A little disappointed in high-level botany

[Moesugi]

It's simple, just replace Fleece with Silk(havent seen this thing in game yet, while Silk is one of the most high quality textile in the world), make Silk gathered from some bushes and all the problems about high level Botanist plus Karakul campfest will be solved.

Bit I highly doubt SE would take that way.

[Matsume]

Warning: Wall of Text

I came into 2.0 with a level 50 botanist and miner and after focusing on gathering HQ materials for the first few weeks following Early Access, I proceeded to cap all of my crafts to make use of my materials.

I would like to clarify a few misconceptions in this thread before they snowball any further so please bare with me here...

That being said, I'm surprised at how useless all but the Crawler Cocoons and Vampire Plants are. I'm sure prices fluctuate on every server, but every single item available to farm at level 50 BOT is worth less than 700g at HQ and that's only the two items previously mentioned.

Obviously prices are determined by the community and what people are willing to spend on them but clearly the demand is severely lower than the supply. Whatever recipes require high level gathering materials, clearly have very little value or don't require enough of said gathering materials.

First of all, level 50 items are FAR FROM USELESS. Let me just go down the list here starting with the Clusters.

Clusters are used for making Two Star recipes, especially water and fire clusters which require one of each for every two star food recipe. Grade 4 carbonized matter is always in high demand by those seeking to tempt their luck with forbidden melds. Spruce logs are used to make all of the crafting offhand tools. Prickly Pineapple is used to make Pineapple Ponzecake (1 per cake) and Pineapple Juice (4 per juice). Dzemael Tomatos are used in Bouillabaise, a lvl 50 crafting food of great use. Black Truffles are used to make Risotto (another two star food) and the Crawler Cocoons are used in nearly every high level non food crafting recipe worth making. In fact, vampire plant, thavnarian mistletoe, trillium/bulb and honey lemons are the least used of all, however even they can find their use.

What's true is that prices are indeed determined by supply and demand. However, as a culinarian and gatherer, I resort to buying these items (generally NQ) off of the AH en masse, because I cannot gather as much as I can cook. For example, Prickly Pineapple: I can craft 160 an hour into 40 Pineapple Juices yet, even with Kings Yield II, I can only harvest 35 an hour. The price has thus risen on my server from 100gil to 350gil per pineapple juice. Now, even this is quite low, and if you are on a non legacy server prices may be even lower. However, I can assure you that the low price is not due to theserecipes not requiring enough of each material but rather that these resulting consumable foods have very little use in game at the moment.

The real problem is that two star foods such as pineapple ponzecake, black truffle risotto, finger sandwiches, etc. cannot be fully capitalized upon for lack of better gear with higher stats. If you do the math, even with HQ food, as it currently stands, you cannot gain the maximum allowable stats granted by these foods because there is no gear yet in game capable of giving such high stats as to make the percentages given by the food better than their lower level counterparts.

For Example: HQ mulled Tea gives Piety 5% (Max 14) Vitality 4% (Max 15) and Spell Speed 2% (Max 10), while HQ Pineapple Juice gives Piety 4% (Max 17) Vitality 3% (Max 19) and Spell Speed 2% (Max 11). Now take a look at my i90 whm stats (allagan tunic, gloves, belt, necklace, af+1 boots, legs, ring): Spell Speed 422. Piety 384. Vitality 381 (currently specced into vit). Even with 30 bonus stat points into vitality, I would not get more than 10 or 11 points of vitality from the 3% juice, however I can get all 15 from the 4% tea. Same with piety and spell speed. And I'm wearing REALLY good gear. This is true for almost all of the food. Unless you are on a legacy server where people have an excess of gil to spend wantonly on high level food, you are not likely to sell many of these for the time being, thus crafters dont bother making as many as they do the lower recipes which literally fly off the shelves.

The problem is over saturation of the market. This is something SE wanted to prevent but it happened anyway due to poor planning. Getting 3-5 items per node swing at lvl 50 is WAY too much. Basically the demand for these materials by crafters is vastly overshadowed by the supply from Gatherers (both MIN and BTN).

