When I talk about "time" to take crafting, I'm talking about the ridiculous numbers of materials.

Let's say a spear pops up on either GC or Scrip turn-in. I want to make said spear.

The spear requires, say, 3 ingots, a potion, two wood (most likely enchanted wood, which requires another potion), glue, leather, and some sort of bone/jewel/whatever.

I mean, seriously? The ingots also need nuggets. So..

3 Ingots = 6 synths, minimum. That's assuming the ingot only wants 1 nugget per.
Potion = I don't even know what goes into a Dissolvent.. but I'm willing to bet that's 3-4 synths.
Wood = 1 Synth per wood, 2 if it's enchanted (holy/hallowed/whatever)
Leather = 1
Jewel = 1

So you're looking at what, gathering at least 10 different materials and doing 12, 14, maybe 16 synths for ONE turn-in? You're talking a whole RL hour or more trying to procure all of these materials (or pay the absolutely ridiculous prices on MB for them).

It's just getting out of this world ridiculous.

And when it comes to leves... you get a piddly (at Lv58-ish) 150k out of an NQ turn-in. If you can HQ, you get 300k.

Meanwhile, three Moogle Quests is 1,500,000 XP and takes 10 minutes. But sadly, that's once per day.