Cosmic Exploration - Great for DoH, Stressful and Unpleasant for DoL

[Rsmeers]

I was having a very hard time progressing through tool upgrades as a DoL until I radically changed my approach. On my experience, Stellar Missions with high RNG (such as hitting Gatherer's Boon, which wasn't working very well for me even with 70% chance) to get you to higher ratings are a waste of time and GP. Instead, it is the mission I initially despised that has been the most reliable and helpful at the end of the day: the Aetherial Reduction/Aethersand one. There's a collectability bonus for having enough Gathering and you can easily hit Gold with just a couple of nodes using the role action and ~700 GP alone (or less if you're lucky).

Of course, you'll still have to complete other Stellar Missions in between until it becomes available again. But you consistently get a lot more Analysis Exp this way than focusing on missions that spend all your GP and can barely get you to Silver unless you're extremely lucky. In general, my impression is that the missions are lacking balance and haven't been thoroughly tested (as many have already mentioned). It's by far the most buggy state a new FFXIV content has launched on — being reward wrong grades during missions, Spongoi not disappearing after being broken during Mech Ops and other stuff. Tools aside, the rewards are not very interesting. It's not all bad, but I do think there's a lot of room for improvement and I hope the next planets are more interesting.

[Supersnow845]

I was having a very hard time progressing through tool upgrades as a DoL until I radically changed my approach. On my experience, Stellar Missions with high RNG (such as hitting Gatherer's Boon, which wasn't working very well for me even with 70% chance) to get you to higher ratings are a waste of time and GP. Instead, it is the mission I initially despised that has been the most reliable and helpful at the end of the day: the Aetherial Reduction/Aethersand one. There's a collectability bonus for having enough Gathering and you can easily hit Gold with just a couple of nodes using the role action and ~700 GP alone (or less if you're lucky).

Of course, you'll still have to complete other Stellar Missions in between until it becomes available again. But you consistently get a lot more Analysis Exp this way than focusing on missions that spend all your GP and can barely get you to Silver unless you're extremely lucky. In general, my impression is that the missions are lacking balance and haven't been thoroughly tested (as many have already mentioned). It's by far the most buggy state a new FFXIV content has launched with — being reward wrong grades during missions, Spongoi not disappearing after being broken during Mech Ops and other stuff. It's not all bad, but I do think there's a lot of room for improvement and I hope the next planets are more interesting.

There might be a breakpoint you are just missing on the gatherers boon one. I am mid tier pentamelded (mostly using materia from island sanctuary so no 11’s or 12’s) and for me all gatherer boon missions when they spawn 6 nodes 2 will be 100% if I use pioneers gift 1+2 and the other 4 will be 90% if I use pioneers gift 1+2. If you use nophica’s/nald’thal’s tidings on the 2 that are 100% chances then you basically gold that mission 100% of the time even with bad luck on the 90%

If you are only getting 70% you may just be missing a breakpoint you may be able to hit easily with really cheap food and those missions don’t need a lot of GP so if you use food to fall over the breakpoint line with low GP it shouldn’t negatively affect you

[Rsmeers]

There might be a breakpoint you are just missing on the gatherers boon one. I am mid tier pentamelded (mostly using materia from island sanctuary so no 11’s or 12’s) and for me all gatherer boon missions when they spawn 6 nodes 2 will be 100% if I use pioneers gift 1+2 and the other 4 will be 90% if I use pioneers gift 1+2. If you use nophica’s/nald’thal’s tidings on the 2 that are 100% chances then you basically gold that mission 100% of the time even with bad luck on the 90%

If you are only getting 70% you may just be missing a breakpoint you may be able to hit easily with really cheap food and those missions don’t need a lot of GP so if you use food to fall over the breakpoint line with low GP it shouldn’t negatively affect you

On Rank A missions such as Light Plating Materials I can get 68% at best, wearing Everseeker set and tools + 690 accessories and using food and both Gift skills. Sometimes I get the Perception bonus (which gives +40% Gatherer's Boon), but it's super rare. So I suppose it's also very bad luck on my part as I've managed to consistently miss 70%+ Gatherer's Boon on lower rank missions and never get the Location Effect bonus. At least it's been a bit better today.

