Leveling miner and botanist.

[FunkyBunch]

The problem is with some of the gathering, you don't know you've gathered something worthless unless you look on the MB beforehand, which can be a pain if you're leveling.
Like Wyvern Obsidian. For some reason it costs nothing on Diabolos. And Silver Ore/Ingots are more expensive than mythril. And randomly one of the gems will be worth getting, but most of the time unless you are leveling a GSM the gems are worthless too.

[ruskie]

From my own leveling experience:
Anything with Ore in name sold
Anything with Alumen in name sold
Anything with Log in name sold
With 3.x the amount of mats is staggering so a lot of the stuff sells...
Various sand and ore and logs.

[Shadygrove]

The problem is with some of the gathering, you don't know you've gathered something worthless unless you look on the MB beforehand, which can be a pain if you're leveling.

I will always collect stuff when I level into different nodes then look at the MB after. Like you I had to NPC Wyvern Obsidian.

[SnugglesD]

If you're going the leve route make sure you only do evaluation types. The 25% bonus exp is way more efficient than doing all of them.

[Maxsdad]

Leves are the quickest, but are you also a crafter? If so, gathering high yield stuff (i.e. darksteel ore) means you can CRAFT high yield stuff (darksteel nuggets) and then sell a more valuable product on the market place. You get experience for gathering AND crafting AND you make money. And sometimes you just want to do some brain dead gathering for 20-30 minutes. Get into a rhythm and whack away. And like Roth says, GC hand in's are a nice supplemental source of experience AND you get GC seals. BTW, there's really no short cuts for fishing, it's just a pain in the ass, LOTS of monotonous grinding.