I just hit level 70 in the laziest way possible using pretty much only leve quests and wow I am so beyond lost. I've been googling guides and trying to do research for nearly a week on almost any spare minute I have between college and work and I still cannot make a dent in the wall of confusion.

I can't even finish my class quests...because my gear is bad? So I try to find how to get better gear...but that requires gil that I don't have, so the only way to get the gil is to farm items to sell, which requires gear...so do I just have to go grind dungeons for several weeks until I have the millions needed to buy a crafted 290 set? I can't even get the collectibles to the minimum range needed to turn in for the 220 gear?

I don't understand how to start the process of gathering, it seems like I have to invest what amounts to 4-5 million gil just to get the most worthless set of gear, and then grind for 6 months at a time for 3-6 tiers of gear after that?

I am so beyond confused, everywhere I look its 4.5 hour guides here, 32 page 'beginner explanations' there, all of which start off with "this guide assumes you have 320 gear level at least" or something, or its just a straight up spreadsheed and I feel like I should just go study calculus or open a small business at that point

Is there some kind of "gathering for dummies" guide out there some people used? At this point I feel like the only reasonable way is to just buy everything outright and avoid scrips completely, I can't wrap my mind around this progression system at all. Can someone please just explain the VERY STARTING step?

Its not that I'm impatient, I just...can't figure out what the heck I'm supposed to do. This is way too confusing. I literally learned VLSM and binary counting faster and easier than I am able to learn gathering progression on FF14.