Cracked CRYSTALS

[QT_Melon]

its a figure of speech but anyway...

I'm not saying that they are the same, but I am making the comparison of crafters / gatherers to battle classes because of how battle classes seem to be gifted free materia if they run certain dungeons and not to mention how much easier it is to obtain cracked clusters, even if it is biased towards tanks mostly and sometimes healers.

Goodness. I'll restate again since you didn't read it.

The main focus of this game is battle. You can't really craft end game until you get to 70 in a battle class.
It's "easier" because the main goal is to BATTLE, with other players. You fight to get clusters. Be this in a 4 man dungeon, partnering up with other people to do hunts to get a higher score on hunt seals. You work with others.

More people do BATTLE content, so the reward is BATTLE materia. And of course it is biased towards healers and tanks because there's more people playing as a DPS (though depending on the server sometimes DPS can get the bonus as well).

Your main goal as a crafter is to CRAFT. Your main goal as a GATHERER is to GATHER. You can do this without being in a party, or raid group. Your gear doesn't require high level matera, unlike a raid where some won't let you in unless you have tier 6 melds on your gear. Your reward for crafting and gathering is materia. That means you do red scrips turn ins, Zhloe to get more red scrips, or spiritbond.

Since melding spiritbonds items faster, and you can get Better Crowned Pie, and Spiritbonding potions these stack. You are guaranteed tier V from the 70 gear and 20% chance of it being tier 6. You do NOT need HQ gear to spiritbond. Keep your original set if you don't want to re-meld, and buy NQ gear from the vendors and put in 2 junk materia, it spiritbonds at the same rate as HQ with one materia. If you don't want to do the main goal of crafting/gathering to get materia which is rewarded when you do it. You can't complain that the system is unfair.

The same time it took to wait for a dungeon due to DPS queues, I spiritbonded the left side of my gear and got more materia than running a battle class dungeon :P
*you can also gamble the more "useless" materia with Mutamix.

[seekified]

They really should've added more custom delivery NPCs like Zhloe that could reward yellow scrips and Cracked Crystals. Melding is punishing enough as it is, at least give us something good for the guaranteed slots.

[Vicci]

Clusters will drop, crystals will rise. Oh and I get a cluster everytime I do lvl roulette as a guaranteed drop (Mostly for tanks only). Wheres the crafter one? Maybe we make too much gil already. I dont know

[QT_Melon]

If anything, I think GATHERERS have it harder than Crafters. Crafters are going to look to getting the crystals for their gear first, gatherers are more of a "middle class" that have to overmeld to get an HQ chance for Folkore (though it seems on the crafting side HQ folklore isn't even extremely necessary)...I just find that weird.

(side note
3* crafts I'm thinking will require 1580 Craft 1460 CTRL. )

[Mandudez]

If anything, I think GATHERERS have it harder than Crafters. Crafters are going to look to getting the crystals for their gear first, gatherers are more of a "middle class" that have to overmeld to get an HQ chance for Folkore (though it seems on the crafting side HQ folklore isn't even extremely necessary)...I just find that weird.

(side note
3* crafts I'm thinking will require 1580 Craft 1460 CTRL. )

I would definitely focus on gathering stat and quantity over quality. HQ sells but they don't get much more than NQ does right now.

[Ayerinn]

If anything, I think GATHERERS have it harder than Crafters. Crafters are going to look to getting the crystals for their gear first, gatherers are more of a "middle class" that have to overmeld to get an HQ chance for Folkore (though it seems on the crafting side HQ folklore isn't even extremely necessary)...I just find that weird.

(side note
3* crafts I'm thinking will require 1580 Craft 1460 CTRL. )

Gatherer melding is just as easy if not easier than crafter right now... here are my melds http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/118MZ super cheap and easy

[QT_Melon]

Gatherer melding is just as easy if not easier than crafter right now... here are my melds http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/118MZ super cheap and easy

That's WITH FOOD.

You can pentameld Crafting sets and do 1 star w/o food but you don't need tier VI. I wanted to get to 1200 perception w/o food, what is the best meld for that?

I would definitely focus on gathering stat and quantity over quality. HQ sells but they don't get much more than NQ does right now.

True, but I still would like to be able to hit 1200. Just thought the threshold was weird this time.

[SnugglesD]

You really don't need cracked crystals. VI are easy to get. Go spend 30 minutes harvesting twincoon and 10 minutes mining effervescent water. Go get spirit Bonding potions and trade some seals to buy moonstones to get better crowned pie. Slap on a set of twinthread gear with some cheap crappy materia attached and quicksynth your your way to millions. Or 2* melds.

[Ayerinn]

You really don't need cracked crystals. VI are easy to get. Go spend 30 minutes harvesting twincoon and 10 minutes mining effervescent water. Go get spirit Bonding potions and trade some seals to buy moonstones to get better crowned pie. Slap on a set of twinthread gear with some cheap crappy materia attached and quicksynth your your way to millions. Or 2* melds.

Easy (and time consuming) to spriitbond gear, yes I agree. BUT - Are grade Vi's guaranteed? No. If you do get a Grade VI are you guaranteed to get the one's you need? No. Cracked Crystals and/or buying for Yellow scrips solves the RNG aspect of Spiritbonding. Buying scratch off lottery tickets is easy...winning a million dollars from those tickets is not. How DoW/M get grade VI vs DoH/L is grossly unbalanced.