This started out as a comment to Catfish Cassie's thread Crafting a Dead Horse: Work vs. Reward Seriously Needs a Revamp but became much longer than I originally intended it to be so I thought I'd make a thread.

The current Crafting endgame is suffering for a number of reasons:

1. The only benefits that Crafting provides to Combat at the moment is food, pots, and leveling gear. None of these are big ticket items that require even a single 2-Star item to reliably HQ.

2. Even when crafting 2-Star items you don't even need a single 2-Star piece of gear to craft it. Yes, melds are necessary however the price pales in comparison (In most cases) to the cost of a single 2-Star item.

3. The only Gathering 2-Star items that can be crafted at the moment are the Accessories and Offhand (Excluding FSH which has no Offhand), and even then they aren't even CLOSE to necessary to farm the current Folklore/Red Scrip nodes, which can be done in all white gear with safe melds. This leads Gatherers to save their Scrips for their left side gear before they even think of using them for Favors.

4. With a lack of Gatherers to farm the necessary Favor items there is a severe lack of them on the market, and the ones available are quite expensive as there is little competition (Depending on your server of course).

5. With the lack of materials on the market and the resulting high prices most Crafters have to resort to farming their own materials which requires getting BTN/MIN to 60 and capping Red Scrips. This is a double-edged sword if they plan to gear their Gatherers as well since their Scrips will be limited to one or the other.

6. The Favor system was atrocious and had a HUGE negative impact when first released. I personally have seen major improvement since the change, but the impression they left still has repercussions.

There are a number of glaring issues (I probably missed a few) however with time they will solve themselves. When Gatherers have their gear and start spending their Scrips on Favors stocks will rise and prices will fall. When/If Crafting becomes relevant for Combat many more people will have an incentive to start leveling and gearing their classes again, and a more stable income as well. These problems are mainly problems AT THE MOMENT. How long will we need to wait? Hopefully no longer than 3.1, though I honestly can't say.

There is nothing wrong with capping your Red Scrips and spending them on i180 gear or saving them until we know whats coming in 3.1. I highly doubt SE will release anything the i180 sets can't handle, especially since their intent with the sets was to give casual Crafters the ability to progress 1-2 Crafts without spending millions on HQ gear + melds.

These last 2 months have been the most painful for those who really want to craft the i170 sets either for the challenge, stats, glamour, or personal achievement, and get discouraged every time they look at the Market Board or the number of Favors they have to do for a single item. This is where I say that Work vs Reward is subjective. Here I'd like to clarify some numbers as far as how many Scrips are needed to complete all 2-Star Crafting/Gathering items:

Only Crafting has full left side at the moment and costs for a full set are as follows:

The Mainhand, Chestpiece, and Legs require 4 mats each, while the Offhand, Helm, Gloves, and Boots require 3 mats each for a total of 24 2-Star mats per set. The Accessories cost a total of 10 2-Star mats (2 each for Belt, Necklace, Earrings, and Wrist, and 1 each for the Rings) and do not need to be made more than once.

So with 8 Crafting sets it comes to 8 x 24 = 192 + 10 = 202 Scrips total to craft all 8 Crafting sets + Accessories. As Gathering only has Accessories and Offhand (FSH has no offhand) the total cost to craft the current Gathering 2-Star items would come to 10 + 6 = 16 Scrips total.

This brings us to a grand total of 218 Scrips needed to Craft every Crafting and Gathering 2-Star item which at 9 Scrips a week comes to 24.2 weeks, or 5-6 months total. 3-4 weeks per Crafting set (A little more than 1 week to craft the Accessories).

What I believe SE is attempting with the Crafting and Gathering systems is to extend it's lifespan in a similar fashion to Combat with weekly caps. If you were to try and get full Savage gear I'd imagine it would take much longer than 3-4 weeks, the primary difference between the two is you cannot "buy" a full Savage set in a week even if you wanted to. With Crafting you can purchase others' Red Scrips (Trade them BTN/MIN mats and they turn them in and give you the items) and craft far more endgame gear in a single week than either Combat or Gathering.

Was this the right move? Do changes need to be made? Maybe, I can't really say as everyone has a different motivation and amount of time they're willing/able to commit to a goal. I'm actually glad it's practically impossible to finish all 8 sets in a week as there is an immense feeling of accomplishment upon finally finishing a set.

I love the crafting system in FFXIV, I really do, so much to the point that I was insane enough to finish all 8 sets in about 2 months. I was absolutely furious with the Red Scrip system when it first released as it meant I couldn't do what I loved without doing what I hated (Gathering) or spending millions of gil in the process. No, I didn't start with 100m+ in gil to buy mats left and right with. I farmed at least 75% of the mats myself, and it took an insane amount of time to complete. But I did it, and whether it gets replaced in 3.1 (HIGHLY doubt it), or if I melded correctly, or if I over prepared and the new recipes can still be made with the white set, I could care less, because it was what I wanted to do and I found a way to do it.

Tl;dr, Crafting will get easier with time. If you don't have the motivation to craft right now there's nothing wrong with saving your Scrips and waiting to see how 3.1 plays out, hopefully changes are implemented to make things easier. If you want to craft 2-Stars right now I know it seems daunting but don't be intimidated by the high prices of the mats. They're actually really easy to gather with the Favor change and if you can do that you cover the majority of the (Admittedly ludicrous) cost. Trust me, its worth it.