Some Questions

[Sentaryuu]

Hello, I've been playing for about 3 months now and I have some questions mainly about crafters and gatherers. What are the best ways to level them? I'm finding it slow to level them. Main reason I'd like to level them is to make my own glamour prisms (and buy the "New Emperor's Gear" and of course craft my own gear), I just don't want to bother my FCmates every time I need one, which is a lot and I don't want to keep having to buy them. It can get expensive.

The way I'm using to level is the Ixal quests which is usually enough to level Weaver 1 time (currently my highest at 39). Main classes I want to focus on right now is Weaver (especially this one), Goldsmith, Leatherworker, Alchemist, Culinarian (only want to level for Steady Hand 2), and Botanist.

Also something to do with the Ixal quests. How can I get the helm components HQ for the quest to raise my reputation to 5, like a good rotation or something? I've been stuck at max on rep 4 for awhile now.

Thanks in advance!

[Raldo]

One of the fastest and easiest ways to level crafters is by doing levequests. There are even some leveling sections where you can just buy the leve items off the market board and the gil you're rewarded tends to be roughly the amount you were spending (mythril ingots come to mind, for this).

If you're out of leves, just grind out crafts like you would any other job. Since you wanted to level gatherers too, you could knock out two birds with one stone.

Other options for exp are your grand company supply/povisioning turn-ins, but those are only doable once a day.

Re: Ixal quests
You get an infinite number of tries, right? If you fail to HQ, you can just pick up another set of ingredients, if I recall correctly. Just keep trying until you succeed. Other suggestions are going to be your usual, use your best crafter, get better gear, try different cross-class actions, etc.

[Nutz]

Best way to level crafters is with leves (and Ixali quests -- though they're a bit limited). I'd go ahead and progress WVR ahead of the others, but still do the Ixali quests daily. Reason being that the final tier of daily quests can be a bit tough at the appropriate level (though super easy at 50+) and you can just complete those quests on any class (WVR) and turn them in on whichever class you actually want to level (that's how I leveled ALC almost entirely and a lot of CUL).

Also be sure to turn in items to your grand company daily, especially if the item has a star next to it (double exp). Always turn in HQ (again double exp) only for leves and GC (unless you somehow can't). Some leves are better than others, but generally the ones that require travel will bring in the most gil for the effort (unless running feels like a lot of effort).

For gathering, leves aren't so great. They work, but are much better spent on crafters. Turning in HQ items to your GC daily is very nice for gathering professions though. It requires nothing but time, as opposed to perhaps better gear and luck with a crafter. Moreover, the side effect of gathering those HQ items is that you gathered a bunch of stuff to craft with or sell.

Turning in a bunch of stuff to your GC will allow you lots of seals for purchasing engineering and survival manuals which are always handy (+50% exp capped at 40k or 2 hours, whichever occurs first). Other than that, WVR, LTW, and GSM are the classes that will most help you progress with crafting and gathering in general because they produce almost all of the equipment (BSM makes most tools). Eventually you will probably want all classes leveled, and if you stick with doing the Ixali quests that will be fairly easy to achieve eventually.

Also, don't be shy about buying turn in items if you have more gil than time. Sometimes they're not even expensive.

EDIT: wasn't sure what you were saying about the Ixali quests, but yeah, if you made a NQ item just throw it away and talk to the NPC again. They were apparently given a bottomless bag of ingredients to provide you with. You only provide the very small number of shards. If you're having trouble you can look up some 2.x crafting guides, though most are suited for omni-crafters with access to every ability. Might just take multiple tries with whatever you've got.

[Sentaryuu]

Thank you for the answers!

The problem of having to try so many times hoping I'd just get lucky is my lightning shards (once I tried 15 times for one of the Ixali quests). It's the shards I have the least of while all others I have over 1000. Though I am currently trying to level Miner (wish I could collect them with Botanist instead) as well so I can collect my own lightning shards/crystals. Mostly using the provisions with my GC to level it.

And of course the cost of some materials are little expensive for my taste (though it's most likely just my server), so some materials are harder for me to get which is another reason why I want to level Botanist, so I can get some of those materials.

