You'll get your level 1 starter tool from the quest unlocking the class. After that, you can get upgrades from vendors or the MB. When vendor NPCs that sell gear offer "Battle Gear" and "Field Gear", the Field Gear is stuff designed for crafting and gathering classes. For your crafting classes you'll want stuff that boosts Craftsmanship, Control, and CP (Crafting Points), whereas gathering classes want stuff that boosts Gathering, Perception, and GP (Gathering Points).

As far as leveling other crafting classes for cross-class skills, there are cross-class skills at levels 15, 37, and 50, except you can mostly ignore the 37 part, since the only really useful one there is Culinarian's Steady Hand II skill. If that's one of the two classes you plan on primarily focusing on, you'll get that one once you reach the right level. For the other classes, level 15 is the main pre-endgame concern.


Quote Originally Posted by RiversideGuy View Post
I sure hope various nodes are pretty obvious, like sparkling and noted on mini and main map!
Two out of three, at least when it comes to Botany and Mining. There will be a sparkling location on a tree or rock with a label overhead showing things like "Level 5 Mature Tree" or "Level 10 Mineral Deposit". Their locations also show up as icons on your mini-map (though not on the full-sized map, so you need to be close enough to get them in mini-map range). They appear in groups of four, disappear once you've finished gathering from them, but then reappear once you've gathered from a couple of the others, so you can keep circling around that group of four nodes gathering the same items. Oh, and for finding stuff, you'll get a Gathering Log which lists all the items you can gather and the region and area where they can be found. You then just need to find the appropriate set of nodes in that area.

For fishing, just head to anywhere you see water and try casting your fishing line. If you've found a good spot, you'll see a notice something like "You cast your line in the Undiscovered Fishing Hole". Once you catch something there, it becomes discovered and is added to your fishing log. (Thereafter that "you cast your line" message will show it by name.) Your fishing log gives information on each fishing hole you've discovered, including a link to a map showing its location (though oddly, this doesn't show on your main map, only when linked to from your fishing log).