Is (early game) crafting in FFXIV insanely difficult or am I doing something wrong?

[AvianAviator]

I don't want to cut corners; I want to craft everything with my own time and merits. I want to gather all my ingredients and make all my own HQ items, at least for the crafting quests. Eventually the idea is to start selling HQ recipes or materials on the market board. First I'll sell stuff for crafting quests, then when I get to end game I would like to sell HQ end game stuff.

But my fucking God, the crafting grind is insane and time consuming. I only just got ONE class (Culinarian) to level 50, and the conditions to get all your ingredients yourself for recipes and even make a HQ recipe is difficult and annoying.

You have to level up one of the gathering classes alongside a crafting one - which, sure, fine, okay, I get. In my quest to level Culinarian first, I got the Botanist up to level 46 I think. But some of the conditions to gather the right ingredients are nuts - I have to check the weather? I can only get this particular plant when it's raining? What? What if the weather doesn't change at all in the time I have allocated to play? Okay, guess I can't get that this time, better buy it off the market board...

And then, I haven't quite figured out the loop for consistent, HQ crafting of some items. Filling the quality bar to the top can take a lot of hits but I only have so many durability slots and 190 CP. Even when I stretch it out as much as possible, taking advantage of Master's Mend and durability-saving and quality-enhancing skills, I still come up short. In my quest to level up last night, I just got frustrated and bought everything from the market board.

Am I going about this with the wrong mindset? Is it the intention of the developers for you to utilize the market board in tandem with gathering yourself? Is there a recommended rotation for lower level crafters? (All the guides I found are outdated and use some skill called Steady Hand which appears to have been removed from the game.) Is it all supposed to be this difficult? What am I doing wrong here

Edit: Also to clarify, I don't need help leveling my crafter. Levequests and other things give plenty of XP just fine (though I appreciate the tips about the firmament and post-level 50 ways of leveling that I haven't gotten to yet).

 

[Deleted member 81119]

The idea is that you don't do it all yourself. This isn't a single player game. You're making it much harder on yourself by viewing using the online market as 'cutting corners'.

Think of FFXIV as "something for everyone, not everything for you". There's far too much if you try to tackle it all on your own. The amount of options of things you can do is so everyone can focus on the things they find fun.

 

[super-famicom]

It's kinda better to level everything together, as materials from one job will need to be used in another job's recipes. And what are you doing to level? Just crafting things randomly? Early level it's good to do levequests and GC supply and provisioning turn ins, as well as tribe quests (Ixali).

I didn't level everything up at once but did Weaver to like 50, then slowly leveled everything via GC provisioning and supply, took many classes to 30 that way. Once you get to post Heavensward and unlock the Diadem and Firmament, then you can level up all gatherer and crafter classes super easily and quickly.

 

[Deleted member 70788]

There are guides online. You basically need to find the best levequests and spam them. If you have the gil you can basically just make macros, crank out the same HQ item over and over, and turn them in for a ton of EXP.

Then there are things like the loyalty quests or something for certain ones (I forget if that's what they're called) that give a ton of EXP and they give you the materials.

Basically what you're trying to do is hard mode. There are far better ways to do it. You also won't make any money off of crafting until you're max level.

Crafter Leveling Guide 1-90 (Endwalker 6.4) - Gillionaire Girls

Possibly the best guide you'll ever find on how to level your crafters from 1-90 in FFXIV Endwalker. All gearsets, macros and recipes provided.

ffxivgillionaire.com

 

[Anoregon]

It sounds to me like you hit 50 and are trying to continue going through what was max level (and thus inherently more time-consuming and grindy) old ARR content instead of just continuing to level 51 stuff in the first expansion. The max level crafts of any given expansion tend to be the ones that require rare mats that can only be gained at a certain time of day and require specific weather.

 

[PlanetSmasher]

Crafting and gathering in FFXIV are awful, and I genuinely can't bring myself to engage with them, especially considering how much inventory and retainer space you have to waste on components. My retainers have been at max capacity for two expansions now and CBU3 has found no way to lighten that load for me.

But yes, the game does intend you to use the Market Board to buy some components. That's basically like 50% of the game's internal economy nowadays - crafters and gatherers selling shit to each other at obscene markups because the process of gathering it themselves is borderline time-prohibitive.

 

[TeenageFBI]

If you want to avoid the marketboard, I found it easier to level all of the crafting jobs simultaneously. If you're not doing that, you're going to pay a LOT for the required mats that can only be produced by other jobs.

