Why is crafting/gathering so difficult/grindy?

[SuperNoob]

Any good way to farm aethersand in stormblood on ilvl 290 gear?

[Mirarara]

Aetheriel reduction is really easy to do.

[Mirarara]

Right, because everybody who is currently leveling should level to 60, STOP, go grind HW Endgame or pay millions of gil, just to progress into SB. lel.

I'm not sure what your problem is, but me and my FC progressed into SB gathering from HW gathering so easily without any HW end game gear, that we didn't even realise it's an issue.

I have all my gatherer at 70 now, and I entered SB with level 58 adept gear (which is really easy), bought NPC gear when I could, then progressed to 70 without any problem you faced.

[QT_Melon]

The only awful grinds I got were from 50-51 and 60-61. It kinda makes sense tho, it shouldn't be too much of a faceroll entry into the new Xpac, if you're catching up you gotta go and get your stuff from the last Xpac to get ahead in the new one. Otherwise, yeah it may take a bit more work.

You're going to need the scrips for the end game books, Master Recipe/Folklore so yeah may as well do your level grinding through red scrips.

If you're leveling up all your gatherers and crafters about the same time, you also should be investing your gathering into getting materials for making HQ versions of your gear.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...w_cp_crafters/
(If you're having that much difficulty reading the first page of a reddit post "I hate the formatting of reddit" ...I dunno what to tell you because usually I read the first post since I didn't permalink the comment that was relevant to this discussion).

[Rohirrim]

If these kind of "annoyances" where not part of the system everyone and their mother would have all crafts and gatherings levels and there would be no market.

Exactly. Crafting is supposed to be a niche on this game tha few people would bother... otherwise items wouldnt worth a dim and if crafting was easy so everyone would have it then i doubt we would have good itens to craft like now...

[Ziggyzapps]

It sounds like you are crying cause you are too cheap to pay for melds before getting level 70 gear and your stats suck. I would of tried the same if I didn't already have gear. You got all NQ left side with no melds on your gather set, and jewelery is single melded with gp...you really been doin this wrong. Jewelery only ever gives GP which is trivial, you should of put gather melds in jewelery a long time ago and just used it for the meld stats. Belt, and helm give little gathering skill and mostly perception which is also trivial past a certain point, it would of been worth it to meld some hq or even nq level 61 ones and wear them 61-70. You could of crafted an hq gaganaskin vest at level 61, spent 50k melding it, and it would have 18 gathering more than what you are wearing now. You could of made the level 62/63 hq weapons for botanist/miner and melded those full of gathering materia, and each of those weapons would of given you +50 more gathering than the weapons you are using now. Melds might cost 300k - 400k for all the weapons but they would carry you to level 70 and that is 152 more gathering each of your classes would of had 4 levels ago. If you couldn't craft anything yet it would of been 100% worth it to buy them. I kinda feel bad for you, that grind must be rough lols.

There is probably a lot of people that level crafters through the moogle dailies and then get overwhelmed when it starts to require effort. The "rich" people who level'd them up before you had to do the grind too and it sucked. Most of us didn't have moogles and when we melded V's were actually expensive. Don't feel like you are getting shafted any harder than we did, you are not.

[Maeka]

There's no point in getting the 61 or 63 HQ set when I'm going to replace it at 65.

As far as the melds, I was simply tired of not having enough GP to do anything, so I melded max GP. *shrugs*

The thread is more about the Crafting side than Gathering anyways, because everything has such ridiculously high Progress and Quality meters that I don't understand how they could expect anybody to get anywhere near the HQs without having ridiculously awesome gear from the previous expansion's endgame, BUT I still posit this question:

What about players who are just now arriving at Level 60? Are they expected to stop, drop everything they're doing, and grind up Scrips before they can start on trying to get to 61? Or are they expected to pay millions of gil to get several different suits of armor, what again, 12 tools, etc before they can start on trying to get 61?

And when they DO get 61, they are faced with another ridiculous money-sink, in trying to get the HQ 61 set which seems to be required to do anything in SB, because no, the NQ just can't be good enough, nope. We can't have NQ-wearing "scrubs" being able to make anything, can we?

And I looked at that rotation someone posted above from reddit, and it's basically same song and dance... build up IQ stacks, buff up, dump Byregot's on it... it's just the numbers are set way too high on Lv61 stuff, that you blow most of the durability on JUST trying to get the progress meter to almost done. The fact that everything in SB is 61 instead of 60* is also punishing because you need to somehow get 62 before you can even start trying to reliably craft anything in SB or you get hit with crushing penalties, on top of wearing NQs.

HQs simply cost too much on Marketboard on my server to go that route, especially for gear you are expected to replace every 2 levels. I'm not going to want to dump 50k melds into 100-200k gear (for single pieces) which all add up to a million+ maybe closer to 2 million gil for a whole outfit, only to go through it all 2 levels later.Maybe if the prices were more reasonable, I would think about getting HQ gear, but not until at least 68, if not 70.

Now that said, I will admit that Gathering in SB is not as punishing as Gathering was in Heavensward.... I'm starting to see 80%, 6% naturally with no buffs and the Gather+ nodes are actually activating now. In Heavensward, it took quite a bit longer until I could finally start gathering junk at a reasonable rate.

