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FFXIV Crafting

335 words.

Just once I would like to play an MMO where it is easier to level a crafting profession than it is to level your character. Often it seems pointless to level a crafting profession because the equipment you make lags so far behind the level of your character.

FFXIV is better than most games, but I’m experiencing it again. I wanted to meld my own materia for the level 50 Relic Reborn quest, but guess what? You need a level 50 crafting profession to do that.

So I began leveling Carpentry in earnest. I got to level 39 with time-consuming and expensive use of levemetes, and then I discovered much to my annoyance that you need an Alchemist to meld materia for a White Mage staff. Let that be a lesson to you out there: Always check to see what class is required to meld materia, because it’s not always logical. I had assumed it would be a Carpenter because you can make Conjurer staffs with Carpentry.

Crafting is expensive. Thusfar in FFXIV I have never had any need to make money, but if you want to level crafting professions in a timely manner, you are going to be shelling out a lot of money on materials from the Market Board. Now I’m trying to consider ways to improve my income. By which I mean raise it past zero - I had been getting by on the money I made from quests while leveling and what you get from dungeon rewards. Now I’m trying to find relatively easy-to-get-or-make things I can sell from my retainer.

Alternately, I suppose you could level all of your crafting and gathering classes at the same time, and then you would be able to make or gather most everything you need. However you will quickly run out of levemetes to do. You only get 4 levemete allowances per day, and that is only enough (maybe) to level one class once per day. After that it’s mostly grinding while watching Netflix.

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Next: GW2 – Loot Rains From The Sky. Previously: Landmark et al – Take My Money!.

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Archived Comments

gattsuru 2014-03-04T20:53:59Z

It’s 6 leves per day (3 every 12 hours). I don’t recommend using them for combat classes, although it’s less bad than it used to be. I’d also note that on most servers, the typical tips for two melds run around 2,000-5,000 gil (and you can’t meld the your relic weapon), so for most classes I wouldn’t recommend leveling just for the Relic quest.

Alchemist is worth leveling because you can go through a lot of xEthers if you run as a WHM in bad pick-up groups. It’s also a lot cheaper than most classes to level : you can reach level 50 by way of the Potions of Dexterity, Hi-Potion, Mega-Potion/Lanolin route, and not need any materials that drop from mobs. These choices are so much more efficient that you’ll want to stick to the Hi-Potion leves for nearly 10 levels. You’ll still want to get Botanist to ~25ish for the Hi-Potion materials, but that’s pretty easy to grind out just plucking Cotton.

It’s still disappointing that the crafting system is so meh, and the crafting shard economy is pretty much reliant on bots. Not quite as bad as WoW’s or GW2’s systems, but it’s obvious that they put a lot of effort into the concept in FFXIV only to botch the execution.

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