So, I finally finished leveling my crafts to 60 and I'd like to share with you what I found in the way and my personal tips for optimal leveling. I know there are other guides, but these are my personal experience with the process and I hope it helps you guys along the way too :)
Let's go:
Tips
- Level your gatherers before, you’ll need them. A lot. - Level your retainers (specially your hunt retainer. The most expensive mats right now are skins). - Plan your level up accordingly so you don’t waste gil or time. - Do the first quest of each class, it’ll give you scripts that can be used to boost your XP. - You can get all your crafting classes to 51 in no time just crafting base mats. They’ll be used later so it’s a win-win situation. You can use the XP scripts here and craft the itens as NQ if you want, I found these XP scripts work better with quantity and not quality, so this is a good time to use them. - I found really hard to HQ base mats in the beginning. Found easier to NQ them and try to HQ the final item (cause of 80-70 dur against 40-35). If you have the artisan gear full melded, Lucis and Artisan off-hand you can level your crafting almost without changing gear (I only changed the chest for the Dhalmel one at level 55 and progressed til 60 with all the rest the same). BUT if you don’t you’ll need to change your gear as soon as possible, starting at level 53. HQ gear are better, so if you need anything about that just ask in our crafting forum. - GC delivery is a GREAT way to get a huge amount of XP everyday. You might want to try to deliver these items every single day. HQ is double XP and seals so…try to HQ it. Some things you can just buy on mb, so check it often too, cause there are a lot of HQ gear that people received from MSQ and are selling real cheap. You can use GC to level up your gatherers too, specially fishing that..well…is such a pain :x
Leves x Collectibles
We have these 2 ways of leveling our crafts. The first one is already known from everyone, the secret is in finding the best leves (in XP and gil cost) and work out your leveling (see list of best leves in this guide). The second is a new thing. Starting from level 56, you can delivery collectibles, get XP from it and the famous scripts. I found it worked best to use collectibles from 56 and up, but you can use this mechanic since the beginning if you want. The reason I did that is that you spend a lot of mats and crystals, and collectible XP are not so good as leves or GC deliveries…so i choose to optimize them and use for xp + scripts when I could. Collectibles are real tricky cause there will be days when what’s been asked is just to expensive to even think about it. So you need patience and look everyday for what works best. For script grinding (not XP), Gorpo and I used this strategy: we leveled up Culinarian (that I strongly recomend you to level up first cause: a) you can craft crafting food that will help you a lot and b) it’s so easy you’ll do it in no time and have an advantage to get the scripts delivering Marron Glaces (lvl 59) as collectibles. The mats are really easy to get, the food is easy to craft with the minimum of collectible, and you can do it dozens of time to get all your master books if you want (I did that). If you want to better understand Collectibles (for gathering too, I recommend this link: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/3cneu3/starting_guide_to_collectables/ )
About rotations: - It will depend on what your level is and how your gear is but I choose to follow a very simple thought through all my leveling, based on the old Lucis rotation. - Basically what I do is: * Comfort Zone > Inner Quiet (these two are really important, you can never forget to start the rotation with them). You need to know how much progress you can get at your level, so I usually made a test with Rapid Synthesis (and sometimes I finished my craft just like that but, well, it happens ˆ_ˆ) and a Careful Synthesis II. You’ll know how much they go. Do the math and see how much do you need of them to finish the item. Knowing that you can plan how much durability you’ll need for the final rotation to use Byregot’s Blessing and finish the item. (In my case I found that most of the time I used 1 Rapid Synthesis at the start and needed 30 dur at the end to finish (one for Byregot’s and 2 for Careful Synthesis II). * Back to the rotation then: Comfort Zone > Inner Quiet > (if you’re gonna use Rapid Synthesis, use Steady Hand II first), if you’re gonna use Careful Synthesis II, you can Steady Hand II after. Well, now you started the craft and know how much DUR you need at the end. We proceed with the Quality then and start with our biggest friend and enemy…Hasty Touch. Use it always with Steady Hand II and try to get as much Inner Quiet stacks as you can. When you hit 20 or 10 DUR, Use Master’s Mend I (if total DUR is 40) or Master’s Mend II (if total durability is 80). Steady Hand II again and Hasty Touch as much as you can, leaving that ending DUR you’ll need to finish the item. You need to have at least 100 CP to finish it, using Steady Hand II, Great Strides, Innovation, Byregot’s Blessing. At this point you can be a happy crafter with your 100% quality change or an scared one with your 20%…But you can’t do anything more about that, so, Careful Synthesis II and finish it! * When you get a GOOD or Excellent proc you can use Tricks of the Trade to get more CP, it’s really needed. When you have Precise Touch you’ll need to see what is best (CP or 2 stacks of Inner Quiet) and that depends on how well your hasty touch is and how much CP you have to finish the rotation).
