Should I level DoL classes to 50 before leveling my DoH Classes?

[GenJoe]

It really depends on how much crafting you plan on doing..
If you plan on going hardcore into crafting, you're on Jenova so I can say.. most of the people selling 4star items right now don't gather their own mats, in the time it takes to gather a stack of mats, you can just craft 10-20 pieces of gear and it's much more profitable to sell those than spend your time gathering.. Not to mention the ~40-50k saved by gathering your own stuff isn't really that much money to some of them.. Hell, I've seen'em buy out mats/clusters over a million gil in value without changing cities and paying the 50k city tax..


So if you plan on doing some hardcore crafting, gathering won't be used later on. It may be helpful while you're leveling up and it is convenient to have around, but leveling it is a pain

[AngelKode]

So if you plan on doing some hardcore crafting, gathering won't be used later on. It may be helpful while you're leveling up and it is convenient to have around, but leveling it is a pain

So you're saying it's better to just craft and rely on the fact that the initial investment for the materials (via marketboard) will pale in comparison to the profits made from the items I make. Does this apply to early levels?

[GenJoe]

So you're saying it's better to just craft and rely on the fact that the initial investment for the materials (via marketboard) will pale in comparison to the profits made from the items I make. Does this apply to early levels?

It's not so much an issue of crafter level, but your market.

There will be some markets where you have enough demand to be crafting 3-4 hours a day consistently and the items will sell out.
Admittedly, this late into ARR, most markets have seen a decline but there are still some items where you can sell a few stacks of each day (I equate a stack of finished products to 1 hour of crafting)

You would still want an item with decent markup (3000 per craft) which puts you at about 300k an hour in profit. If you can reach that point (at end-game crafting, you should strive for that goal or even higher) then it starts becoming pointless to gather mats..

At my peak crafting, I was crafting 10-14 hrs a day and still couldn't satisfy the market demand, MB has changed, but by expanding your wares you should still be able to find a few markets which combined give you hours upon hours of available work. At which point, you won't be gathering your own mats as you have a more gil efficient ways to spend your time.

I'm not saying that it's feasible right this moment, I personally think it is, but you may run into some stiff competition. But if your eventual goal involves crafting a lot for a lot of gil, then having a gatherer won't really help you make or break it..

Of course, the above only applies if you want to make gobs and gobs of pointless gil and you're willing to babysit the market board for it.. It's completely optional.



If it's funding your early crafting that you're worried about, I'd look into making secondary mats as your level up items.. i.e. make lumber with CRP and sell that on MB, you'll at least break even on most cases and sometimes make a pretty penny. With BSM/ARM/GSM you have the ingots etc.

It's not fool proof, market fluctuation can get you with its ups and downs which is where having a gatherer comes in handy, but whether it's worth the trouble of leveling one from 1-50 just for that bit of independence, for me personally, I don't think it's worth it. Unless I'm not seeing ANY items for sale, I rarely go out to buy it.. The way I see it, if i overpay for mats, I'll just overprice my products and make the money back