How important is crafting?

[Thistledown]

Think of it as a side game that you can make a whole game out of. You will NEVER be requirecd to craft to do something that is not directly crafting-related.

It does make pretty gil though. I'll give it that.

[Akuzimo]

I got my first class all the way to 50 and completed the initial story chain before I picked up my first profession. You will be fine without one. Focus on your Conjurer before going into professions.

[kaynide]

Many people have already answered for the most part, but I figured I'd chime in a bit anyway:

For me, crafting is more of a helpful bonus than a necessity. When I got everything to 50 I found, very conveniently, that I could repair all my gear on the fly, even in dungeons. Very useful

Additionally, self melding or crafting gear is useful, but not crucial. You can always pay someone to get something..and the price to buy something straight off the market board is usually not so inflated (exception: endgame/specialty goods and anything that resembles lady's underwear...)

[raela]

Repairing in dungeons is a nice benefit (you can even repair while in combat!). If you constantly craft new HQ sets once you spiritbond one, you can generate a lot of materia while leveling alt classes/jobs. For leveling, you can take 30~60 minutes a day to do GC supply/provisioning missions (and maybe ixali quests) to gradually level all classes at once, without too much effort. Definitely take up botanist or miner (or both!) at the same time, possibly with the GC dailies, so you can have a retainer take care of shards for you.

Then again, I actually enjoy crafting, so leveling this way was fun for me. I barely bought any mats (gathered my own 99% of the time) and hit 50 on gathering/crafting classes before I hit 50 on my battle job.