Quote Originally Posted by Lyraele View Post
I do get the feeling that leveling craftsmen up may actually not be economically a win over just buying food as I need it
Just using the Crafting Log to level (and doing each Leve exactly once, making up the difference with Collectible hand ins for the Master books as necessary) I'm making a decent amount of gil. Whether crafting is profitable (necessary for it to be "an economic win") is dependent upon actually having stuff to sell to recoup the costs. If all you do is Leve (and Quick Synth) your way up, you will be facing an economic loss and not start to recoup anything until you start factoring in savings by not buying the HQ foods you are after. Making stuff and putting it on the board, ideally stuff that moves, is the key to recouping the cost of leveling. Do that, and you may find that your crafting can not only pay for itself to be leveled, but also for the stuff you wanted out of it in the first place.

Bear in mind though, I'm leveling all 8 crafting classes from 60 to 70, not just one from 1 to 70.