[Vidu]

And I looked at that rotation someone posted above from reddit, and it's basically same song and dance... build up IQ stacks, buff up, dump Byregot's on it... it's just the numbers are set way too high on Lv61 stuff, that you blow most of the durability on JUST trying to get the progress meter to almost done. The fact that everything in SB is 61 instead of 60* is also punishing because you need to somehow get 62 before you can even start trying to reliably craft anything in SB or you get hit with crushing penalties, on top of wearing NQs.

This sounds as if you're just doing something terribly wrong and dont understand all your crafting-skills to well. Or maybe you lack some crossclass-skills that really, really help you to get enough progress in. I've been using Raths rotation for most of my leveling - granted Markers Mark is/was painful, but there are other skills at your disposal to get some good, fast progress in:
1) Markers Mark - just to repeat it for completion here. Pair it up with two PbP at the start -> Markers Mark, comfortzone, steady hand, PbP, PbP and then Flawless Synthesis until you run out of MM-stacks is a good way to start off
2) Piece by Piece - already mentioned, but worth mentioning again
3) Muscle Memory
4) Once you hit 67: Focused Synthesis

Yes, Crafting requires you to put something into it before you get something out of it. Maybe I dont share your experience because I went into SB as a HW-mastercrafter who sold ilvl255-gear during the last weeks of HW. So I had a fully melded ironworks-set and a mix of green and blue HQ-tools for all my crafters. But let me tell you: That lasted me til level 70 (I only replaced some of the green tools along the way, granted).
In addition to that: The NQ-65-set is more or less onpar with unmelded HQ-ironworks, so it should basically work as good as that. And if it doesnt: Put in the effort to craft it yourself in HQ - its very possible, it only requires you to know what you're doing and how to use the skills are your disposal.
Heck, I even worte some macros to HQ 40-dura-crafts. I never felt the numbers where to high, but again: I used the skills I had at my disposal to push them properly.
You dont need several suits of armor either - ironworks is shared by all crafters and if you say thats to expensive on your server: Get TWO sets of armor, namely LTW and weaver and go and make your ironworks stuff yourself! Or ask someone to craft it for you - you should have lots of glass fiber from the moogle dailies anyways!

If you feel 60 to 61 is such a terrible grind there is a very easy soltuion for that: do 2-3 days of your GC-turn ins (you should do that anyways!). On that level the required crafts are HW-stuff still and they will push you to level 61.
Same with scrips really: at those levels you should still be able to get scrips and good exp from HW-items. Or just do them on cul, where the mats are often cheap (or easy to gather) in the first place.

Crafting is already pretty easy in SB. Leveling is pretty easy aswell - easier and "nicer" than HW for sure since every crafter gets at least one very attractive leve-quest (I'm talking about those that only require lumber/thread/nuggets etc. instead of a "real" product). We're back to 40/80-dura-items aswell! SB-crafting really isnt to hard if you know what you're doing and how to prepare yourself.

...and knowing what to do and preparing is just a simple basic mechanic in this game... I dont know... I dont want to come of rude but your whole complains are sounding like those of someone who wants all the rewards now but without putting any effort into them.
You dont expect to get your O4S-kill by just pressing 1-2-3 and claim that "This worked in Sastasha NM!", do you?
Crafting is as much as a learning process as fighting. I enjoy crafting "puzzles" and figuring out how to do certain things.
You sound as if you only enjoy 100% guraanted-sucess without putting effort into it.

I neither found gathering nor crafting extremly difficult or grindy. GC-turn-ins, good leves, collecatble for gatherers (and if you like for crafters), exp-manuals, macros and a good movie to watch while pressing the two buttons I needed for anything made it an actual relaxing experience.

[rjspencer4]

I'm going to have to wait until beast tribe quests to level more, it's still way too difficult for me.

[Ziggyzapps]

There's no point in getting the 61 or 63 HQ set when I'm going to replace it at 65.

I don't get it.... what's the point of getting gear at 65 then if you are just going to replace it at 70? If you had just got the weapons at 62/63 and melded cheap gathering into them and accessories you would be level 70 by now in both gatherers, and the weapons and melds would of payed for themselves 10+ times. You really shot yourself in the foot on that one, all those missed gathering attempts....ouch.

What about players who are just now arriving at Level 60?

Yea, you are expected to do some gearing up. The expansion just came out two months ago idk why you would expect to just waltz back, do a few moogle quests and then get a free set of gear to carry you to 70. The level 61 recipes are only slightly harder than the level 59 recipes, and much easier than level 60 4 star crafts, it's not a huge jump in difficulty it just seems like it cause you did nothing but moogle quest and have trash gear. You may not want to bother with crafting... by the time you get 70 on your crafters 3 or 4 star is gonna be out and you will likely have aneurysm when you see the effort required, but if you tough it out then please meld CP into everything. Not 1 CP or 2 CP, meld all the CP you can and then eat CP food. If you want to shoot yourself in the other foot go ahead and ignore CP and blame everything on broken RNG.