Why is crafting/gathering so difficult/grindy?

[Mirarara]

You will see more complain from crafter if all these difficulty (that isn't really hard in the first place if you did some planning) is removed.

Why do you think crafter can earn gil? Its due to the difficulty to level them.

[QT_Melon]

I'm a bit confused at the trend of your posts.

One post tries to prove RNG is a lie, then this post trying to say this patch is difficult and grindy. When people give you help or tips it's completely ignored or shunned. It seems you're willing to make it difficult for yourself when help is offered. :/

[Maeka]

I'm a bit confused at the trend of your posts.

One post tries to prove RNG is a lie, then this post trying to say this patch is difficult and grindy. When people give you help or tips it's completely ignored or shunned. It seems you're willing to make it difficult for yourself when help is offered. :/

The RNG thread really doesn't have anything to do with this, the terrible RNG in XIV has been something that has annoyed me from day one to be honest. In fact, it was even MORE annoying earlier levels when you have fewer tools to deal with it.


As far as this thread, I appreciate help and advice, I am only speaking my mind in why I don't like the sudden spikes of difficulty. To reply to the last post on Page #5, where someone said "But this expansion JUST came out!"

See, the same thing happens (but even worse!) when you go from Vanilla to Heavensward. You go from being able to struggle but craft Lv50 stuff.... and then you smack face-first into a brick wall where you can barely craft basic materials at 1% HQ, using up some 7-8 Synth steps just to finish the recipe. It doesn't get much better even when you get 51+51 NQ gear either, in fact IIRC, the first tools are actually 52.

Now, obviously, I'm past that stage, but I feel that it is not a very good situation for anybody who is now freshly arriving at the Lv50 range. I feel that the tools and gear from HW should be changed to be Lv50 to give them a leg up a little easier so that they can do something other than Moogles. Why do you think everybody uses moogles to get from 50-60? Because everything else is just too ridiculously hard.

Now I WILL admit that now that I've been able to get some scrip tools, Stormblood is not quite as harsh as Vanilla-> HW was on both Gathering and Crafting, so I commend SE for lightening it up some, and Moogles are nowhere near as annoying as Ixals. So they did seem to learn at least a little from the past, and that's nice to see.

[Synestra]

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).

I always keep finished materials stocked up on my retainers to avoid this hassle.

[Ziggyzapps]

Because everything else is just too ridiculously hard.

They can't balance stuff around you cause you are bad and ignore gear/melds. I went straight from vanilla to HW without ever gearing up at 50, moogle quests weren't around yet. I do remember a pretty big jump in difficulty and thinking there was NO WAY i'd be able to hq stuff like I could pre 50, but I also remember being around level 53, hq'n things like a boss cause I learned how to play. I like the difficulty, and I don't mind the gear grind at all, i'm a little disappointed that iron works carried most of us to 70 and there wasn't any need to stop and gear up. A lot of us are rather bothered by how easy stormblood crafting was and still is, if I was in the process of leveling my crafters and they just nerfed it into easy mode I think i'd be very annoyed.

[Mirarara]

i'm a little disappointed that iron works carried most of us to 70 and there wasn't any need to stop and gear up.

Even if you don't have ironwork (like me), it's really easy to get to 70 by using 61 NPC gear this patch.

[Erudito]

OP nailed down why I don't craft seriously to a t. I used Ixal and purchased leve items/daily hand-ins to get to 50. I used moogle beast tribe quests to get to 60. Have not and will not touch anything crafting related until a crafting beast tribe is introduced. Why? Because a single craft would have me spend hours on end just to get the materials alone. And no, the market is out of the question as the prices for the most used stuff is still high on my server. Those materials are for making materials which make materials which might be for other materials. You see where this is going? If you don't have too much time on your hands then you have to sacrifice a massive portion of the game to craft and gather materials for said crafts.

They can alleviate this by reducing amount of materials needed for crafts but I doubt the dev. team would do that since changing the recipes would take an enormous amount of time. Time they could be using on something better, larger and more prominent.

[Roth_Trailfinder]

If it takes you hours to gather enough mats for one craft, either you are looking exclusively at mob-dropped mats en masse, or you are doing something horribly wrong.

Between retainers, the marketboard that you disparage as being too expensive, and simply going out and gathering your own mining/botany materials, it won't take more than a few minuts of *your* time to gather the materials for most crafts. Some, you will have to engage in some forethought (ok, I'm going to make this, that, and something else, requiring in total 21 Gazelle hides, better send the retainer out for some three times in a row) but you can use that time while the retainer is out gathering stuff for you, to go do the combat stuff you want so much to do.

Lets look at a fairly obnoxious recipe : Serge Poncho.
1 Twinsilk, 3 Dawn Serge, 1 Worsted Yarn, 3 Manzasiri Hair. Broken down, that is 12 Twincoons, 13 Effervescent Water, 20 Halgai Mane, 23 Manzasiri Hair, 10 Rock Salt. Of those, you are looking at (depending on retainer ilevel) 5 Ventures worth of combat drops, three node visits for Twincoons, 4 node visits for Effervescent Water, and a trip to a vendor for Rock Salt. You can easily send the retainer out on those Ventures while you are doing other stuff, so engage in a little forethought, and you've got your materials with less than ten minutes of your own time actually spent upon it, and plenty of time spent on other things.

Many other recipes are easier, far far easier. Algae Salt, takes 5 Gem algae. You get 20 from your Botany retainer, or you can make the recipe once after depleting one node and getting one from the next node. Or the Stiperstone Grinding Wheel, which uses 8 Larch Logs (two nodes), 1 High Steel Ingot (1 bought Iron Ore and two nodes worth of mined materials), and 2 Stiperstone (half a node).

Suggesting it takes hours on end to do one craft is an extreme misrepresentation of the state of crafting in this game. To do many crafts, of course it is, just as it takes hours on end to do many runs of any given Extreme for primal mounts.

[Maeka]

snip

As I'm typing this, I want to do a Koppranickel Index because it's starred (Red Scrip turn-in).

I need...

2 Mythrite Nuggets (5 sand, 1 mythril ore)
1 Amphithere Leather (3 Skins, 1 Dark Chestnut Log)
1 Koppranickel Ink (3 Sand, 1 Deepeye Tears, 1 Moth Scales)
1 Beech Lumber (5? Logs)
2 Koppranickel Nuggets (5 Sand, 1 Copper Ore)

So they got me going to Western Highlands, Churning Mists, Forelands, Southern Thanalaan, Fringes, Peaks, and a vendor that sells copper ore. There are also 5 mob drops in there.

Isn't that kind of ridiculous? To get this junk it will take me a couple hours most likely if I didn't already have a few from opening chests and such.

[Elamys]

I mean, if you gather the exact materials you need every craft, yes, it's going to take you a long time. This is why you should keep a stock of the most common materials, if you're going to craft a lot.