Quote Originally Posted by LongsunZhao View Post
I signed in about 3 and a half hours ago with a plan to do a different craft (leatherworker). I didn't have the money to make the item for the Grand Company. I don't have gil to do any leves to level it. All I could do was the challenge logs. Cheap materia melds on leather items and the HQ thing I did by making just animal leather. I just feel like there's too much to take in. It's not easy juggling all these materials needed, all the gathering and then making good enough collectables to cap.

I'm really starting to feel totally out of my depth with this game now.
I see that your LTW is 58 now. What crafting gear are you using for this? If crafting gear is an issue, you can get a leg up by using your CUL to get decent blue scrip crafting gear so that you can start HQing things a lot easier at your level. As a side note, you might want to level WVR as well so that you can make the other crafting gear.

If you haven't leveled a battle retainer, I would highly suggest doing so -- you can get 75% (rough estimate, since you'll need some botanist mats as well -- but I see you also have a level 60 botanist) of your materials (aside from crystals) from a battle class retainer for LTW. I can see where your issues are coming from if you thought that your retainer wasn't worth leveling though. You have a botanist, you can get crystals that way or have your retainer gathering crystals. You now have everything at your disposal to make leve or GC turn-in items. Total gil spent? a few ventures, which, if you're doing it right shouldn't cost you any money at all.

Having trouble gathering high level items? why not spend a little bit of time for blue scrips and upgrading those forager pieces with blue scrip gear -- again, 0 gil spent.