Leveling Speed?

[Flett117]

I told you man, it's just not worth it on your first sun through and the time you spent with that crafting, you could be 5-10 lvls higher. Keeping crafting gear deals with HQ gear and at that low of lvl you have a 1% chance.

[GenJoe]

I told you man, it's just not worth it on your first sun through and the time you spent with that crafting, you could be 5-10 lvls higher. Keeping crafting gear deals with HQ gear and at that low of lvl you have a 1% chance.

Not really, I personally wouldn't pursue that path, but I have a friend who's doing that.. leveling all gathering/DoH and his combat class(monk) simultaneously. It's slooooow... but you can actually hq near 100% as long as you have the other classes around the same level for the cross class skills. I'm leveling crafting on my alt right now and I've resorted to just making my own gear on the alt instead of making it from my main to transfer to save myself the trouble. I've failed once or twice, but hey, the mats are cheap enough to try again.. Beats having to relog.
It will also grant you a very in-depth insight into the crafting mechanics, so you'll be ready to get into the end-game crafting as soon as you hit level 50.
It's a good way to do it if you can handle the slow progression.

[Niwashi]

I haven't had much difficulty getting High Quality results while leveling crafting. I think if you're only getting a 1% High Quality rate while crafting, then you're probably doing something wrong. It just relies on getting most of the crafting classes to level 15 before taking any much higher than 15, so you get the cross-class skills you need. After 15, you can focus on just the ones you're most interested in, plus perhaps Culinarian, as it has a useful level 37 skill. (The rest will become important again once reaching endgame when you want the level 50 skills, but between 15 and 50 you can specialize, focusing on one or two at a time if you want.)

It's quite useful to be able to make your own HQ gear while leveling up. Sure, your battle classes can sometimes get better than HQ gear from dungeons, but only when RNG is in your favor and the right piece of gear drops right when you need it to. The rest of the time, when you haven't gotten a rare dungeon set lately, the best gear available is High Quality crafted gear. Now, those who aren't crafting can sometimes just buy that off the MB, but being able to make it yourself both saves some gil and guarantees that it will be available when you want it.

The crafting does take up time, though. If you're in a hurry to reach 50 as soon as possible, it's fine to level a single battle class first using a combination of dropped, quest, and purchased gear, and only then go back and work on crafting. It's just that you've missed one of the advantages of crafting by that point.

[GenJoe]

You can also get some nice supplementary income as a low level crafter/gatherer. Little competition and most lv 50s just prefer to buy it for convenience, that means profit.

So that helps if you intend to do any crafting in the end-game.