Spiritbonding Heavensward crafting accessories...

[Geryth]

Snip

Your numbers are way off. I JUST confirmed that it takes 300 crafts + spiritbond potion to fully SB a set of HQ HW crafting gear levels 52-55. It does NOT take "just over an hour" to gather what I need. It takes more than double that, unless I decide to meld 2 materia to each piece, in which case I can reduce that amount by 40% (180 crafts instead of 300 crafts). That might actually get me to a more sustainable place. But going by Cedar Logs (Mythrite Nuggets + Mythrite Rivets would actually be even quicker way to go but I found out that I can't farm Ice Crystals through Aetherial Reduction without Fishing, so I'm stuck with Wind/Fire/Earth/Lighting items so cedar lumber is the best way for me to go). So if I meld two materias to all pieces of gear I'm SB'ing then I'll STILL need 900 cedar logs + 540 Wind Crystals. Still pretty far over your "just over an hour" calculation.

That's still 2 hours of farming (1.5 hours for getting logs, 30 minutes for getting crystals) vs. 30 minutes of fighting, so yes, it's still 4x faster to spiritbond in Urth's Gift. Maybe I'll get less IV's in that time (not far behind either), but I'll have MUCH less III's and II's which I'll also make use of.

Even reducing the farming amount I need by 40% considering melding materia it's still looking like Urth's Gift is the better way to go.

No. Type of materia is dependant on the type of equipment. I would have taken you knew this, otherwise you wouldnt mention SBing via combat?

I think you're just confused. I know full well that crafting gear gets me crafting materia, and that gathering gear gets me gathering materia. I want crafting materia, so I made crafting gear. I can't craft out of thin air. I need to gather materials to craft. In this case, I'm gathering cedar logs to craft cedar lumber to get the 300 crafts I needed to SB my crafting gear that I wanted turned into Crafting Materia. I crafted 100 dark chestnut lumber and 200 cedar lumber, so I had to first gather 1500 logs to achieve that. WAY higher than your 600-700 figure that I don't know why you're still throwing around. I first mentioned battling because in ARR you can (still) SB crafting and gathering gear through combat. I was very dissapointed to learn that they changed that for HW content.