Farming Leather is miserable.

[Padudu]

LAHEE is the forest laughing at you for thinking you'll be able to get leather from the mobs.

you listen here, it may be hard work but it's honest work. maybe some of us take pleasure in culling an entire species in the name of leather

[Jojoya]

you listen here, it may be hard work but it's honest work. maybe some of us take pleasure in culling an entire species in the name of leather

What would Geva say?

[Padudu]

What would Geva say?

Geva wouldn't say anything if she doesn't know in the first place

[Gemina]

I clear my crafting logs instead of doing leves to level my crafters, and LTW is the class I dread the most. Simply put the amount of time it takes to gather all the skins you need in comparison to easily access gatherables such as ore, sand, or flax is exponentially more costly whether the currency you use is time or Gil. It does not matter. Boasting about FATE trains for gemstones is not a viable counter argument as your acquisition is dependent on other players. Gathering and crafting for the most part, are solo activities.

With a job like WVR, mats like fleece that are needed also drop from mobs, but not only is the demand for the intermediary goods much less than leather, the drop rates on these items are phenomenally better than skins.

In short, acquisition of skins and hides is abysmal at best, and not a great incentive to mindlessly grind FATEs. Also bear in mind that each of the two tiers of crafting logs will usually have around 5 different leathers that are needed for crafts bringing the grand total of skins to just get through your logs to be well over 1k. At 2 gemstones a pop I really hope you like doing FATEs, otherwise prepare for a very expensive time crafting through the LTW phase.

My suggestion is beastmaster. Make it a gatherer with limited combat potential, and far more efficient means to gather from live resources.

[deadman1204]

I've spent alot of fate gems on leather. I Also plan ahead, and have my retainer do alot of 1hr leather gathering missions.
If you plan ahead a few days, its not a problem with a retainer

[Skor]

Leather worker is the one crafting class that I truly despise and it is all because of having to farm skins. I dislike so much.

[Jojoya]

Leather worker is the one crafting class that I truly despise and it is all because of having to farm skins. I dislike so much.

Except you don't need to farm skins for the most part?

You can buy them off the MB.

You can buy the leather itself off the MB (not uncommon for the leather to be cheaper than a single skin).

You can send DoW/DoM retainers after the skins.

For ShB and EW, you can buy the skins using Bicolor Gemstones.

I think the only skin I've had to farm in the last 2 years is Archaeornis Skin because both it and the leather can be scarce on the local marketboards. Even then it only takes me about 10 minutes to farm the 30 skins I tend to target.

Self-sufficiency is nice but there's a point it makes a lot more sense to simply buy some materials off the marketboard instead of spending your time trying to farm yourself. The time saved can be invested in earning gil to pay for what you purchased (and have more leftover).

[Deveryn]

Farming isn't even that bad. You have a nice little circle to run which is generally uninterrupted.

[dspguy]

Complaining about farming skins when there are other ways to do it is like saying "it takes so long to level up" if all you did was kill random world-spawn enemies for experience. While I do agree it might "feel weird" to farm skins using other methods... take advantage of maybe earning some exp FATE grinding for gemstones. Or do some other activity to earn gil and buy them off the MB.