Petition for leves

[Jojoya]

I don't think this is the right question... The two are not mutually exclusive. You can level while earning gil, or you can level while losing gil. And I merely suggest level while earning gil. To do so, I suggest to avoid doing leves from start to finish.

I understand your point of view here but it's still actually a valid question. A lot of players are truly doing it only to level. They want to be able to repair/meld their own gear, not craft for profit. You actually could have 3 answers to that question.

So yes, if they gather everything themselves, then everything cost nothing, but you're also assuming they're leveling ALL classes. Otherwise, there are many leves items they cannot make, since most items require certain mats from other classes. I think we can safely assume that, if someone wants to quickly level via leves, they are probably NOT leveling all classes together slowly, and they WILL buy mats. And so, massively doing leves is a gil-draining way of leveling instead of gil-earning. This is actually somewhat independent of what point in the expansion cycle they do these.

That's why I think a lot of players who are only doing the leve route tend to stick with ALC or CUL as solo jobs. Those have very little reliance on the other DoH classes for the items generally used in leve spam.

[dezzmont]

Remember that time is also Gil. Leves are much more XP, and thus time, efficient per-craft than collectable turn ins. This means you are spending less time macroing (If you can even macro a collectable of an appropriate level, which you might not be able to do without further investments into gear you don't need to make for leves) and thus can do more productive things than leveling crafters gil wise, and you can also start profiting off higher level crafts sooner, which matters when even profitable options on the MB tend to have a low daily trade volume and thus your daily profit tends to be capped.

Low material costs are over-valued. What you should actually care about is your ROI and the rate of return.

For me, even as a profit motivated crafter, the difference is night and day in both those categories, and I don't ever use collectables to level, even if I want to grind materia its just so much more efficient to use a few leves to cap for an expansion in a few minutes, and then get materia with end game gear, abilities, and equipment, not to mention the fact that its better to maintain a diverse inventory and getting faster access to all the items on an expansion drop is worth it for its own sake while they are still selling high.

[Caimie_Tsukino]

Remember that time is also Gil. Leves are much more XP, and thus time, efficient per-craft than collectable turn ins. This means you are spending less time macroing (If you can even macro a collectable of an appropriate level, which you might not be able to do without further investments into gear you don't need to make for leves) and thus can do more productive things than leveling crafters gil wise, and you can also start profiting off higher level crafts sooner, which matters when even profitable options on the MB tend to have a low daily trade volume and thus your daily profit tends to be capped.

Are leves items easier to make than collectables these days? I always merely relied on previous expansion's endgame BiS set to go through all 10 level of a new expansion, and I didn't recall encountering anything difficult along the way of leveling. I just quickly wrote up some macros and autocraft everything.

I also tend to tell people not to rush to the endgame (unless you are at the beginning of an expansion or a patch). Because although you get a lot more choices of things to sell at lv 90, the endgame products are usually NOT as profitable as the leveling items (or the leves items themselves!). Personally, I have heard of too many stories of how people rush to level 90 by splurging everything they have, thinking they would make a fortune there, only to find lv 90 items competition to be too high and prices too low, and have to constantly play the undercutting war to be able to sell anything at all.

Time is money, but rushing to "invest" may or not not be a great idea unless you are very clear that there will be "good return" in the end. If you have only 2 million gil to spend, and you spend that 2 million to rush a class to lv 90 within 1 day with leves, I doubt you can make back 1 million by selling lv 90 items within another 2 days. It's really a risky investment.

Instead, I'd recommend taking it slower... spend leves on leveling gatherers instead of crafters, gather own mats and level up retainers, use retainers to further gather more mats, massively craft HQ ingots/lumbers from raw mats, partially sell some on MB, use some for leves, lower quality of the rest of the HQ ingots/lumbers, and use them to go through crafting log to make HQ products, sell some HQ products and use some for leves/collectables/daily GC provision missions. I really think this will be a much safer investment with good returns for novice crafters.

For me, even as a profit motivated crafter, the difference is night and day in both those categories, and I don't ever use collectables to level, even if I want to grind materia its just so much more efficient to use a few leves to cap for an expansion in a few minutes, and then get materia with end game gear, abilities, and equipment, not to mention the fact that its better to maintain a diverse inventory and getting faster access to all the items on an expansion drop is worth it for its own sake while they are still selling high.

I think it will work really well for someone who is familiar with the whole crafting and market game. When you get into factory mode to craft at lv 90, spiritbonding can be a much more effective way to earn materia than collectables. But not everyone is hardworking. I am one of the lazy ones, and I rarely go all out to massively craft things at level 90 for gil.

[ForctyusGold]

i would like to able turning in completed levequest in each area where youre doing them , even you accepted in different place . if that makes sense mostly works for DoL maybe for battle ones.

and please .. even you dont speak about that . i would love to have new battle levequest after level 60 :c

[Jojoya]

Are leves items easier to make than collectables these days?

Recipes of the same level are roughly the same difficulty between leve items and collectables.

Both are significantly easier than Restoration recipes.

I've got a really easy to cover my costs when leveling a new alt - make duplicates of items I need for quests and leves (and sometimes GC supply missions). If I need an item for one of those things, I know another player is going to need them as well and it rarely takes long for a buyer to appear. If the crafting materials are getting sold in large stacks, a lot of times the item will be cheaper than the stacks.

[dezzmont]

Are leves items easier to make than collectables these days? I always merely relied on previous expansion's endgame BiS set to go through all 10 level of a new expansion, and I didn't recall encountering anything difficult along the way of leveling. I just quickly wrote up some macros and autocraft everything.

They are the same difficulty, so if your rocking BIS gear from the last expansion you can probably still get to 90 running macros without any new gear or trouble, but if your a new crafter or leveling an alt gear is a real issue for macro crafting in a new patch. In that case you need to manually craft, and Leves will give double the XP generally of an equivalent max collectability collectable.

I also tend to tell people not to rush to the endgame (unless you are at the beginning of an expansion or a patch)....

It heavily depends on what your doing. At the end of the day though its way more about how many items you can push rather than the individual profit margin. It doesn't matter if there is a niche item that has a 500k profit margin at level 40-whatever compared to end game items that have a profit margin of say... 30k if it sells once a week while you can sell 10 a day of the end game item, unless your unable to leverage the capital to trade at market capacity of course, or want to passively trade. And of course bankrupting yourself to level is not a good idea, I agree, but at the same time it is really a question of if getting the change you get from collectables is worth your time or not. If you can double the rate at which you level all your classes you could skip gear tiers much more easily and get to making the stuff you want.

I think it will work really well for someone who is familiar with the whole crafting and market game. When you get into factory mode to craft at lv 90, spiritbonding can be a much more effective way to earn materia than collectables. But not everyone is hardworking. I am one of the lazy ones, and I rarely go all out to massively craft things at level 90 for gil.

It is more about being cognizant of your goals. A lot of crafters prioritize 'saving money' rather than 'earning money.' Collectables can very much be worth it but there is a good place for mass levequests too (most experienced crafters probably should be using them to level when the expansion hits, for example, and levekits sent to an alt or player your helping are the best way to level them) that would make a QOL turn in feature very appreciated.