Crawler cocoons are the best as OP mentioned and you only need 4 for one lvl 50 craft. 4 cocoons is nothing when I can get 25 from one node, and that's just one person. 25 cocoons times all these gatherers results in a filled up market board. Naturally you could go the other route for 15 NQ and 3HQ (potential for more) but either way results in way too many items and too low of a demand.

This is a slightly inaccurate statement. If you scroll up and read through my pineapple predicament you will understand what the problem is, and I can assure you it is not over supply. All of the items used in food recipes are consumable. Meaning, once you eat it - it's gone forever! The problem is, there is currently little incentive for people to eat that food. Also, the reason crawler cocoons, gold ore and darksteel ore are in such high demand is because these are used in practically every high level crafting recipe, such as all of the crafting, gathering, and battle classes ilvl 55 gear. This gear can, in turn, be spiritbound and converted in to Tier IV materia, taking even this non consumable crafted gear out of circulation, which creates even greater demand.

Here is an idea.... How about use these mats in gear that lvl 50's might actually wear... and the demand for them will go up. If these mats were used in recipes to make gear that players would wear at lvl 50, ppl would want, and buy them.

Want to know what mats to sell for massive profit? Just look for the nodes and mobs with teleporting bots flying around them.

These mats are sed in gear that level 50's might wear. Reason people don't buy them is because either the foods are not worth the stats, or in the case of crawler cocoons and militia gear, people haven't quite yet figured out just how fast you can spiritbond gear and what the rates are. I wont give away my secrets but I'll just say that I can convert HQ militia gear into Tier IV materia at a rate of at least 2 tier IV materia per hour, possibly more (I've gotten 3 tier IV in a row on one occasion). Once people figure out how to effectively spiritbind gear, you will see demand for these items increase.

You're doing it wrong.

Most of the profit is not on the 50 items. Find an item that is used in a craft and gather the hell out of it. Culinarian items are amazing to gather since they actively need materials.

To be fair, most of the profits are not in gathering. period. If you want to get rich, you had better start leveling all of your crafting classes and make something useful out of those precious materials of yours. A smart crafter can HQ a recipe with NQ materials and wont even bother buying HQ materials off the market wards.

Miner is a tad better. They gather the mats for GSM stuff (many of which are made rather frequently), BSM (majority of the crafting weapons) and ARM (nobody really cares), the Alumen/Black Alumen that a LTW needs for every piece of leather, and the Effervescent Water that is used to make Twinthread and Natron (used to make Felt).

The two biggest things that hold Botany back is that other than Crawler Cacoons, the high level Weaver stuff (Fleece/Snurble Tufts) is monster drops rather than gathered - and the gathered parts they do need come from Mining (see above). Flax seems to sell okay (on my server) but it's not much above the price of average miner stuff. The other big issue is Carpenter. Sure you can get Spruce Logs, but Carpenters can make a grand total of 7 items (not counting mat items like Spruce Logs) at 50. That's the item level 55 and 70 stuff put together. Rosewood is also not nearly as useful as Electrum/Cobalt is.

Once housing/furniture is in though, Carpentry (and some others, guessing Weaver for stuff like bed sheets/drapes/couch cushions/etc.) should have an explosion of recipes which may bring Botany up to the level of Mining, depending on demand. Likely won't be until individual housing (estimated for 6 months or so after FC housing last I heard) though, as many FCs will probably have people to gather the mats to outfit their FC house without needing to touch the market boards.

On top of that, the 2 star CLN foods aren't even worth making at the moment over lower tier food as current stats/gear won't hit the caps that the food can give (with a lower %), so those mats are a bit of a deadend too. Vampire Plant only sells because it's used to make the weapon that WHM needs for their Relic Quest (Thavnarian Mistletoe and Trillium Bulb being the other two that aren't just bought from a vendor). Alchemist gets the mats to make the Grimoires for SCH/SMN from, you guessed it, Mining.

^Two stars for him. He gets it.