What enemies drop Earth Crystals?

[Shaiandra]

Right now I'm MNK42, and I've been neglecting my only gathering class (BTN22), and wanted to get some Earth Crystals to work on my LTW. Long story short, are there any earth elemental enemies in the 30's to mid 40's range that can drop Earth Crystals?

I've wandered most of the world and have seen elementals of all five other types, but no earth elementals in that level range. Northern Thanalan has lv 49s, but I don't think I can reliably take those yet.

I probably could just ask others for a few, or start leveling up BTN a bit, but am I missing some place or are there actually no such creatures?

[TohruHonda]

Earth Sprites drop them, it is a slow and inefficient way of gathering crystals. You should level up your gathering.

[Brises]

Level 1 botany. Faster than random drops.

[Debura]

Level 1 botany. Faster than random drops.

Crystals are from grade 30 harvest points. If I'm not mistaken, I think that requires level 26 gathering?

[Conradus]

Right now I'm MNK42, and I've been neglecting my only gathering class (BTN22), and wanted to get some Earth Crystals to work on my LTW. Long story short, are there any earth elemental enemies in the 30's to mid 40's range that can drop Earth Crystals?

I've wandered most of the world and have seen elementals of all five other types, but no earth elementals in that level range. Northern Thanalan has lv 49s, but I don't think I can reliably take those yet.

I probably could just ask others for a few, or start leveling up BTN a bit, but am I missing some place or are there actually no such creatures?

Not in the wild, no. Earth Sprites in the wild go from 15-19 in Sandgate (which drop shards) directly to 45-49 in Raubahn's Push (which drop crystals), nothing in between. The Grand Company levemete in Costa del Sol gives out a leve "Twenty-nine Was the Cutoff" which spawns Earth Sprites of level 22 (plus the leve difficulty) that drop crystals, but of course, you'll have to burn leve allowances to hunt those. You're probably better off going with levelling BTN another four levels so it can go get crystals. It's really unfortunate; Earth is the only element that forces you to hunt such high-level sprites to get crystals. All the other elements have one at 35 or less.

[Shaiandra]

Not in the wild, no. Earth Sprites in the wild go from 15-19 in Sandgate (which drop shards) directly to 45-49 in Raubahn's Push (which drop crystals), nothing in between. The Grand Company levemete in Costa del Sol gives out a leve "Twenty-nine Was the Cutoff" which spawns Earth Sprites of level 22 (plus the leve difficulty) that drop crystals, but of course, you'll have to burn leve allowances to hunt those. You're probably better off going with levelling BTN another four levels so it can go get crystals. It's really unfortunate; Earth is the only element that forces you to hunt such high-level sprites to get crystals. All the other elements have one at 35 or less.

Thanks for the very detailed response! Strange there is such an inconsistency though...

[Deolus]

It doesn't take too long to level botanist to 26 and with the hotfix on tuesday it will be even faster (increased xp for botanists and miners).