How to level DOH

[monochromicorn]

First thing should be to get to 15 in every DoH class so you have a bunch of basic cross class skills to work with (can skip armorer if you like).

Should not need to use any leves to get to 15, just sit in the guild and craft stuff using only materials sold by the guild (for cheap) and either sell the results back to the guild, sell it on the market (if profitable enough), or desynthesize it if it's one of the desynth classes you want to level.

And don't bother leveling the DoM class (like mining) to go with it unless you really want that leveled too. That takes forever, especially if you're not using leves (assuming you want to save your leves to level your DoH class).

hes wrong only in saying that you shouldnt level the DoL classes. buying those mats cn get very expensive, especially when you have to start paying 500 or more for a mat with a stack of 20-30, and you only need 10. thats an extra 5-10k gil for some intermediate mats. wait till you have to buy some of the mats for lv 45+ crafting recipes.

edit: DoM is disciple of magic, so not really sure if you should trust a guy giving advice if he doesnt know the difference between disciple of magic and disciple of land

[Giantbane]

hes wrong only in saying that you shouldnt level the DoL classes. buying those mats cn get very expensive, especially when you have to start paying 500 or more for a mat with a stack of 20-30, and you only need 10. thats an extra 5-10k gil for some intermediate mats. wait till you have to buy some of the mats for lv 45+ crafting recipes.

edit: DoM is disciple of magic, so not really sure if you should trust a guy giving advice if he doesnt know the difference between disciple of magic and disciple of land

oh, no, there's a typo ... (there I fixed my original post)

it's time vs. money ... you will spend a lot of time leveling your mining class, particularly if you have to split leve allowances between the DoH and the DoL class. I didn't bother leveling any gathering classes until after I had all 8 DoH classes leveled. And yet, by always choosing the most cost effective leve quests (cheapest mats vs. highest return), I ended up with more $$ and more shards than I started with on each and every craft.

Even then, I only chose to level my miner so I could make my retainer a miner. I never do any mining myself and $$ (or making $$ from crafting) has never been an issue for me. DoH gathering is nice if you want to gather your own stuff, but it's not at all necessary if you'd prefer not to do that sort of thing.

also, i would level WVR if you want to. i regret doing ALC first because crafting gear was so expensive on jenova.

This is good advice. In addition to crafting your own DoH gear, if you level WVR to 50, CS2 is an excellent cross class skill that is both useful while leveling and in crafting anything at all (like jewelry to spiritbind, HQ items spiritbind faster). To this end, if you want to grab all the basic skills that you'll want for crafting at 50, consider doing Culnarian to 37 (Steady Hands 2) and Carpenter to 50 (Byregot's Blessing) before your goldsmith. Both of those skills are very, very good for crafting so you'll want them. And if you get them before leveling your goldsmith (along with CS2 from weaver), it will make leveling your goldsmith much easier (easier to HQ items for more XP & $$ when you turn the skill in).

But that's only if you're willing to level 1-3 other classes first before getting back to your goldsmith.


Also, here is a list of every leve turn in for every DoL/DoH class (i *think* they're all up to date):
http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/118...Material-Tiers

very useful to plan which leves you want to do (whether you value the ones that give you the most XP or whether you value the ones that use the cheapest materials vs. gives back the most $$).

[monochromicorn]

snip

sorry about that attack on the typo, bad day at work, and i had a bad time controlling myself earlier.

it might just be that the economy is better on your server, because it is a lot cheaper, although slightly time consuming, for the DoLs. i got botanist up to 50 in almost a week, but that has saved me over 100k just for crafting mats, and before i leveled botanist, there was no easy way for me to make money. i could gather shards, but that could only get you so far. the crafting mats arent sold in the kind of numbers you actually need for crafting, most are 33 to 99, and if you only need 15, youre paying a lot of extra gil for mats you might not need.

edit: i include in that the amount ive had to spend upgrading my gathering gear. so X amount of gil - gathering gear every 5 levels= roughly 100k.

[Giantbane]

sorry about that attack on the typo, bad day at work, and i had a bad time controlling myself earlier.

it might just be that the economy is better on your server, because it is a lot cheaper, although slightly time consuming, for the DoLs. i got botanist up to 50 in almost a week, but that has saved me over 100k just for crafting mats, and before i leveled botanist, there was no easy way for me to make money. i could gather shards, but that could only get you so far. the crafting mats arent sold in the kind of numbers you actually need for crafting, most are 33 to 99, and if you only need 15, youre paying a lot of extra gil for mats you might not need.

edit: i include in that the amount ive had to spend upgrading my gathering gear. so X amount of gil - gathering gear every 5 levels= roughly 100k.

