Level 50 BTN retainer

[Noriag]

Hi everyone. Just a quick question. Im curious if anyone here has managed to send their above retainers on the highest level woodland exploration venture. The gathering prerequisite is 383 I believe. I gave my retainer all my best gear (forgets hat and hatchet as well as my socketed hq gear and they are only up to 315. Is this even possible right now? Thanks for the help!

[Sapphic]

Yep, with blue axe you can get upto 472 gathering, so for 388 will need to get another artisan tool, one for you, one for retainer. I'm at 407 gathering atm.

[RavenL]

I believe you need the new main hand and head to reach it. I have 374 gathering right now but I don't have the main hand and my off hand isn't fully melded yet.

[Ronove]

My retainer has 370 gathering, so once I get the rest of his stuff melded, then I can definitely give him what's needed for the highest exploration. Granted, I gave him the Forager's Axe because I'm not using it atm. The hat doesn't matter I think because it doesn't have Gathering? Or that's at least what I've heard. I don't have the hat yet.

[Leknaat]

my retainer is at 385 gathering (2 over)

Forager's Hatchet
Militia Scythe (HQ) + Guerdon II x2 (+8)
Forager's Hat
HQ Botanist Body/Hands/Legs/Feet
Waist with Guerdon I x1 (+3)
Neck/Ear/Ringsx2 with Guerdon 1 x1 (+3)
Militia Wrist with Guerdon II x1 (+4)

And yeah the gathering on the forager hat barely matters at +4

[Noriag]

Yikes. All my gear was socketed with most gp materia for my journey to get the f oragers gear, which I did. Guess id have to remove and meld gathering plus stuff if I wanted to get high enough. What kind of stuff do ylu get for the highest level ventures?

[mbncd]

If you spend a little under 20k at the Calamity Salvager, you can buy a spare level 50 quest axe if you need it. I don't even have the new tools yet for myself so that's what I did.

Avoid the tier 4 materia and you should be able to cheaply reach the gathering caps on everything else without any dangerous expensive over melding, just using tier 1 and 2 materia on almost everything.

Don't bother with the other stats and it makes it so much easier. With 0 perception materia on my retainers (though, they are wearing the guild quest tools HQ gathering class specific gear with the gathering materia melded to cap), 95% of what they bring back from the highest level ventures is HQ hidden node stuff (related to their class, like my miner brings back HQ gold ore while my botanist brings back HQ fruit) anyhow and the rest is the minion or light steel or taffeta (not sure if they have HQ variants).

[Leknaat]

3 Allagan Silver Pieces and 3 hq Trillium for my first 18 hour foray

[mbncd]

Oh yeah, I forgot, the 500gil pieces of allagan are the currency of the highest level 18hrs, 3 or 4 with each. Also you get 3 HQ node items rather than just one, like 3 HQ crawler cocoons from a single 18hr.