Returning player kind of lost? I miss crafting!

[Maeka]

-snip-

Try Zhloe's Custom Deliveries in Idyllshire and get the tools for each DoH using the yellow scrips you get from her. And then once you're done with her, go on over to Rhalgr's Reach and do the same for M'naago. Between the two of them you should get quite a few scrips, surely enough to buy one or two class's Lv70 tools (these are about as good if not slightly better than 71 HQ).

Once you've done that, you can turn in easy items requested by the Appraisers in each of the towns. (Gridania's is right next to the Marketplace, for example) for more scrips and XP.

Then go to the Crystarium if you have access to that, and do the Levequests there to get all of your DoH on 71, the first few are simple and you can just do NQs. Since you've been away for so long, you should have 100 Levequests pooled and ready. Once you get 71, this allows you to get a suit of Lv71 NQ clothes from the Crystarium as well as Lv71 jewelry which should give you a significant boost.

From there, trying to HQ your own clothes and jewelry shouldn't be too difficult. Or you could simply buy the HQs off the Market, they should have come down in price about now (it cost me about 1 million the day 5.1 launched, I bet it's cheaper now).

Or you could use Ishgard Restoration to get your DoH all on 71 and get some scrips in the process.

Once you're 71 with either Scrip or HQ Tools, HQ Clothes and HQ Jewelry, you should be able to HQ everything comparable to your level 100% of the time without needing HQ materials, just about with a few exceptions.

EDIT: Your rotation at 70 once you get the aforementioned gear will look something like this (it isn't perfect but it works for me!):

40 Durability (for Processed Materials)
Reflect
Waste Not 2
Basic Touch (use Precise Touch if Good or Excellent. If Excellent, use Careful Synth during the Poor condition, or Observe if you know you have the CP and can afford it).
Basic Touch
Basic Touch
Basic Touch
Basic Touch
Master's Mend
Great Strides
Byregot's Blessing
Waste Not

From here, you can either use Careful Synthesis, or Observe -> Focused Synthesis. With Lv71 gear, you should have 3 Careful Synths left before you run out of CP after you do the 2nd Waste Not, and if you're trying to do Lv72 stuff like Ingots, you will likely need 1 Basic Synthesis after because you might fall just short on completing the item. Also, after Byregot's, you might end up at 94% then all you need is 1 more Basic Touch that you could weave in there somewhere, just don't let Waste Not wear off, you'll get the hang of it.

With 80 Durability Finished Products, you basically do the same, except if you made your own processed materials using the rotation above and got all HQs, you'll have 50-75% HQ to begin with, and 80 Durability. I recommend starting off with Muscle Memory instead of Reflect in that case, and following it up with either Careful Synthesis or Observe->Focused Synthesis (be careful you don't accidentally finish the synth). Then once the Muscle Memory buff wears off, use Inner Quiet and then do something similar to the above, it won't take long at all to max out HQ, and then if you've plenty of Durability, Careful Synth your way to 100. If you're low on Durability, you could instead use Observe->Focused Synth.

Now, I know there are other skills like Manipulation, Innovation, etc but I've never found a need to use them, though if you try Lv70 Ishgardian Collectables... you might end up needing a better rotation. But using the above and sticking to things my level, or 1 level higher with the gear I mentioned above, I've not failed to HQ yet.

While typing this I realized a couple pieces of jewelry I bought might have had a CP materia or two; if you're falling short on CP, buy some cheap CP food to make up for the difference until you can get some cheap materia to meld in your gear or something.