Who needs money? Crafters, who needs shards?

[EllemEnopee]

You know, I'd like to suggest another use of this. In particular, this is for you FC crafters out there who have big shard costs and perhaps not enough support from your FC. Make this into an FC event.

Even if you only have a few people in your FC who do not craft and never will, getting a group together to run and do the level 1 quests can build some fellowship and give your FC mates a chance to feel they are paying the crafters back. If you can come up with some sort of incentive -- whatever would be meaningful in your FC's "rewards" for its members, such as credit towards a higher rank within the FC -- it could provide additional incentive to spend 30 minutes traveling with your FC en masse to 8 guilds in 3 cities to have 2 conversations each with 2 people at each guild. To convince them to stay at each for 10 more minutes to spam Basic Synthesis enough to hit level 5 and do 1 more quest, give everyone who does this an HQ 3-stack of the potion or ether that fits their level. If they go the extra mile and get 3 of those classes to 10, give them an HQ 5-stack of their favorite food. I'm picking potions and foods because most of them have no crafted components, so the shard cost is low. Finally, for those who put in the effort for perhaps 6, perhaps all 8 of the classes to get them to level 10, craft some of the new appearance gear that requires mats from treasure maps or ventures and do a random draw to see who gets them. Or give them a "ticket" for each class they get to level 10 so they can have up to 8 chances to win.

Oh, and if you do have some sort of contest for leveling crafts to 10, you might want to set a deadline several days in the future from the initial event. Getting 8 crafts to level 5 takes little time. Those other 5 levels take a bit longer. Report people's progress as a means to egg on the others. And have them convert any gear from quest rewards that gets spiritbound into materia, donating that materia to the FC.