Leveling on a budget for heavensward

[AlexStarr]

I plan to try to get my miner/botanist from 43 each to 50 this weekend. I have 100 leves built up. Any advice from the community for this or gearing up afterwards? My plan is to make enough money from the early expansion to buy a house for my little FC

[Eye_Gore]

Doing leves for gather is a little mind numbing, boring as heck, but you just have to grin an bear it. Level 40-44 is Whitebrim and 45-50 Mor Dhona, if I remember correctly. As for gearing I haven't gone beyond the AF gear for them so not sure there. After I leveled all the DoH and DoL never did much more.

[Yumi_umi]

After hitting 50, u meld ur hq foragers or AF gear to meet the reqs ( imo get AF if u only wanna get 1/2 star nodes )
Meld till u reach minimal req and grind out the 60 HQ gathering 1 star turn in for forager main hand and 30 HQ for your foragers hat.
Being 2 star gatherer should be more than enough to net u some gil.

Or u can just hit 50 and mine the cluster nodes in mor dhona for some gil
I.e 1 cluster sells for 700-1000+ gil

[Shadygrove]

For the L 50 class quests take the hat. Do not meld it. Otherwise ignore AF.

As you can afford it, and this is NOT an if you can afford it, acquire and meld the forager's set. This is actually cheaper than the AF route, although it might not look it at first glance. Its about the overmeling. Three materia slots vs. two. After that work on the accessories.

Earned stuff: you WANT the Forager's hat first thing. I would suggest getting it as miner as the node also has Grade 3 Shroud topsoil which sells well.

If you can get the stats to do so you can bypass the forager's tools and go straight into the Supra / Lucius path. The crafted Artisan's offhand will help a bunch on this. (I somehow believe this can be done in forager's without overmelding, but this is only a belief.)

I will log out as BTN, its fully melded BiS.