gathering classesFollow

Gathering can be fun, it can also get old... luckily leveling a gathering class to 50 is virtually painless. The key is gear, gear improves chances of HQ and HQ = more xp. I leveled mining mostly on leves prior to the leveling changes, it took a while and had a few painful spots. I leveled botany on a mix of normal gathering and leves post change, and it was much quicker with no memories of frustrating points. Get HQ gear whenever possible and it's fine.

I haven't tried fishing yet, but I have heard it's more frustrating yet more rewarding.

I hated the XI fishing system. I like the XIV system. It's not difficult, but fishing is SUPPOSED to be peaceful and relaxing, and that's exactly what it is. If I want excitement and danger I play a battle class.

Fishing's simple system allows you to watch TV or have a RL conversation with someone while doing it. It's good chill out time.

I have both a Miner at 50, a Botanist at 50 and a Fisherman at 50.

I leveled my miner pre-exp adjustment, it was long, tedious and slow. Leveling was mainly through leves, as idividual nodes didnt give much exp per hit. But in the end more than worth it for the materials i can now collect free of charge.

My botanist was leveled to 50 post-exp adjustment, and it was the easiest thing ever. 200-250 exp per strike at a node, a good 1000 exp per node, and if you went into things with the mindset of "ok, in 50 nodes i get a new level" then everything would be a breeze. If you went into it with the idea that "I get 200 exp per hit, i have to do 250 hits before i get my level up" then you would quickly discourage yourself from doing it. Still, it's something you should free some time for.

Fishing to 50 was easy. The fish you need for the leves are between 2 and 4 gil on the auction boards due to mass-oversupply and them not being used for anything else, even the HQ's. So leveling from 10 to 50 through leves didnt cost you a dime. Infact, you made money from all the level completions it gave you. You could even fish up a few of them in between if you really wanted to do it. The most painless leveling i had in a while.

durrr... i said fates instead of leves like i meant to do...

Edited, Jul 23rd 2014 7:32pm by KojiroSoma

yes I agree leveling a gathering class makes perfect sense if you do it DURING or BEFORE leveling a craft but what about AFTER a craft or crafts are leveled? For example Im sure a lvl 50 blacksmith isnt gonna go mine ore when he/she has enough gil to just buy it off the mb in 5 secs right?

Also what good is fishing if its used for nothing? I mean in XI fish were at least used as food ingredients (which makes perfect sense)

I actually break down the cost of whatever is being sold on the market boards, versus how much the components AND how much effort it would take to acquire whatever it is on my own. FFXIV "minimum wage" for me is 50K/hour. If whatever I need to buy will be worth at least 50K/hour (which works out to a stack of whatever once I've gathered and processed it all), then it's worth it to do it on my own. If I can buy a finished, processed stack of it for less than 50K, or if the individual components are quite cheaper than whatever the finished product is selling for due to markups. then I don't bother gathering.

Linen cloth is a good example. Getting the flax to make the thread to make the cloth, along with the crystals, takes about an hour if you hammer at it and you're smart with your GP. A stack of that cloth regularly sells for 100K on the market boards on Lamia. It's more valuable for me to sink that hour in and just procure the materials myself.

On the other hand, farming diremite webs to make dew thread is a pain in the butt, and it's a much more valuable use of my time to just buy the webs or the thread to make my own velveteen, since I can buy the cotton thread from an NPC for dirt cheap.

Naw, there's just a bunch of 250K atma you have to buy for your later stage relic weapon upgrades -_-

Don't forget that there's also the option of letting retainers collect some of these materials for you (diremite webs are level 24 DoW/DoM, I think). I can spend 40 minutes doing something else while my retainers collect them for me. Since I'm a bit scattered in my approach to crafts, I rarely exhaust anything in that time.

Yes I did, thank you.

And actually getting 7 mil in FFXI wasn't difficult during the Great Christmas Inflation of 2005, and also was not difficult by the time Abyssea came out. In the intervening years, the NQ Hauby dropped to around a million gil.

You also had other options for a lot of that gear in XI. I got my Noble's Tunic, my Sha'ir Manteel, my Kirin's Osode, and my Novio Earring by going to HNM events, hoarding points, and lotting on drops. 90% of winning is just showing up and no place else was that more true than HNM events. I pissed off a lot of folks over the years by my underhanded and cheating tactics of "showing up, not spending points for a year, then taking all the loot I wanted."

That works awesome as long as the shell doesn't fold after three months because the leaders got all the drops they wanted and lost interest...

This, it's worth having at least one gathering class at 50 so you can get your free map once every 18 hours.

Apart from that I have fun with my gatherer at 50, unspoiled nodes are strangely addictive, and I'm working my way towards the new tool (not quite sure why but whatever).

Nope, fishing gives you a random map (like the lv.40 one) and then screws you out of your chance of getting the one you actually wanted to dig up later on your Miner/Botanist. Resets your timer just like the rest of them, only you have no way to aim for a specific map.

on a random note can you repair stuff without being on the class needed to repair? for example lets say I have blacksmith at 50 but im playing on bard and are carrying around dark matter..... could someone request repair on me (or trade me their item) and I can still repair it on bard (as when Im playing bard and click on stuff in my armory chest I DO see a repair option) without having to change my class to blacksmith to do it?

I do enjoy fishing. Something relaxing to do. The simplicity of the system is a positive in that regard. I sometimes get annoyed with the progression of it though. You run into major roadblocks that don't always involve fishing. It's more about converting/buying materia and either being able to meld them yourself or getting others to do it for you. Buying or being able to make your own HQ gear & gathering food. Desynthing/buying fieldcraft & mastercraft demimateria. Lots of potentially time-consuming and/or expensive non-fishing things in the way of anyone trying to become a top fisher.

I've wondered if fishing was more involved, then perhaps there could be various challenges to earn BiS fishing gear solely by, you know, fishing for it. Of course I understand this isn't a game about fishing. That's not the main attraction and they have plenty of other things to deal with. It's just something I've thought about that maybe could've made it more enjoyable.

Edited, Aug 1st 2014 3:52am by TwistedOwl