Curious About Crafting

[CodeCass]

Curious:

This may be a COMPLETLEY newbie question, but here goes:
I'm currently a level 34 Summoner. I've been thinking of maybe taking up a serious crafting job to make some extra gil as well as craft my own gear and meld my own Materia. So being a Summoner I'm thinking going Weaver. Now my question is do I even need to be worrying about this? Some players have suggested I simply focus on leveling my SMN and not bothering with crafting until after I cap for the first time. I myself I'm really wanting to do some crafting on the side as I get through my levels, but don't want end up really hindering myself in the process.

What is the general consensus on this? Is it ok to take up Weaving to start making my own armor and selling the extra to make some gil, or; is it better for me to stick to leveling and then work on crafting later?

[Maelwys]

Short version: Don't bother
Long version: If you really want to level ONE craft; try Culinarian.

CUL is fairly standalone with both Hasty Touch and Steady Hand II - these two skills plus "Tricks of the Trade" (15 ALC) are the basis of most of the "levelling" synthing rotations where you don't follow a set rotation each time.
However for most crafting it's not going to make you much money unless you can reliably HQ things, and you're not going to be able to reliably HQ anything difficult until you have at least a level 50 Carpenter for "Byregot's Blessing".

Most HQ Crafting relies on careful usage of Cross Class skills, so unless you have a few of the Crafting classes levelled up already (Weaver, Carpenter and Goldsmith are the obvious choices for 50, CUL for 37 and the rest at 15) you'll struggle to HQ things. If you just want to make NQ gear and meld materia, then by all means go for it... just be aware that you'll likely not be able to make much gil via selling things you craft on the market.

[CodeCass]

Thanks for the info!

[AzucenaC]

Weaving is really only useful for the the end where you craft most of the AF crafting and gathering gear (other is leather working I believe). I ended up starting with a couple of friends and we all picked a craft/gathering class to go into to help each other out as we levelled. Unfortunately for the first 20 levels, we would level so quickly that we would end up skipping a lot of gear or get pretty good gear from the dungeons. Though if you have the materia you can meld your crafted gear to be better than the dropped gear.

I started off SMN and did Weaving, Goldsmithing, Alchemy, Culinary, and Botany as my gathering class. This allowed me to be pretty self sufficient with the exception of Goldsmithing (my friend is the miner so he give me all the ore). To make money you really have to play the market and see what is selling. Unfortunately there is no really good way other than to look at your crafting list and search the board one by one. Or you could do leve quests as they do give some pretty good gil and help you level quicker in the DoH classes.

You should also note that your rested experience will also be eaten up by your crafting class. With the new patch coming out in a couple of week, crafting may be a viable way to make some decent gil. And the Weaver will make all the casting armour.

In the end it is what you prefer to to with your free time, we can only make suggestions based on what we did in game.

P.S. hate the 1000 character limit....only to be able to edit it past 1000. So silly.

[CodeCass]

This is really interesting to me. I was unaware the need to level multiple DoH and DoL classes. In my mind I guess I figured Id pick up Weaver and just level it and start turning out the gear and making the extra gil on the stuff I didn't need. You guys' comments have helped clear this up wonderfully. So I suppose for now I'll continue leveling my Summoner, and maybe start putting in some levels into the classes that will help the Weaver. Honestly the gil is the least important of the aspects of crafting that interests me. I mainly want it for making my own gear and melding materia, and helping out my other low-level friends with their materia melding and whatnot.

[Niwashi]

You're never hindering yourself by adding additional skills. If you've already decided that you're going to take up another class (whether that's a crafting class or another combat class, whatever), there's no advantage whatsoever to deliberately waiting to do so.

It will take a while before the weaver will be useful to you for your own Summoner gear though, just because a level 1 weaver cannot make level 34 gear. You'll need to level weaver up a bit first. Ideally you'd want to get it (and any other crafting classes if you decide to add more than that one) up to near the level of your highest class, so you can make gear suitable for all your classes.