In related news, that Diadem area is incredibly useful for leveling gatherers and crafters, look into it.

 

[Zomba13]

Trying to craft solo is a fools errand in my opinion. I had to actively try and stop my girlfriend from doing it when she played because her entire inventory and retainers were full of one off crafting materials. She loves crafting and making things and it's nice seeing her get involved and making spreadsheets but ultimately it's a waste of time. To craft a sword you need like three other crafters levelled up and the gatherers to get the stuff and it just becomes a loop of "well I need this levelled to make that piece but then to make that piece I also need this levelled up but before that I need this levelled up to put those two bits together before I finally get this other job levelled up to make the damn thing".

The crafting minigame is cool and it's nice being able to make the stuff you want for yourself or others but it's a real REAL slog if you try to do it alone and "by the book".
I always recommend this guide for the easiest crafting levelling: https://guides.ffxivteamcraft.com/guide/crafting-leveling-guide

 

[super-famicom]

I tried to do the time of day plants once, and it kinda sucked, so I just use MB for that stuff. I've made a couple million via retainers selling stuff from Quick Expeditions and mats that I don't use, so I have a nice cushion to buy things when needed. I'm not going to get into selling on MB as a main goal, though. Just wanna max out levels and maybe craft some cool stuff once in a while.

 

[Atolm]

There's no point in crafting HQ unless it's either something that sells or you're using levequests to level up. Also the whole system is thought in such a way that every crafter depends on others. For serious crafting, you level up all of them at the same time.

 

[Sioul]

Level all the crafters at the same time, the other crafters use similar materials every 10 levels. Do your job quests. Get new gear when available (craft it yourself, dont buy it). Try to gather all the stuff but if you really want to buy ALWAYS read the tooltip and look for "Shop selling price: x" , that means that a NPC sell that item for that gil so you can avoid being scammed

 

[noffles]

it was much worse in stormblood, but the early grind is kind of gross. i don't think it starts to feel good with the current set of actions until around level 60, personally

if you want to actually grind stuff out though, wait until you have access to the firmament/the diadem and you can blast levels out like nothing -- fairly sure there are useful progression guides for that too

it's an absolute ballache to get everything to 90 though. by the time you hit 80 on each class though, you can rely on a leve/collectable grind

also level them all at the same time

i hope my incomprehensible ramblings help

 

[Azubah]

Try to find the crafting/gathering tribes, you get an insane amount of XP for doing them.

 

[SanTheSly]

I honestly only started crafting at the end of Shadowbringers and my immediate thought was "how would this have been possible any earlier than this?"

Unless you're fine levelling every DoH/DoL at once to get your own materials, it's prohibitively expensive. I probably burned through like 700-800k in gil just levelling my Alchemist up to 70. Even doing tribals only gets you so far with that.

Gathering and Crafting being infinitely deep systems also makes it pretty imposing. I only realised at level 70 Miner/Alchemist that I should have been doing custom deliveries and trading in collectibles for Scrips so I can get decent IL gear for each role. I was paying out 50k-100k every few levels on terrible gear from in game merchants.

Downside to the scrip gear is no materia slots. Speaking of which, learning to be a crafter meant I FINALLY had to learn about the materia system in this game.

Anyway the point is, FF14 is now a part time job. Welcome to the club.

 

[super-famicom]

Once you hit 60 in a job, please do the custom delivery quests in Idyllshire and help save the orphans!

 

[Ashes of Dreams]

It's an MMORPG, of course "I want to do everything by myself" is going to lead to a more intense grind. If your options for an ingredient is "spend my entire play session waiting to gather this leaf myself" or "spend 1000 gil to buy this leaf from someone else", just buy the leaf...

Everything everyone else is saying is also correct, though. If you want to be sustainable as a crafter yourself, it's going to take time and work but the path you actually want to take is first leveling up all the gathering jobs, not just one. Then you want to level up all the crafting jobs together, not just one. There is no isolated crafting job, it's going to use from everything. And then yeah, don't really concern yourself too much with making good items until you hit current end-game. And ignore the end-game of previous expansions for now, it's a waste of time until you have less important things to do.

 

[Aquova]

My crafting levels are in the mid-60s, but I don't think I've ever correctly understood the correct way to get higher quality results, I just brute force my way into making the low quality version lol. I've always just done the two or three higher EXP grand company requests once a day, which is typically enough EXP to level up that job by a level.

