Mining Blues: Help with my favorite DoL

[Squintina]

Your gathering needs to be 370 or more with 332 perception (if I remember correctly). Then in order for a better chance at HQ you need a ton of GP. With my setup (bare minimum) After all is said and done I can only use unearth 1 for an 11% chance at HQ. I would need 28 more GP to get unearth 2 to work, ton of money or spirit bonding for materia required.

353 gathering as of patch 2.4

I like mining. I find it relaxing and fun. I like the flavor of my hero spending his downtime covered in dirt digging for the materials that keep Eorzea moving. But I'm stuck.

I have my Mammon, and a full set of HQ "Miner's" gear. I need HQ Umbral Rocks to upgrade I believe but I can only seemingly get them if my FC has the buffs up (which is rare). I'm ridiculously poor, so just outright melding isn't ideal, but if I must, what and where?

Also, are DoL worth progressing? I keep hearing that they aren't from my crafter friends...

I have 576 GP and I believe it was the around 560 when I did it.

My husband and I took 2 separate approaches to this.

He did Unearth II->Sharp Vision III on Node 7

While I did Toil->Unearth->Sharp Vision II, then Deep Vigor when it proc'd for a guaranteed HQ.

The difference being that his rotation gives a higher HQ %, but we all know that RNG is still just RNG so it's not a guarantee.
My rotation gave me a lower HQ %, but because Deep Vigor guarantees 1, even if RNG hated me, I still had one! (Often I still ended up with 2-3 HQ Umbrals).

We both started around the same time and finished around the same time, so I wouldn't be able to say which was more effective.

We both only did melds for the 100% affix success slots, no overmelds, using materia we had gathered over time.

And if you need extra stats but don't want to meld, there's always food! If you need an easy way to browse through foods, http://ffxivcrafting.com/food is pretty nice. Just go to gathering, click on the food category that fits the stat(s) you care about.

When you're about to meld, it tells you how much stats you're going to get so you can make sure you're getting the full amount the materia says.

But if you're unsure, there's a guide:
http://www.ffxivguild.com/ff14-arr-d...materia-melds/

Where you are should be the section "Relevant Pre-BiS Gear:" (the 2 sections before that are the 2.4 and pre-2.4 BIS)