Old thread, but since it was already resurrected I'll reply, if only to correct potential misinformation.

Quote Originally Posted by Tlamila View Post
And I hugely agree on the xp. I'm happy it got faster, but this is just ridicolous. Not only the gear, but also the job quests are impossible to keep up with now. And 60+ for the quests you absolutely need to craft/gather the item/s yourself (you can't even cheat it by buying it on mb) and for that indeed you need the right gear. I got to the point with GSM where I need 1030 craftmanship to craft the quest item, and with my current gear I only had 500. I spent all the money I had to buy the best gear for that level and still it's only 600 or something. I assume the quests want your gear always up to date with melds and all at that level, and scrips gear, but with this levelling speed it's impossible. The only thing I can think of is to leave all the job skills behind and just get to 80 and seriously gear up there, but that would be so annoying...
At no point do the quest items require a particular level of craftmanship. They have certain recommendations, and although the recommendations for the low 60s quest items are a bit higher than what you can get with unmelded on-level gear, the recipes are easy enough that you can successfully craft them with lower stats. Compared to normal recipes of the same level the quest items only require about two thirds of the progress and quality, but for some reason the craftsmanship recommendation is the same.

Another thing is that a full set of HQ Lv63 crafter gear without melds gives 923 craftsmanship, not 600-something like you say. Even an NQ set gives 816 craftsmanship, and can be obtained from NPC vendors for 226k gil. That should be more than enough to craft the required items. In fact, the previous tier should be enough, given that the quests hand out gear of their own level as reward. I certainly didn't have any trouble crafting the items for the quests back in 4.2 or something, and I was pretty prudent with my gear upgrades.