Leather farming is horrible

[Petite]

Just wondering, is leather farming "good" for gil-making? Are there specific mobs that drop decently priced leather? If so, I'd like to know so I can warm up while waiting on PFs or queues and make money.

[Jaquan]

As I said earlier, the issue is how out of whack with the rest of the crafting it is. Even if you used retainers, unless you hire extra and pay more (which I also think should not be a thing in a subscription game), the gathering rate is massively different from the rest of crafting.

The gathering rate caps at 15 per 40 minutes per retainer. Depending on what your crafting goal is you generally need about 2 hours with 2 retainers to get skins you want for a quick session. Which is on average faster than if you'd do that manually.

[Deceptus]

Honestly, the only way I stay sane in terms of collecting leather is just to send my combat retainers out to gather the skins for me. :/

Stuff like leather is the reason I'm glad they added the skins to the bi-color gemstone vendors.

[Nicodemus_Mercy]

Just wondering, is leather farming "good" for gil-making? Are there specific mobs that drop decently priced leather? If so, I'd like to know so I can warm up while waiting on PFs or queues and make money.

Farming leather from kills just isn't realistic or profitable for the effort invested. You CAN make gil selling leather, but typically that's by sending your combat retainer out to get the types that currently selling. The best time to do this is early in an expansion since everyone is leveling their crafters and the new leather is in short supply. But even later in an expacs life leather still ends up having value since it's still needed in some cases and late comers still need leather for leveling their crafters.

But just farming mobs for leather... yea that's a waste of time IMO. You'd be better off doing fates while waiting for PFs or queues to get bi color gems to buy things to sell or unlock stuff.

[Petite]

Farming leather from kills just isn't realistic or profitable for the effort invested. You CAN make gil selling leather, but typically that's by sending your combat retainer out to get the types that currently selling. The best time to do this is early in an expansion since everyone is leveling their crafters and the new leather is in short supply. But even later in an expacs life leather still ends up having value since it's still needed in some cases and late comers still need leather for leveling their crafters.

But just farming mobs for leather... yea that's a waste of time IMO. You'd be better off doing fates while waiting for PFs or queues to get bi color gems to buy things to sell or unlock stuff.

Gotcha. I asked in case some mob out there might drop 5K gil leather with a good drop chance.

[vetch]

Monster material farming in general has always been pretty miserable due to spotty drop rates. They put in the bicolor gemstone thing as a bandaid, which works after a fashion, but like most new systems or adjustments they never back-ported it to previous zones.

The thing they're bandaiding is their own kludgy pacing hacks that they introduced in HW onwards. ARR didn't need any bicolor gemstones because not only are ARR droprates higher, 1 ARR skin drop also made 1 ARR leather so it's perfectly viable to just kill mobs for a little bit.

They could simply choose to not have bad drop rates and grindy recipes.

[Deveryn]

I don't think the materials for gems were a bandaid fix, just a way to deal with excess gems, as they made FATEs more worthwhile with the progression and rewards.

[Stepjam]

SE won't implement a gathering profession to deal with monster-drop because the following:


1) It will hurt their profits from players hiring extra retainers to make combat retainers to gather such items.


2) Players who are stingy will play another alt to get combat retainers, which mean they will spend more time playing the game, which requires more sub times. They may even be able to sell boosters!


3) They already try to band-aid this scarcity of monster-drop income via the use of bi-colored gems, which are used to goad players doing FATEs, which playing the game, thus subscription payment.

I mean adding a leather gathering class would ALSO make players play the game, thus add subscription time, so I'm not really sure what your point is there. And the bicolor gems work just fine to serve as an alternate source to using retainers, so I don't think it's about that either.

[JTWrenn]

The real root of a lot of these problems is that they have pay to win (to some degree) in a subscription based game. Extra retainers should not be a thing for extra cash, and because it is we have systems tied to it as the most efficient method for profit. It is free to play game issues bleeding into mmo's with full subscriptions to mess things up. All retainers should be given as part of the $15 a month, with fewer given for $12 a month (as that is sub standard rate for a AAA MMO). Get rid of the idea of extra retainers for a price and suddenly we would have a leather/monster item gathering class and the game would be better, but profits would likely go down. Whales, and those willing to pay to win are ruining a lot of games, and this is just a small tip of that iceberg.

I hope ffxiv leans into their culture and idea of people being on a level playing field regardless of wealth instead of what we currently have. I really can't come up with any reason but profit margins for the current weirdness of drop rates and difficulty of gathering these crafting items.

[Bsrking5]

SE basically already said no that why they added bi colored gems