 

[Xwing]

 

[AvianAviator]

Thank you for the responses so far, everyone. And thanks to folks who provided guides.

There's no point in crafting HQ unless it's either something that sells or you're using levequests to level up. Also the whole system is thought in such a way that every crafter depends on others. For serious crafting, you level up all of them at the same time.

Click to shrink...

Right now I'm literally just trying to make HQ items for the Culinary MSQ. I wasted so many materials trying to get a fucking HQ pastry fish that I just bought the stupid thing on the marketplace. I feel like it defeats the purpose of the quest line if you can't make the thing yourself.

But the idea is to eventually sell high level items.

Unless you're fine levelling every DoH/DoL at once to get your own materials, it's prohibitively expensive. I probably burned through like 700-800k in gil just levelling my Alchemist up to 70. Even doing tribals only gets you so far with that.

Gathering and Crafting being infinitely deep systems also makes it pretty imposing. I only realised at level 70 Miner/Alchemist that I should have been doing custom deliveries and trading in collectibles for Scrips so I can get decent IL gear for each role. I was paying out 50k-100k every few levels on terrible gear from in game merchants.

Downside to the scrip gear is no materia slots. Speaking of which, learning to be a crafter meant I FINALLY had to learn about the materia system in this game.

Click to shrink...

Yeah that's the problem, I don't want to spend so much money to level these things up. But the consensus seems to be that I don't really have a choice, I'm supposed to depend on the market board for some things.

I don't think I even know what scrips are.

It's kinda better to level everything together, as materials from one job will need to be used in another job's recipes. And what are you doing to level? Just crafting things randomly? Early level it's good to do levequests and GC supply and provisioning turn ins, as well as tribe quests (Ixali).

I didn't level everything up at once but did Weaver to like 50, then slowly leveled everything via GC provisioning and supply, took many classes to 30 that way. Once you get to post Heavensward and unlock the Diadem and Firmament, then you can level up all gatherer and crafter classes super easily and quickly.

Click to shrink...

I have been doing levequest, have not really touched supply and provisions at all except to turn in dungeon items. Never used it for crafting I don't think. I do the ixali sometimes.

 

[Martylepiaf]

if you have difficulties to craft HQ stuff maybe your gear is not good enough

 

[Altair]

Leveling crafters in this game is a time and gil sink. That's just the way it is. Even doing it the *easy* way still takes time which is buying the mats, ishgard restoration, collectibles, gc turn ins, leves, etc. If you're determined to gather and craft everything, then you're going to be annoyed with it. Also, pretty much everybody uses exclusively macros for all crafts in this game with the exception of experts and even those are sometimes macro'd. Hardly anyone does normal crafting because it's more effort for the same result.

 

[Yeona]

Trying to do it all yourself is hilariously overcomplicated and the system was never designed for you to do that.

Rely on other players and participate in the economy.

If you're having difficulty crafting lower level items at high quality, this usually means your gear's not that great, or you aren't reading your crafting abilities' tooltips well enough. Is there any specific ability you're confused about? Are you kinda familiar with how abilities work with one another etc?

 

[Persephone]

Crafting and gathering in FFXIV are awful, and I genuinely can't bring myself to engage with them, especially considering how much inventory and retainer space you have to waste on components. My retainers have been at max capacity for two expansions now and CBU3 has found no way to lighten that load for me.

Click to shrink...

why would you say something so controversial yet so brave. though fishing is fun as long as you're not going for rare/big fish.

Stormblood crafting was the best because they just gave you the mats. why did they undo that.

 

[TalonJH]

You aren't meant to really zoom through it. It's almost like a separate optional game. For some people, it's their main focus. Don't grind yourself to death. Do the daily turn ins at your Grand Company, do some levesquest, tribal crafting quest and later make sure to do the weekly collectable turn-ins. If you get bored, consider doing most of your crafting while in duty queues. People tend to enter the duty roulette and just stand there waiting for it to pop. You can change to your crafting/gathering class while you wait and knock out a couple task while you wait. When the duty finder pops, you Simple just change back to your combat quest and accept. Lastly, make sure you are leveling your retainers. You can send them out to gather specific ingredients or to randomly bring back items that you came then sell on the market board. They should always be out doing something. If you don't need a specific ingredient send them out to find a random item and before you log off for the day, sent them on the long venture that you unlock.

