takes (500 / 5) = 100 Eorzean minutes * 3 seconds real time/1 Eorzean minute = 300 seconds, or 6 minutes. Not terrible. Considering you get only 6 Leves per day, it's worth the extra wait I'd say.