I need to try leves at some point.

[coldheart21]

Just wanted to add my own question to this if I may. I haven't done any of the crafting gathering yet, but I do eventually want to try it. Should I level up the gathering classes first or do them simultaneously? I do have a retainer that is full of mats found through my leveling career if that changes anything.

[Ehr]

Just wanted to add my own question to this if I may. I haven't done any of the crafting gathering yet, but I do eventually want to try it. Should I level up the gathering classes first or do them simultaneously? I do have a retainer that is full of mats found through my leveling career if that changes anything.

I would recommend doing them all at the same time if you're looking to be Gil efficient. I did my crafters one at a time and it made me go broke since I was having to buy mats and i didn't really level my gatherers until I finished leveling my crafters.

[Anova]

Definitely level up both. Both classes benefit tremendously from leves, so you may have to spread it out. I would start on crafters first, simply because you can get all your mats from the local city vendors or from your fc vendor (if you have a fc house). Gatherers benefit a lot from chocobos and although you three are past that point, I would recommend newer players to wait until they get chocobos before attempting gathering.

Also, some other tips you might know:

If you are leveling a crafter, I would prioritize Carpenter, Goldsmith, Alchemist, Culinarian, and Goldsmith to level 15 (in any order). Access to the lv.15 cross-class abilities of those classes will allow you to guarantee HQ items. This will help you gear up your other crafters/gatherers as you immediately have the best possible gear and can spiritbind faster (helping you make that huge jump from level 50 to 51). Turning in HQ items also gives 300%xp for the actual craft and 200% bonus on the turn in. It will save you a ton of money if you are too lazy like me to hunt stuff like leather or monster drops and buy mats in bulk on the market.

Starting from level 30, you will see leves with half the xp reward and asking for multiple items. These leves allow up to 3 turn-ins on a single leve, providing a possible total of 3x the gil, reward, and xp. These are very useful if you're running low on leves or need more gil.

There is a huge spike in crafting difficulty starting from level 50 to 51. I would recommend saving and spending your craft/gather materia then to augment your gear. You could buy the Revenants Toll gear to make it easier too, but doing so also spends a lot of seals and rare gathering nodes on gear you will replace in 3 levels anyway. If you're not hurting for seals or have a lot of rare mats stored up though, but it's not the most efficient. You'd probably do better by selling the mats on the market though. A lot of those are used for airships and can be sold for a pretty penny. You can then fund mats for other mats you need at that level.

Also, look out for specific leves at lv.45 in Coinoch. The returns on some of those actually let you make more money than you spend and will essentially fund themselves so you don't have to farm mats (aside from a modest starter). They have not changed that to my knowledge, so it's a good spot to recover any money you've lost. We had 10 crafters exploiting those levequests to help pay for a mansion That's how much money can be gained from it.

[greyfurr]

It's the shards I have the least of while all others I have over 1000. Though I am currently trying to level Miner (wish I could collect them with Botanist instead) as well so I can collect my own lightning shards/crystals.

Just want to chime in and let you know that you can harvest lightning shards (you can get all the shards, crystals, clusters) as a botanist. You can get the lightening shards in Thanalan at the following places:
For Logging:
Lv. 10 Spineless Basin
Lv. 20 Black Brush
Lv. 30 Spineless Basin
Lv. 50 The Clutch

For Harvesting:
Lv. 15 The Clutch
Lv. 35 Broken Water
Lv. 50 Sangolii Desert

[SoricReisa]

A complete crafting guide series broken into 5 chapters filled with all the tips, EXP tricks and combos that are effective through all the stages of leveling as well as all the current end game content at level 60.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcNeKh8s0xs

[Sentaryuu]

Thank you! I'll look at the videos tonight. Oh I did realize I could get them botanist xD But the only the reason I was thinking miner was because of one of it's abilities, the "Byregot's Ward" ability, so I'm still going to level it for that anyway. Also my sister is leveling mainly Armorer and Blacksmith, so we can like help each other out.

And other is gear upgrades for the crafters' is another thing I'm finding difficult since some can get expensive, but I try my best to maybe try crafting them.