Some people do add crafting later, and just decide they're not going to use crafted gear for their first class. It can still be useful for gearing up subsequent classes later. But I don't see any way that crafting gear on all but one of your classes could be considered an advantage over gear on all your classes.


As for adding multiple crafting classes, there's a couple advantages to leveling several of them up together. One is the cross-class skills that Maelwys mentioned. The other is the fact that each class has recipes that use materials made by other classes, so doing them all gives you better self-sufficiency. (In the case of weaver, the most common secondary class they get resources from is leatherworker, but there's a few resources from other crafting classes as well.)

[Maelwys]

This is really interesting to me. I was unaware the need to level multiple DoH and DoL classes. In my mind I guess I figured Id pick up Weaver and just level it and start turning out the gear and making the extra gil on the stuff I didn't need. You guys' comments have helped clear this up wonderfully. So I suppose for now I'll continue leveling my Summoner, and maybe start putting in some levels into the classes that will help the Weaver. Honestly the gil is the least important of the aspects of crafting that interests me. I mainly want it for making my own gear and melding materia, and helping out my other low-level friends with their materia melding and whatnot.

Levelling a crafting job is quite different in this game due to the cross class skill system - and the most efficient way is to use Leves (if you synth a HQ version of whatever the Leve contact is asking for then you get 3x the exp for handing it in... and if you get short of leve allowances, there are "triple hand in" leves where the final contact gives you the option to repeat the hand-in section three times before going back to the initial quest giver)

You really won't be left with much spare crafted gear by the end of it to sell or give away if you're using this method.

Having crafting classes is nice for melding... and it's certainly possible to make yourself gear (though you'll outlevel it fast and probably spend more on materials than you would by just buying a NQ version on the AH) - but as mentioned above, getting a HQ version will be much more difficult until you get more cross-class skills available. (example: If I'm synthing a ring on my Goldsmith; I'll use cross-class skills from Weaver, Culinarian and Carpenter!) Even though I actually WANTED to synth stuff using Weaver and Leatherworker... Carpenter was my first level 50 crafting class, just because of how powerful the level 50 cross class skill is.

[Anova]

Levelling a crafting job is quite different in this game due to the cross class skill system - and the most efficient way is to use Leves (if you synth a HQ version of whatever the Leve contact is asking for then you get 3x the exp for handing it in... and if you get short of leve allowances, there are "triple hand in" leves where the final contact gives you the option to repeat the hand-in section three times before going back to the initial quest giver)

Unfortunately, SE has nerfed that xp bonus to only 2x. You only get double the xp from leve turn-ins and crafts for hq items. It is still the fastest way to level crafting though, and some leves are obviously better than others for grinding.

[Maelwys]

Unfortunately, SE has nerfed that xp bonus to only 2x. You only get double the xp from leve turn-ins and crafts for hq items. It is still the fastest way to level crafting though, and some leves are obviously better than others for grinding.

Sorry, you're right. Had the old numbers in my head for some reason.

If I recall correctly, the bonus from handing in a HQ item was reduced in Patch 2.1, but the generic hand-in reward was raised across the board (affecting both NQ and HQ hand ins, the upshot being that handing in HQs grants roughly the same EXP as it did before but handing in NQs is considerably better than before)

I still use this link for the leves themselves.

[Bixby]

If I recall correctly, the bonus from handing in a HQ item was reduced in Patch 2.1, but the generic hand-in reward was raised across the board (affecting both NQ and HQ hand ins, the upshot being that handing in HQs grants roughly the same EXP as it did before but handing in NQs is considerably better than before)

You recall correctly. It's pretty nice. HQ turn-ins are still crazy good, it's just that NQs aren't quite so disappointing anymore. Before 2.1, I'd only ever do leves 5-10 levels below me, because they weren't worth it if I couldn't guarantee an HQ. Now I always do the ones at my level, because it's not a tragedy if I end up with some NQs.

If I recall correctly, HQ turn-ins are actually worth a little more than they were before 2.1. Not sure I trust my source on that (my memory of someone else's not-necessarily-verified posts in the DoH forum), though.