Probably a dumb question

[Minsue]

So for somone kinda new to crafting which crafter would you say is the easiest to lvl?

[Ilisidi]

The one you can get material and equipment for the easiest or cheapest.
I personally levelled all of them (except cooking) in step with the botanist and miner for the synergy in material gathering and creation and to share equipment which I also crafted on my own.

[Wilford111]

The question shouldn't be which one is easiest, rather what method. Generally the ones that have recipes that require more than average materials will be the hardest, but leveling all of them becomes trivial with beast tribe quests, levequests, GC turn-ins, Ishgardian Restoration, etc.

[UkcsAlias]

I would generaly focus on leveling multiple crafters at once. Mainly because they synergize a lot and can make the later levels a lot easier. And while it might look like its slower, if eventualy going for all of them, this is significantly faster.

Culinarian is an exception as it doesnt rely on the other crafting classes, and instead relies mostly on gatherers, but culinarian often requires a lot of ingredients compared to the other crafters, and is also generaly a lot more difficult to sell items with (a lot of people do not care about food). I would not recommend this.

For other classes, if taking only one, you generaly will notice that around lvl 35 it will start to become anoying to obtain the items (the nearby stores no longer sell the items you need), unless you just resolve to the market for buying. Especialy at lower levels, most of the items are relatively cheap (gathering yourself is however still better, but if you have plenty of money, it might be a timewaste you dont want). Beyond lvl 50 you are going to rely on a lot of other crafters, or end up overpaying a lot on the market.

To decide your class (or classes) it is best to look at crafting jobs that are close together to make it easier to level multiple jobs at once. For example:
- Smithing/Armorer
- Leatherworker/Carpenter
- Goldsmith/Weaver/Alchemist

These are all either close together, or within the same region making traveltime towards each other short. You can often combine the quests of these and speed up their leveling.

For these classes it also depends a lot on which gatherer classes you have. As for example carpenting synergizes well with a botanist while smithing goes well with a miner. This can make it easier to reach lvl 50 with those because you can often gather a big bulk of items (including shards). Beyond level 60 all of them are somewhat similar though as they have a lot of ingredients that are produced by others.

In the end, it realy depends on the type of items you focus on most, and what you prefer to level yourself, as all of them are somewhat similar in speed to level. And quest wise all of them are similar in difficulty regarding the items to obtain and things to craft.

Another important aspect is to make use of the daily deliveries of the grand company. This is generaly the fastest way to level for the effort you use. Each of them give a lot of XP, and can grant up to 4 levels for a single item (if its starred and HQ) when below lvl 50! For this alone i would suggest unlocking all crafters, even if you just focus on 2 or 3 of them. Just checking the market for potential items you can turn in can do a lot. Some of those starred items are sold on the market for 2k in HQ, which is a lot of fast levels!

[Jojoya]

All the crafting classes learn and use the same abilities now so it's less which is easiest and more which is most useful to you if you only want to level one. There are advantages to leveling them all since they're mostly interdependent for materials (CUL being the odd man out) plus having the correct class leveled allows you to repair your own gear.

GSM tends to be a common pick for those starting with just one since it makes most right side accessories, allowing you to repair about half your gear.

The first time you craft a recipe, you'll gain an XP bonus on top of the normal XP for completing the recipe so it's good to make different items for that bonus if you're not using leves or collectables for XP.

Don't neglect doing the class quests when available. Each is worth almost a full level of XP if done at the appropriate level and will need to be completed to unlock an important ability at level 65 (Manipulation).

There are vendors scattered around that will sell most (though not all) materials needed for leveling up to 70 if you're not gathering them yourself. Keep in mind prices can be better on the marketboard for many of the materials. You can check the material tooltips for the vendor prices to compare if you're looking at the marketboard prices. If (Restricted) appears after the price, it's sold by one of the beast tribe vendors that requires a quest unlock and sometimes a reputation standing.

Try to at least keep your tools up to date while leveling if not also the rest of your crafting gear. They're going to give you the largest percentage of your craftmanship/control stats that you need. CP also becomes very important once you get past level 50.

[Kallis]

People keep saying to level all crafters, which feels to sort of defeat the purpose of behind the question "which is easiest to level"
The real answer is they're basically all identical (except for the gear slots they fill), and inter-dependent, meaning they really can't be levelled comfortably or cheaply without leveling each other.

Culinarian is the one odd-one out, and technically the only real answer to this question as far as I can tell, as it requires very very few mats from other crafters (just a very few alchemist crafts, iirc). If you just want to level one crafter to start with, without all the complexity of managing multiple jobs, and make use of any/all 3 of the gathering jobs to feed it, this is actually the easiest to level. It's what I did to keep a crafting job levelled while going thru MSQ and it was actually pretty nice for learning how it works without killing my inventory
The problem is you're left with a job that you can't do much with. You can meld your gear and craft consumables, which is really nice but can be very time-consuming and not nearly as profitable.

[Caimie_Tsukino]

This is such a difficult question to answer because it's different for everyone, and it's different for different levels of different classes too...
E.g. There are GSM and ALC leves in ARR that ask for Clear Glass Lens or some other items that could be directly purchased from the crafting guilds (It's been so long, like 7 years ago... i can't remember). So, to me, that was ridiculously easy. You just go to those guides, buy a ton of stuff, and turn them in, and level up almost for free. However, it BURNs away your leves, since purchased items from guilds are NQ, so you're wasting leves very quickly.

Then there's the factor that different people do different things, resulting accesses to different mats.
E.g. Some ppl who do certain dungeons a lot will have access to certain loot drops, and if they have sufficient desyn ability, they can produce a ton of mats for free for a particular class. Some ppl who just likes to gather a lot using their Miner may have access to ores more than logs. Same thing happens when a person owns multiple retainers of the same class, such as Miner. So that means leveling BSM, GSM and ARM would be easier.

Then, there's the factor that certain leves are particular easy or cheap for certain class at certain level. OR certain Collectables being in similar situations. So some class being "easy" at certain levels may becomes "difficult" at certain higher levels... and the situation can go opposite as well for some classes. So now, which of those two types of classes is easier to level then: easy first then hard? or hard first then easy?

Then, think about how easy it is now to level up at the Firmament using Ishgard Restoration (from lvl 1 to 70-ish). It takes literally 15 min to go from lvl 1 to 50, and then another 15 min to hit like lvl 65. If you consider THIS, the little differences between the difficulty of classes don't even exist! They're all TOO EASY...

It's not a dumb question, but it's too complex a question to answer, imo. Really depends on what you do to access mats, and what you do to level up.