Best way to get cross-craft mats?

[CaptainRumfiend]

Having a full time job during the week, I find myself having decent spare time to devote to the game.... but not really enough to level up every single crafting class. That's a bit much. Therefore, I often find myself needing mats from other classes, such as leather for my weaver, in order to finish levequests. Is there any other way of getting the mats? So far, my FC has been pretty good about helping me, as we are a mix of people with different classes. The Market Board is too costly and I won't make any profit off of the quests.

I really don't think there is any other way and I'm probably going to end up trying to add leatherworker to my trades, but just on the off chance that there's another way, I thought I would ask.

[synesthetic]

Hm.. At low levels, you can get away with buying such mats from NPCs. I always run a search at http://xivdb.com/ to see if I can buy this or that mat from somewhere before resorting to crafting it, since I hate gathering shards to make up for it afterwards.

At higher levels though, you're stuck either crafting them for yourself or getting/buying help.
If you ever do find the time to level up more crafter classes though, it's worth it. Certain skills, like Byregot's Blessing, are amazing for any crafter.

Or you could take a break to level up a combat class first, and then jump into some beast tribe quests. I'm told the Ixali daily quests are actually quite good for giving crafter xp, hardly costing you any shards, on top of providing you with the quest mats required. Like by the time I capped out my reputation with that tribe (which took a couple of weeks?), one guy said he went from 1 to 46 CUL. Granted, you can cap a craft faster than that normally if you have access to the mats to do it; but for something you can do on the side, those quests are very good.

[Bixby]

Yeah, I always check xivdb for sources of things I'm going to need.

For leather, you could farm up the hides yourself and find someone to leather-fy them for you. Or spend that time doing something more profitable and buy the leather with said profits. Same net effect. Depends on how you view the spectrum between "fun" and "time/cost effective."

What are your retainers doing? If you have one set as a battle class, they can bring you back specific monster drops. Might need to level/gear them to a certain degree to get the stuff you're specifically after, and for leather you'd still need to find another crafter, but it's an option.

Personally... I just accepted the cost of leveling DoH classes. It may be possible to profit from the leveling the whole way, but that's a whole lot of time and energy (i.e. opportunity cost). For me it was easier to just spend some up-front gil to level, knowing I'd make it all back several times over once I'd finished leveling.

[Blindheart]

Beast tribes for sylph, ixali, and Amalj'aa will get you cloth, wood, and metals you can purchase, but takes a month or so to unlock vendor that high. I don't think they have beast tribe selling leather.

[Nyalia]

Honestly, if you want to do endgame crafting, you'll have to level up all DoH classes to 50 anyway. If you have limited time to spend in-game, I strongly recommend doing the daily Grand Company turn-ins to get crafter exp. You can also do the Ixali Beast Tribe Dailies to get good crafter exp. Also, crafter leves give tons of experience and can be done rapidly if you pre-craft the turn-in items, and make exclusively HQ ones (don't do the triple-turnins, do the singles or couriers).

But, if you just want a ton of NQ mats of specific types (like, Boar Leather), you should /shout in a city and see if you can find a crafter who will make you a bulk order of the item (99-396 depending on how much you'll use it) for well under the MB price. This can be done by the crafter via Quick Synth while afking, and they'll get some HQ items they can keep and sell on the MB. I know I'd do this for you if you were on my server, for a fair price.

[Eye_Gore]

You can buy leather and hard leather right from the weaver guild supplier, heck of alot cheaper than the MB. As stated though once you get higher, you will either need to level other classes or spend on the MB.

[Urthdigger]

Going to have to agree with Nyalia. There's little reason to take up just one craft, since you need them all up there to HQ reliably, and all classes use items from a variety of crafters, so even if it's just to craft/repair/meld your own gear you'll need at least 3-4.

[The_Last_Dragoon]

My suggestion is to not take on a levequest that specifically requires you to outsource materials. Instead, focus on redoing a single levequest that is located within close proximity to the levemete. That is of course unless you desperately want that particular item, but otherwise it's just better not to deal with them.

[Nyalia]

^ This too. Use a list like this one to determine what items are requested for the different leves, find the one that's easiest for you to make, and just do that one over and over until you hit the next multiple of 5. Repeat until 50.

[Niwashi]

Some crafting classes are more dependent on others for materials than others are, and (as you've already seen) Weaver depends on a lot of Leatherworker items. It's true the other way around as well. Leatherworker needs a fair amount of thread and cloth from Weaver. So it tends to be easier to level those two up together. (Each needs occasional items from other classes as well, but not as often as from each other, so that makes it somewhat easier to either buy those occasional items, or just avoid the crafts that require the more expensive ones.)

Even if you don't feel you have time for dealing with all eight crafting classes at once, would you consider expanding from two to three of them at a time? If so, I'd suggest the following:

• 1st) Unlock Leatherworker, Alchemist and Culinarian, and level those three from 1 to 15. (Pause on leveling Weaver and Goldsmith during this step, except for whatever Weaver items you need to supply your Leatherworking.) Alchemist and Culinarian are relatively self-sufficient in terms of materials from other classes, and Leatherworker mainly needs Weaver items, which you can already make.
  
  Once you get these three up to level 15 (along with Weaver and Goldsmith which you already have), you'll have access to five of the best level 15 cross-class skills. So you won't be too gimped in your ability to produce High Quality items while you're leveling stuff the rest of the way. (You still won't have quite the versatility of someone leveling all eight classes, but you'll gain a lot of it.)

• 2nd) Once you've unlocked those cross-class skills, abandon ALC and CUL, and focus on bringing Leatherworker up to around the same level as Weaver.

• 3rd) Continue leveling Goldsmith, Weaver, and Leatherworker (trying to keep WVR and LTW near enough the same level to supply each other with mats). You'll still need occasional metal or wood materials, but not that many, so you can either buy those or just avoid the recipes that need them, depending on how expensive they are.