good game, but can't proceed without leveling crafting :<

[Alise]

^
lol, as all answers over there, everything has solution that you couldn't see, but then you chose to just "make a thread for rant" instead of "making a thread ask for solution"

Want to do main story quest ?
>> never need crafter/gatherer to begin with, you can just trade material melded by key item. it written on your journey in english.

Want to get cotton ball ?
>> it is really cheap from NPC vender, cheaper than the worth of time for a gatherer to find it. As level 50 gatherer myself, I always purchase it from NPC too.

[gadzi_h]

Don't worry to much about crafting. I did the quest then finished the story before starting any crafts the only advantage to taking a crafting class to 20 is melding your own gear. Taking it to 30 is producing your own dye for modifying your clothing. If you took that long to level your crafting you might not know about "basic touch" adding to EXP gained from each craft. As quality goes up so does your EXP earned. Crafting is not for everyone and I understand if you don't want to level it, but as everyone has said you don't have to level them, but if you do I would recommend levelling your DoL with your DoH, it saves you a lot of gil.

[Merryl]

Totally optional quest and skipable...I did. ^^
Just keep up with the hunting logs and keep moving forward, you're half way there.

[Hiroradius]

You don't need to craft to play the story, BUT, there are a few story quests that require a crafted item that they tell you to craft.. Just go to the bulletin boards to get it.

Also, fyi, all crafting classes can be leveled to 20 WITHOUT gathering. The mats can be found on vendors for next to nothing. Some are in the crafting vendor, some are in city vendors, some are in outpost vendors, but up to 20, all crafting mats can be bought from a vendor, after level 20, some still can be bought from a vendor some need to be gathered or farmed off mobs.

The only thing that will hold you back from doing the story are the mandatory dungeons and waiting in que for xx amount of time. Everything else can be done.