When it comes to Gil, it just feels like things are expensive because you are early. The market board is almost the only real money sink in the game so there it's really no reason to worry too much about it. If you keep at crafting and gathering(especially if you are doing most the work and only buying some of the ingredients, you'll have more than you know what to do with. I moved to one of the new servers for a change and bought a medium size private house and still have over 35 million and I'm poor compared to some of my friends that only craft in the game.

Consider going a group with crafters for help and just take your time.

 

[PlanetSmasher]

why would you say something so controversial yet so brave. though fishing is fun as long as you're not going for rare/big fish.

Stormblood crafting was the best because they just gave you the mats. why did they undo that.

Click to shrink...

Fishing is at least semi-relaxing, I guess. But man, trying to manage multiple crafting/gathering gear sets ON TOP OF all my other gear sets for all my jobs AND THEN make room in multiple inventories for all the stuff I need to make the crafting/gathering jobs work is just...ugh.

When 7.0 comes out they need to completely divorce crafting/gathering inventories from the main inventory. Make them their own side menu set. Give them their own tabs inside of retainers. Etc. Stop making players have to fight against their combat jobs just to make room for crafting and gathering.

 

[Persephone]

Fishing is at least semi-relaxing, I guess. But man, trying to manage multiple crafting/gathering gear sets ON TOP OF all my other gear sets for all my jobs AND THEN make room in multiple inventories for all the stuff I need to make the crafting/gathering jobs work is just...ugh.

When 7.0 comes out they need to completely divorce crafting/gathering inventories from the main inventory. Make them their own side menu set. Give them their own tabs inside of retainers. Etc. Stop making players have to fight against their combat jobs just to make room for crafting and gathering.

Click to shrink...

something something spaghetti code, unfortunately

 

[Eidan]

I didn't find it that difficult. I did most of my leveling in the Firmament and it seemed pretty straightforward. I had a botanist and fisher leveled to help provide a lot of the supplies I needed, and would just purchase any other items I needed from NPCs and the occasional market board. My crafter was a culinarian.

I find crafting to be a a pretty chill side activity in the game. If I were to change anything it'd be to give non-combat related inventory items/gear/rewards their own inventory space. Too much time is spent shuffling items around between your inventory, the inventory of your retainers, and your saddlebags. I legit don't know how anyone could manage actively working on crafting while also doing their combat classes at the same time, let alone doing multiple crafters and combat.

 

[FeenixRisen]

I only have an ALC leveled to 60 because it's such a pain to level a crafter I just gave up. I need to get hot on it though...

 

[N7_Kovalski]

Hmmm - I found 1-50 in crafting super easy and that was before they buffed all the exp. You can easily get most crafting classes to 20-30 just by hanging out in the crafting guild and buying mats from the merchants right there. If you are doing your dailies (GC turn-ins), weeklies, and beast tribe, getting to 50 is a breeze. Not to mention levequests. 50 upwards gets a little harder since some mats are a little more difficult/time consuming to get but even then, the moogle beast tribe nets you a lot of exp. I will say that CUL and ALC do kinda suck because of the sheer number of mats you need for things.

 

[signal]

Isn't it super easy because you can just like buy everything?

Crafting is such a waste of time though imo. Waste of time and inventory space!!

 

[Ruck]

Crafting gets easier as you gain access to more skills. I haven't leveled a crafter from scratch since 2.0 and the ability unlocks have changed since then I think, but basically once you get the right skills the rotation doesn't change. You can (and should) macro a rotation so you don't have to do it yourself every time.

As for time and weather gated materials, they're not that common. Especially weather ones, I can't actually even think of any besides fish and most fish are useless. Not like, the thing they're for isn't widely used, but instead they are literally just vendor trash you get for bragging rights. So don't worry about weather stuff.

edit: also yes, crafting and gathering is ultimately a waste of time unless you are maybe really deep into the housing deco game or you need to make your own raid food for whatever reason. more power to you if you are having fun with it though, that can be reason enough

 

[King Fossil]

Click to shrink...

I was in that 4th phase when the max level was 50 for crafting/gathering. After I hit 50 for everything and they later increased the max level, I noped out of it. Waste of time.

 

[-Tetsuo-]

Yes I do believe it is the developers intention to seek assistance from other players in an MMO

 

[Meia]

I leveled everything to 80 in the last 6 months as one of many projects I've decided to do before I even start Endwalker, and it wasn't too bad, really.