[SkankyRoe]

There might be a breakpoint you are just missing on the gatherers boon one. I am mid tier pentamelded (mostly using materia from island sanctuary so no 11’s or 12’s) and for me all gatherer boon missions when they spawn 6 nodes 2 will be 100% if I use pioneers gift 1+2 and the other 4 will be 90% if I use pioneers gift 1+2. If you use nophica’s/nald’thal’s tidings on the 2 that are 100% chances then you basically gold that mission 100% of the time even with bad luck on the 90%

If you are only getting 70% you may just be missing a breakpoint you may be able to hit easily with really cheap food and those missions don’t need a lot of GP so if you use food to fall over the breakpoint line with low GP it shouldn’t negatively affect you

I find it odd that you would be hitting 100% with no DT materia when I'm using the 7.2 high tier pentameld set with HQ food and still only getting either 74% or 78%(can't remember which) after using both Pioneer's Gift actions. I suppose it could be an issue of the high tier set's stat priority(it was built around 7.2 Legendary Nodes rather than these missions), but given you aren't using any DT materia I'd still expect the high tier set to surpass yours in both Gathering and Perception, so it doesn't really make any sense.

[Supersnow845]

I find it odd that you would be hitting 100% with no DT materia when I'm using the 7.2 high tier pentameld set with HQ food and still only getting either 74% or 78%(can't remember which) after using both Pioneer's Gift actions. I suppose it could be an issue of the high tier set's stat priority(it was built around 7.2 Legendary Nodes rather than these missions), but given you aren't using any DT materia I'd still expect the high tier set to surpass yours in both Gathering and Perception, so it doesn't really make any sense.

What is your current stat distribution

If you went hard on 7.2 legendary nodes you might have a bit too much GP. I pentamelded after 7.2 had already slowed down a bit so I went low on GP and high on the other two stats, I don’t have no DT materia. Just I went 12/12/11/9/9 rather than 12/12/12/11/11

Maybe I accidently hit a high breakpoint pumping too much into gathering

[SkankyRoe]

What is your current stat distribution

If you went hard on 7.2 legendary nodes you might have a bit too much GP. I pentamelded after 7.2 had already slowed down a bit so I went low on GP and high on the other two stats, I don’t have no DT materia. Just I went 12/12/11/9/9 rather than 12/12/12/11/11

Maybe I accidently hit a high breakpoint pumping too much into gathering

I'm using the current recommended 7.2 high tier set, 5345/5173/930, which is specifically designed to enable a 1000 GP rotation. So yeah prolly too much GP and not enough of the other stats for this particular content.

And lol I thought you meant you didn't use any DT materia period rather than just for the overmelds. With you using 12s for the normal slots I can see you possibly surpassing the current high tier set if you are using less GP melds

[Supersnow845]

I'm using the current recommended 7.2 high tier set, 5345/5173/930, which is specifically designed to enable a 1000 GP rotation. So yeah prolly too much GP and not enough of the other stats for this particular content

Yeah seems to be a stat mismatch which is definitely frustrating especially when you pay for a high tier set

It could also be the fact that since the next planet isn’t till 7.31 they are trying to partially future proof the moon against 7.3 gear since this is the only planet that will cross two gear tiers for the crafters and gatherers

But yeah I get why that’s frustrating

[SkankyRoe]

Yeah seems to be a stat mismatch which is definitely frustrating especially when you pay for a high tier set

It could also be the fact that since the next planet isn’t till 7.31 they are trying to partially future proof the moon against 7.3 gear since this is the only planet that will cross two gear tiers for the crafters and gatherers

But yeah I get why that’s frustrating

It's severely frustrating because I find the Gatherer missions more engaging, but the apparent incompatibility of my pentamelds with the content, paired with stressful time limits and my sudden bad luck streak just have me completely put off for that side of the content for now. But I also realize it was more or less unavoidable, this is brand new content so the experts really didn't have any way to figure out a pentameld set that would be more compatible with it for the 7.2 sets. I have high hopes for the Gatherer experience to feel much better with the 7.31 installment, the 7.3 pentameld sets will likely have Stellar Missions factored into their spread, and hopefully player feedback will result in some rectification of the more glaring issues like the between-mission GP situation.