New crafter leveling strategy

[gdavidson79]

I'm relatively new to crafting. I understand the basics so my question is really related to mapping out a plan for how to level them. I understand, from reading many threads and guides, that ARR crafting was sort of meant to level them all as a whole in order to gain the cross class abilities that made life easier. With HW and now SB in place, single focus crafting is much easier and viable. That being said, I would like to at some point level them all. I'm not in this to speed my way through so I'm fine taking my time. So is it more strategic to level them all at roughly the same speed or power through in one craft and move on to the next. My current status is Lv. 26 with all of them and 30/31 with my gatherers. I did this to keep them all in the same gear to reduce the amount of different crafting gear in my armoury chest but I'm not opposed to taking one all the way and leaving the rest behind for a time. I also am near max reputation now with the Ixali. Only about 1000 rep left before they are rank 7.

Any thoughts or guidance are much appreciated!

[Adeacia]

In order to craft one item, you often need to craft other items first. You'll need other crafters leveled to do this.

For example, I started to get materials to craft a level 70 WVR main hand tool last night on GSM, only to realize that my CRP wasn't high enough level to craft the lumber I need.

If you want to get into crafting, you really do need to level all of them.

[Nixxe]

There's no real secret. Just make one of each thing in the crafting log up to level 15 or so as you can get all the mats from the various vendors in the crafting guilds, though not every vendor will provide everything you need and you may need to travel. If you get them all to level 15, you'll get a good chunk of important cross class abilities. Do leves and beast tribe quests after that. The Ixali are doable from 1-50 and you should keep doing them after you cap rep. Moogles will cover you from 50-60 and then Namazu will do 60-70. Beast tribe XP drops to a flat and underwhelming amount once you hit the level cap that tribe was intended for, so make sure not to keep doing Ixali quests with a level 50 DoH.

https://www.ffxivguild.com/category/disciples-of-hand/

That's a good place to start from for picking which leves to use. I've never strictly followed their guides because often what they say will be easy or difficult or cheap or whatever is not the case because it's server dependent and also because sometimes the market is feeling silly. I would generally focus on getting the most XP per leve unless it's going to be far more costly than another leve offering nearly as much XP.

[Kaurhz]

To summarise the TL;DR guides:
- Level each of your crafters in line with each other so they're sync'd and you're able to craft any materials you need.
- Unlock all of your beast tribes as they have essential materials that are used in crafting recipes up to and including Level 35.
- Buy materials from beast tribes, as these will in most cases alleviate your shard consumption, and typically the cost of shards... Crafting the Velveteen Cloths is more expensive than buying the cloth from vendors alone, in shard consumption alone. Assuming you buy shards and not farm them.
- Most people will hate me for this, but don't bother touching leves unless you're capped or at Level 35+. This is where materials start getting tedious and where buying them is more expensive. So save your leves for this period, as this is also the level range in which you can start to get consistent HQ compared to Level 1-30.
- Save doing ixali beast tribes on your Culinarian and Carpenter, as these have the most important cross class abilities respectively, Steady Hand II and Byregot's Blessing, as such it is not a great issue if these get drastically higher than your other classes.
- A combination of beast tribes, and custom deliveries, and daily Grand Company turn ins will comfortably get you from 50-70 in the time frame of around 2-3 months assuming these are never missed

Some pointers here weren't relevant to the question, but are useful all the same particularly for low level.

[gdavidson79]

Good tips from everyone, thank you so much

[Nixxe]

Something I forgot to add: Grinding via synth spam, especially with grand company manuals (you'll need a small mountain of them at higher levels), is totally viable, but the XP comes from the quality, so you'll want to macro craft HQ items rather than quick synth them. Look for items with simple materials that are easy to HQ and can be sold for a profit so you can get paid to level. Good choices are generally intermediate materials, such as ingots, leather, or cloth.

[Driskus]

Something I forgot to add: Grinding via synth spam, especially with grand company manuals (you'll need a small mountain of them at higher levels), is totally viable, but the XP comes from the quality, so you'll want to macro craft HQ items rather than quick synth them. Look for items with simple materials that are easy to HQ and can be sold for a profit so you can get paid to level. Good choices are generally intermediate materials, such as ingots, leather, or cloth.

This is what I did with a good chunk of my leveling. Once I had scrip manuals readily available, I would even pop a commercial manual at level 1 on a new class then just go nuts spamming synths. I would end up at 30-40 in no time at all doing that. A good chunk of my 60-70 xp was from synth spam as well, and the majority of the rest was from cheap leve turn-ins.

[Frizze]

I wont say theres NO advantage to pushing one class ahead of the others, but there isnt a big one. The potential advantages would be getting specific cross class skills quicker(steady hands 2, byregots), or theoretically having an easier time crafting beast tribe turnins(which you then turned in on the lower level class). Those arent nothing, but they arent huge advantages. So leveling strategy then.

1. Do Grand Company turn in items every day you can for every class that is feasible. Hand over HQ items whenever possible for double exp, and try not to miss starred items(also double exp - double this double with hq every chance you can).
2. Use as many beast tribe dailies as you can afford. Thats ixali 1-50, moogle 50-60, namazu 60-70.
3. Dont skip class quests. These are always a good chunk of exp and a source of some free gear upgrades/catalysts. Plus a few of them have very fun stories to tell.
4. When crafting for exp push as much quality as you can - this gives a good chunk of bonus exp per craft. Maxing quality is good, maxing it without hq mats is better. Just dont fail a craft because you got too greedy for quality.
5. Leves can be used to speed up the process, though it can get very expensive. Honestly, they provide more value to gathering classes in my view so maybe use them for your gatherers to keep up(gatherers can also use GC turnings and class quests - plus the namazu beast tribe has a gathering option as well).
6. Dont fret about gear too much. Better gear does make it easier to craft, but you can get away with spacing out your upgrades a little until you get to the high end stuff. As a guideline id look at upgrades every 10-15 levels until you hit 50, then every 5 levels after that. If you do find yourself having a hard time then looking into upgrading isnt a bad idea. In particular, dont try to get the very best level 50 or 60 gear - make do with cheaper alternatives and grind through those levels(50 and 60 can each be rough), then upgrade to the next set after(51/61) for a similar but much easier and cheaper boost.
7. Remember that many of the end-game crafters have been working on it for years, so its ok if you dont catch up today. Slow and steady is better then fast and burnt out.
8. General exp management is still helpful - use FC buffs, use food, use manuals, log out in sanctuaries for rested exp, use exp bonus equipment if you have it, all that good stuff.

Good luck!