Quote Originally Posted by Matsume View Post
Anyone who has spent a decent amount of time farming HQ darksteel and gold ore in FFXIV has noticed by now a difference in drop rate on new moon and full moon phases.

The only question is to what degree these things affect crafting and gathering. As you can see by my signature, I was an avid FFXI crafter and devoted all of my time to it. HQ theory crafting went to an extreme of testing whether equipping an elemental staff had an effect on the HQ rate but I can assure you that direction and time frames were the norm.
I can attest to that. I always seen significantly higher gather rates on Full/New moons when mining for HQ items such as Darksteel.