My final rotation then (80 DUR) : Comfort Zone > Inner Quiet > Steady Hand II > Rapid Synthesis > Hasty Touch x 4 (if good or excellent, Tricks of the Trade or Precise Touch if you have it) > Careful Synthesis II (if you’re gonna need 2 of it to finish, you can use one here to optimize Steady Hand II use and need only 20 DUR at the end). > Master’s Mend II (you’ll be back to 80 DUR) > Steady Hand II > Hasty Touch x 5 (if good you can Tricks of the Trade or Precise Touch, if excellent you might want to jump and finish if you have 7 or more stacks already). > Steady Hand II > Hasty Touch x 1 > Great Strides > Innovation > Byregot’s Blessing > Careful Synthesis II
This is it about rotations. For 70 DUR it’s basically the same thing but you need to always come back your DUR with Master’s Mend at 10 DUR. For 40-35 DUR the logic is the same, but at 10 or 5 DUR you’ll need to use Master’s Mend and do it 2-3 times. You can Waste Not too, Gorpo uses it a lot, but I prefer not (personal preference here). Again, I found harder to HQ these mats then the items.
And a collectible rotation, Amaya? Well, its the same! You just need to remember to use the Collector’s Synthesis before you finish the craft or you’ll get an HQ or NQ useless item…Crafting Collectibles is easier than HQ, cause you don’t need to get to 100% or near it. If everything goes wrong, you just need to get to the minimum quality and deliver it. I never used HQ base mats for collectibles cause of that.
Oh, wait, but I’m a specialist! Isn’t there anything that can helps me? Well, it has something that can helps you or drive you crazy cause…well, SE loooves RNG. As specialists we can whistle while we work (using the skill Whistle). This gives us another stack (starting at 11). This stack will get down with every good proc we get (or, in other words, if we don’t get any good procs…well…we are whistling pretty bad at work :X) When this stack gets to 9, 6 or 3, you can use the skill Satisfaction to regain CP, and sometimes you can use it with tricks so…lots of CP, yay! When Whistle is in this amounts, your craftsmanship gets a boost and sometimes you’ll finish a recipe without even knowing what happened, so, take care with your Rapid Synthesis and Careful Synthesis here too. You have another skill too, called “Nymea’s Hand, that can restore item DUR at a low CP cost, depending on your whistle stacks (the fewer the stacks, more you regain in DUR, and it can be a life saver). BUT then again, you depend on Good procs so…if you’re lucky and have a lot of good procs, this will work pretty well for you. If not…well, you spent 36 CP (to activate whistle), so use it wisely at your own choice. If you’re gonna use it, you can use it right after comfort zone, before Inner Quiet on my rotation. Just keep an eye for all the procs so you don’t loose one step in the way. About Leves: - You can go two ways here: You can choose the leves that ask for mats deliveries (in stacks of 3 mostly of them) and save your gil but have a hard time HQ crafting them or you can go for the better XP gain with their complex items, that tend to be easier to HQ crafting but sometimes are too expensive for us…Depending on your gil, mb prices and all, you can choose the best option. - WVR and LTW are currently really hard to level up cause of the skin prices. - Culinarian, as I said is the easier in my opinion, cause you have a leve that you deliver 1 Ishgard Muffin (the ingredients are cheap and the XP are high so…win-win). You can use this leve to go all the way to 60 (and it’s a 54 tier leve). The Marron Glace as collectibles will be cheap to gather the ingredients too and can give you all your masterbooks or gear if you go for the Blue crafter gear. - All the rest depends on MB prices and your gil. But check it often as there are a lot of HQ gear that people are getting from MSQ that are leve deliveries so you can take advantage of this items cheap price and just buy them finished. - About the order of the crafts to level. This is a very personal choice, but if you want tips…as I said: first Culinarian, then Alchemist (you need alchemist base mats for almost all of the other crafts). Then, if you want to craft your own gatherer and crafter gear: weaver, leatherworker (together they have most of the crafting and gathering gear, including the gathering jewelry) and blacksmith (most of the weapons), followed by carpenter (has some weapons and crafting jewelry), armorer (has a few weapons for Culinarian and Alchemist) and goldsmith (has the earrings for crafter and gatherer).
Well, I think this is it for now. If you have any doubts, just leave on the forum or hit me ingame!
Amaya Kiyohime replied
534 weeks ago