Just start doing gathering with the Firmament. I ground both gathering professions to 70, and in doing that got a lot of what I needed to grind the other crafting professions high enough. I used the marketboard to buy other things I needed, and did the moogle mini-game you get tickets for from turn ins to make up any money I lost doing this(the casual attire usually sells for a mil on the marketboard, got like 3 of those doing all this).


Because I had nothing but time usually I then did the moogle beast tribe to level most to 60, then the namazu to 70, dwarf to 80. Fishing I did the ocean fishing every 2 hours to level that, which doesn't take too long. Even though my highest battle job is 80, I got two crafters to 90 by doing the weekly collectable turn-ins.


Also don't underestimate the Fetes in the Firm, as each one gives you 2% exp no matter what level profession it is. You can marketboard the dyes you can buy with tickets for good money too(up to 15 mil even with this much crafting pretty much from that).


...now if I only finish getting my War to 80, do the Hildebrand questline, and get peeps to help with the base Omega raids, I can start Endwalker(stopped progress in 5.3). :p

 

[kurahador]

As you level up crafter, you get more skill into your rotation that make HQ items easier to obtain.

But if you wanna brute force it yourself, you gonna have to gamble with Hasty Touch. And always eat foods that temporarily boost your crafter stats if you wanna craft something difficult.

 

[SpoonyBob]

Not to say that other professions AREN'T frustrating at times, but my experiance was that Culinarian recipes were especially annoying with how scattered the ingredients are, and that doesn't seem to ever let up.

But yeah, at the end of the day I came across the grand company turn ins and never looked back. All crafts max level with almost no idea how to actually craft something.

 

[Cerulean_skylark]

I don't want to cut corners; I want to craft everything with my own time and merits. I want to gather all my ingredients and make all my own HQ items, at least for the crafting quests. Eventually the idea is to start selling HQ recipes or materials

Click to shrink...

If you're JUST starting out, this is a pipe dream. Crafting was intended to overlap with other crafters, gatherers and combat jobs. And some quest crafts are STUPIDLY hard for leveling purposes if you're trying to be 100% self sufficient.

Do not feel ashamed at buying some quest crafts. Levequest crafting can be good and actually turn you a small profit if you're getting everything yourself. But also crystals can be a bottleneck when crafting en masse.

Long story short. Good luck and do your best but there is no shame buying some stuff because it's designed to interact in a larger economy.

By the time you're like level 60 in all crafters you will have some very useful skills that become mandatory to easier crafting. It's a weird system that is hard at first due to limitations. Then easy. Then really hard again. 99% of end game crafters find macros that automate the whole process and off-load the decision making to theory crafters and luck

 

[Transistor]

The idea is that you don't do it all yourself. This isn't a single player game. You're making it much harder on yourself by viewing using the online market as 'cutting corners'.

Think of FFXIV as "something for everyone, not everything for you". There's far too much if you try to tackle it all on your own. The amount of options of things you can do is so everyone can focus on the things they find fun.

Click to shrink...

This is the best advice, I think, because I fell into the same hole that the OP did.

 

[Zuly]

I did all crafting and gathering to max back in Heavensward with minimal use of the Market Board when it was significantly much harder to level and you have two choices: spend a lot of gil or take your time and concentrate on abusing daily turn ins from Grand Company, Tribal Quests, etc.

Edit: You have to make sure that your gatherers are either at level or much higher than your crafters to avoid spending gil and you are leveling all the crafters alongside each other so they can craft the materials.

 

[Kenai]

Crafting and gathering is super easy if you just go into Diadem and/or do Firmament stuff. It's not exactly exciting but you get what you pay for (you make money) Since you use mats specifically from Diadem and get specific rewards and titles that might be up your alley?

Leves are also pretty easy but they run out so it's best to be following a guide constantly to be efficient with those.

Also the associated tribe quests for the relevant expansion give a lot of exp too and are pretty fast so I recommend those. And your retainers can start gathering mats for you to make it even easier, they come back every 2 hours. And daily GC turn ins give a lot, you can level to 90, on just that


The only thing that's a waste to me is bleeding edge crafting for raiders because that stuff is hard to craft day 1 and gets undercut super quickly.

 

[AvianAviator]

Also to clarify, I don't need help leveling my crafter. Levequests and other things give plenty of XP just fine (though I appreciate the tips about the firmament and post-level 50 ways of leveling that I haven't gotten to yet).

I'm talking about trying to craft some of the HQ items requested of me in the story quests, and actually going out to gather specific things that have more requirements than just "go here and smack this tree for a little bit." Though I see the answer is basically "this is an MMO doofus, don't do everything by yourself" lol.

