Foragers gear....

[LineageRazor]

Before Lucis, a full set of fully melded Forager's gear, along with HQ food was necessary in order to catch the mightiest of the Big Fish, unless you used the Free Company buff (in which case you could get away with a partial, or not-fully-melded set).

For Miner/Botanist, though, yeah, you can manage even the highest nodes without it, though as always higher stats means better gathering rate and higher HQ chance.

[Lyzern]

It's only expensive if you buy it off the Market Board.

If you craft it yourself, you'll save at least 500k gil on my server, that's half the cost.

If you get your own sealants, you cut off almost 90% of the price.

And the reason I got mine is because it's a (very small, yes) boost on all my 3 gatherers and I don't have to have 3 sets of equipment.

[Alx789]

I gather 1-3 star maths for my crafts. It saves a lot of gil. When i started to craft 3 star i had to gather HQ 2 star to make leather, ingots, etc. i used 650 gp rotation (fully melded forager gives 636gp and 4 gp in offhand, then perception food buff with 10 gp at least). After getting craft lucis/masterbooks2 i modified my rotations and now gathering HQ is not the main goal for me - i prefer amount of items, so i use food with 10+ Gp buff and max gathering buff.

[CGMidlander]

I didn't have to meld a Miner's set at all because I had a Forager's set for my Botanist already. (And melding the Forager's stuff was easy because of the extra guaranteed materia slot)

[GenJoe]

I didn't have to meld a Miner's set at all because I had a Forager's set for my Botanist already. (And melding the Forager's stuff was easy because of the extra guaranteed materia slot)

Yeah overmelding can be incredibly annoying to just sit there and click away.. If that's the case, I supppose forager's set will allow you to get by without having to go through all that trouble of trying 50 times before a materia goes in..

[chidarake]

and when xpac comes out and the stats are needed to mine the new high level nodes the people who did upgrade will have an advantage maybe during levelling or timed nodes.

of course at that point everyone will be clambering over the mats needed to craft them and the sales volume will probs increase and so will the price. although im sure S.E will make it much easier to get sealants by then if the gear is needed.