Yea, I can definitely see the merit of doing the DoL class too. But I hate gathering so I just bought the materials and went that route. I was still able to find a relatively cheap levequest to use at every stage so this never became a problem for me, personally.

[theimmortalbum]

snip

Yeah, I replied without quoting because I'm dumb. You may have convinced me to not level my DoL - it's time consuming, and I have 2-3 hours per night to play, and that includes running my daily expert and high-level. I just got my last Atma last night, and think I may take a break from Animus to level DoH. It seems like a nice change of pace, and it's not like Animus/Novus is going anywhere.

I'm also on Ultros. I'm sitting on ~600k gil right now. I don't mind going broke, since there's nothing I need to buy, but obviously I'd prefer to have money. I should level EVERYTHING DoH to 15, then WVR to 50 (going broke if I need to), CUL to 37, CRP to 50, and then GSM, then the others if I feel so inclined? How far do you think 600k will get me in that respect?

I'd almost think I'd prefer cheapest mats + $$ as opposed to XP, just because of the whole $$ aspect. Is the xp/$$ difference that great between those two extremes?

[Giantbane]

Yeah, I replied without quoting because I'm dumb. You may have convinced me to not level my DoL - it's time consuming, and I have 2-3 hours per night to play, and that includes running my daily expert and high-level. I just got my last Atma last night, and think I may take a break from Animus to level DoH. It seems like a nice change of pace, and it's not like Animus/Novus is going anywhere.

I'm also on Ultros. I'm sitting on ~600k gil right now. I don't mind going broke, since there's nothing I need to buy, but obviously I'd prefer to have money. I should level EVERYTHING DoH to 15, then WVR to 50 (going broke if I need to), CUL to 37, CRP to 50, and then GSM, then the others if I feel so inclined? How far do you think 600k will get me in that respect?

I'd almost think I'd prefer cheapest mats + $$ as opposed to XP, just because of the whole $$ aspect. Is the xp/$$ difference that great between those two extremes?

Like I said, I made $$ leveling up every single craft, but that was a little while ago and some of the materials are more expensive now. But you should still be able to do all of that for much less than you have. Getting everything to 15 should be really cheap since all the materials you should need are sold by the guild vendor for next to nothing. After that, I would say not to worry about a gathering classes unless you hit a point where the necessary materials are just far too expensive for you to continue.

The one exception to this is if you want your retainer to be a miner to help you making items to spiritbind. While I hate mining for myself, it is nice to be able to send the retainer out to gather all the necessary materials I need for crafting my own jewelry if I want to spirit bind. If you want to do this, then it would make sense to level up your mining also, since your retainer's level is limited by your level in that class (so you need a 50 miner for your retainer to be a 50 miner). Of course, that's 1 more thing to level (not including needing to level up your retainer too).


As far as XP vs. money, worst case quests will still give you 50% xp of the maximum so you're not losing *that* much. You *usually* want to avoid anything that says triple because those will be the most expensive. Courier quests will often be your best bet (especially if you have a free aetheryte destination) unless it requires particularly expensive materials because it still gives you a lot of xp (~90% of a triple turn in) but you make fewer items. The only problem with those can be travel costs between the Quest Giver in the main city and the Quest Receiver out in an outpost somewhere, but that can be mostly negated (see below). But in general, just use the link I provided (the values for those are still mostly correct) and the market board to compare the material costs of creating the item vs. the amount of experience and the rewards you get in return to figure out the cheapest way to level.

Mitigating courier travel costs:
Set your home point to the main city where the Quest Giver is. Set a favorite destination (use your free destination if you have one) to the outpost wherever the Quest Receiver is. Get the quest from the main city, teleport to your favored/free destination where the Quest Receiver is and turn in the quest. Then switch to a level 1 job (any level 1 job, a DoH class will do) and go get yourself killed. You resurrect back at the main city for free and can get the quest again.

[Magetype]

You should also do your Grand Company supply missions as these give great XP. Also the Ixal tribe quests also have turn-in's for XP and they provide ventures as well.