Next question: How to handle tradeskills

[Mebahiah]

I've seen advice (on Reddit or GameFAQs, I think) to pursue all the tradeskills, but I get the feeling the original intention of the game was that you'd pursue no more than three (i.e. the number of tradeskill Souls you can have at once), and use the Market to trade what you don't need for what you do need. I can see the self-sufficiency idea behind leveling all the tradeskills, but the word "tiresome" comes to mind. (For the record, the top three I'm aiming at are Alchemy, Blacksmithing, and Carpentry.)

What suggestions for a novice?

[Arrhin]

I canna think off the top of my head which ones, but you NEED to level all/most to 50 plus to get all the actions for high end crafting. Other than that just focus on what you want to master for 70's and gear/melds on main and off hands. As far as materials it's generally a MB check and a brief pondering on how much my time is worth, for whether I will buy/gather/craft mats or not. Generally it's a mix.

[Frizze]

If you look at it as having to get 560 crafting levels(with 210 gathering levels too so you can get your own mats) then it will seem tiresome or overwhelming. The key(well one of them) is to break it into segments that are more manageable. You can work on one or two at a time if you like. Or all of them at once, but only in 5 level increments. Or focus on some while passively leveling the rest. Or swear youre only doing a few of them, then break down later and do a few more. People tend to recommend doing all of them because there are really useful cross-class skills from all of them(not to mention being able to supply your own sub-combines). The whole tradeskill souls idea didnt get added until the first expansion afterall.

So suggestions? Well the first set of levels are really easy to get through. You can do 15 levels(the first cross-class skill) in under an hour per class without too much gil invested. After you sign up for the class, stand by the guild supplier NPC and start crafting. Theyll sell the mats required to get through the first few tiers of recipes, and just making each item once(this gets you bonus exp) tends to be enough to get you there. Stop for class quests(they give a ton of shards) as you go. Once you get past that there are still some easy gets for crafting exp. Once you advance your grand company rank a little theyll offer you provisioning missions - once per day(per class) theyll ask for an item. Turn it in, get exp. If its something they really want(marked with a star) get double exp. If you turn in high quality get double exp(these two stack). Buy the item or make it yourself(and thus get the exp for crafting it too). A HQ starred turn in is more then half a levels worth of exp. In addition to the GC missions, once you advance the story far enough you get the opportunity to do some side quests to improve relations with the local beast tribes. While most of them are combat oriented, there are crafting tribes too. These quests give you the materials and ask you to make something to turn in - and if you fail, ask again and theyll give you another set. So you dont need to buy or bring anything(aside from shards/crystals), just show up and craft. There are tribes for 1-50(the ixali), 50-60(the moogles), and 60-70(the namazu) - and the recipes for each are scaled such that any crafter of any class in the right range can do the combine. And finally, you can always toss in some leve quests too. These also reward HQ turn ins with double exp.

Theres a lot more i could say, but that feels like a good start. Best of luck!

[NosamKin]

Well, I started with gathering BTN, MIN and GLD, CUL. I thought that was enough. However I've taken Frizze's approach and have leveled them all up over time. A few hours here or there and all my crafters are now at 70. I decided leveling gathers and crafters gave me more benefit than leveling more fighters/healers.
If I were to do it all again, I would still level BTN and MIN - FSH is not worth it.
For crafters the order I would pick is ALC, CUL, WVR, CRP, GLD, leather, armor, blacksmith.
The order is somewhat dependent on your crafting goal and your class. If you are a tank, and want to make your own armor, then for you armorer might be more important. I think everyone will have a different opinion about the best order.

[Canadane]

The original intention was the level them all. Crafter Souls only came around in Heavensward.
Other than a bit of bonus stats, I don’t even use the specialist stuff myself.

[Niwashi]

I generally aim to level the crafters together, but since one of the things I'm doing is making my own DoH/DoL gear, weaver tends to pull ahead of the others, especially in the early levels. Then I use leves and/or Ixal quests to focus on whichever is falling behind and try to get them back in sync with each other, or at least close. The one I most often fall behind on is culinarian, just because it takes longer to do all the gathering for it since it's recipes tend to require more raw materials than the others. (Though to somewhat balance that out, CUL requires less intermediate crafting than the others, like how WVR turns fibers into thread in order to turn thread into cloth in order to turn cloth into gear.)

(My main has already had them all at 50 —my level cap— for a while now, but I also craft on a couple of my alts and am still leveling those.)

[Mebahiah]

Ha, I'll admit the "tiresome" came about when, after doing the Envoy quest, I decided to 15 everything in rapid succession.

That...took a while. I may have overworried that even doing a 5-increment for everything would be similarly long-winded.

Still, I'll see what I can do about the 5-increment plan. (Although I still swear that the real real intent was that no one would actually pursue more than one to three tradeskills so they could focus more on smiting evil...)

[Frizze]

Yeah, doing 8 classes to 15 in rapid succession is probly something in the neighborhood of a 5 hour time dump all told. When i took the plunge i did one city per night, so it was only 2 or 3 classes per sitting. One way to space out the 5 level plan is to shoot for 1 class per session. So today might be a goal of 5 levels on weaver, next time try those same 5 on alchemist, and on down the line. And dont underestimate the gains you can get through those grand company supply and provisioning missions. You can always buy the item(either from a vendor or the market board) if you dont have time or the mats to make it yourself, and starred recipes are always worth taking a shot on. If it hypothetically takes 2 weeks worth of sessions to get each class 5 levels, but you get a handful of "free" levels along the way its just less work later.