Dumbfounded...

[XLauncher]

Grandmaster of the Hand here, along with two DoLs at 60 (fishing will be easy whenever I get around to it) and two battle classes at cap. Leves and Grand Company turn ins made up the bulk of my exp. When a GC request yields a bonus that day, you can easily gain upwards of 1.8m exp from the turn in that day, so getting a few of those when your crafting jobs are nearing cap is a huge boon. Collectibles are also a huge help, as there's no limit on how many times you can do them like there is on leves, and some of them are pretty light on materials; marron glace pretty much singled handedly carried my CUL from 58 to 60, as well as bought me nearly all my Master III books (protip: the ALC book is garbage, save it for last if you even bother at all). I don't have any huge secrets regarding the process, but it was quite helpful that a lot of the leve and GC requests were things given out through questing and HQ versions at that. I bought a lot of things from the market board purely for level fodder, and some of it was quite cheap since people didn't know yet.

As for battle classes, no secret there. MSQ for my DPS class, dungeon spam on my healing class. And for what it's worth, I didn't skip any cut scenes during the MSQ.

[Doki]

Protip: get a few retainers to max level battle class. Their regular hunt ventures can farm 10+ materials an hour each. I have 2 retainers that farm dragon hides, often bringing in 20 HQ hides total per hour. By the time I log in, do daily hunts, and roulettes, I have about 60 or more hides waiting to be crafted, or sold for profit.

[LineageRazor]

So, theres people that have gotten every craft and every gathering to 60 along with maybe one or two battle jobs. I think I work pretty hard in the game but how the heck are they doing this so fast? Maybe I'm not working as hard as I think lol

Crafting and Gathering classes really do level fast, if you're smart about it. A little TOO fast, for my comfort, to be honest; I like to enjoy the leveling process by doing things like crafting one of every item and doing every Guildleve - but a couple weeks of crafting Grand Company turn-ins, and suddenly my Goldsmith is level 57 and the rest of my crafts are 53+. Aside from crafting a few stacks of materials, I haven't really focused on my crafting jobs, and they're already that high. I haven't crafted a single collectable (I really gotta get to work on those scrips!), or done even one Guildleve. If I were to truly sit down and focus on crafting, I'd likely have them all to 60 now, as well.

[Kydi]

For someone who has only leveled blacksmith to about 24, how would you recommend levelling from scratch? I'm keen to be relatively self sufficient if possible, so I guess gathering must come first, then the crafting classes.

[Azper]

Most of mine are in the 54-56 range at this point (ARM and CUL excluded). I'm stubborn and refuse to pay for stuff I can craft or gather (MIN and BTN are at 60) myself. >.< That's all been from the GC turn-ins and just casually using a few leves here and there. I'm sure if I put more time and effort into the whole collectable system, they could be a lot higher, but I just haven't had time to dive into that yet.