Trying to do it all yourself is hilariously overcomplicated and the system was never designed for you to do that.

Rely on other players and participate in the economy.

If you're having difficulty crafting lower level items at high quality, this usually means your gear's not that great, or you aren't reading your crafting abilities' tooltips well enough. Is there any specific ability you're confused about? Are you kinda familiar with how abilities work with one another etc?

Click to shrink...

I have been getting my gear as rewards for completing missions. I haven't gone out and bought any gear.

But I would like some primers on abilities because I think I am confused about them. Generally I need to build up quality first, right? But I have trouble managing my CP and durability to get the quality high enough. I found a rotation online, can't find it now but I'll post it to show generally what I've been doing.

 

[Baphomet]

Crafting is easy to level just do Grand Company turn ins that's how I mostly leveled up my crafters.

 

[Zuly]

But I would like some primers on abilities because I think I am confused about them. Generally I need to build up quality first, right? But I have trouble managing my CP and durability to get the quality high enough. I found a rotation online, can't find it now but I'll post it to show generally what I've been doing.

Click to shrink...

Early on, you will have to rely on Hasty Touch for quality and using CP for durability and your finishers (Great Strides + Byregot's Blessing). What you want to do is get as much Inner Quiet stacks before using your "finishers" for a big fat stack of quality. When it comes to increasing quality, you want to use as little CP as possible and using CP for buffing (Waste Not, Innovation, etc) your steps.

 

[Eriol]

Also to clarify, I don't need help leveling my crafter. Levequests and other things give plenty of XP just fine (though I appreciate the tips about the firmament and post-level 50 ways of leveling that I haven't gotten to yet).

I'm talking about trying to craft some of the HQ items requested of me in the story quests, and actually going out to gather specific things that have more requirements than just "go here and smack this tree for a little bit." Though I see the answer is basically "this is an MMO doofus, don't do everything by yourself" lol.


I have been getting my gear as rewards for completing missions. I haven't gone out and bought any gear.

But I would like some primers on abilities because I think I am confused about them. Generally I need to build up quality first, right? But I have trouble managing my CP and durability to get the quality high enough. I found a rotation online, can't find it now but I'll post it to show generally what I've been doing.

Click to shrink...

that could be the problem, your stats are key for hq crafting the stuff needed for those quests, your main and offhand need to be upgraded sometimes.

Thats why its better to lvl everything at once, because the gear you will need for those stats are crafted from other crafting jobs

 

[Yam's]

Kinda surprised at the answers here. Doing everything yourself is super easy in this game. Between leves, beast tribes dailies, daily company supplies and the weekly custom deliveries, you can easily max every gatherers/crafters by yourself without touching the marketboard. The only time you may hit a roadblock is when you're trying to do old job quests that require specific items. You can either buy what you need or do them later once you can gather the required items in hq without trouble.

 

[MegaSackman]

Crafting after lvl 50 it's easy and fast. Gathering... I'm not sure, I'm at 60 for mining but I got bored so I unsubbed until the next update, it didn't seem too bad.

It helped me to mix tasks like mining, doing roulettes, doing the island, and other stuff. Doing just a job can be a frustrating experience.

 

[CopyCatGirl]

Crafting is my favorite part about FF XIV. And it always felt to me like the game is almost pushing you to be an omnicrafter and do everything yourself. No need to rely on the market board.
Anyway, if you are stuck at quests that require HQ items just do them later. With better gear crafting gets significantly easier. It's normal that getting reliable HQ results for more difficult crafts is tough if you don't have the stats for it. Especially for endgame crafts you need a lot of materia and the right food. But during leveling it's really not worth it to bother too much with that. Just focus on leveling for now. Getting HQ for regular crafts for leves/Firmament/beast tribes should be doable.

 

[AvianAviator]

I just looked at my gear closely and you know what, I think that is the problem. I've got a mishmash of stuff on ranging from level 41 to as low as level 19. Wow.

 

[Ruck]

I just looked at my gear closely and you know what, I think that is the problem. I've got a mishmash of stuff on ranging from level 41 to as low as level 19. Wow.

Click to shrink...

Yeah upgrading that will be huge. The difference between level 50 gear pieces is big too since there is such a wide item level available to you. If you can, I would just go to 51 or 52 whatever the next set is and skip the level 50 stuff if you can. People will super overcharge you for not knowing any better