Goblin Party @ My Brain 24/7 | A week shy of 33 before Cohost closed. Cis, ACAB forever, Trans Rights Are Human Rights forever.
RIP Cohost 2024. You were the best social media site to have ever been done. Long live eggbug. If you're seeing this in the future, on some archive, be kind to others. It's the only way things get better.
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Part of me knows that Heavensward was the easiest it's going to be for DoH, or at least so I've heard. IDK if there's tradecraft leves worth a damn beyond HW or not - I sorely hope so. Or some other kind of big-burst HQ-hand-in extravaganza.
Otherwise it'll be grindin' out quicksynth style with boosters up. :/
I am deeply curious about the exact details of that hearsay because HW was and still is regarded as the worst expansion for crafters among all the olds I've ever spoken to! Expensive crafts, painful subcombines, and just a whole lot of "I have slaved all day to produce ONE (1) stick".
Anyways, from the perspective purely of someone interested in getting their levels up;
There's also the replacement for individual class quests in ShB/EW later which you should path into on your own but I want to flag because their exp payout is BONKERS. Think "just doing your quests will get you nearly the entire ten levels."
Anyways sorry if this list is a bit long, but I wanted to make sure you have the search terms to go poking around for stuff besides leves if you decide that's interesting! Have fun!
No stress on long comments! Thank you so much for being so informative. There's a lot of info for the game, but it's not well organised either in game or online, so it can be tough to know when one is bashing their head against a brick wall or not.
HW is the hardest? Huh? That... Well, that doesn't seem right, at least not by how I levelled. Levelling HW crafting was super easy! Can't speak for anything else about it, certainly wasn't crafting at this level when HW was relevant. Honestly has been the easiest levelling of any job I've done, so... Not sure if it was a thing they added after, or what, but...
I went down to the tradeleves folx with a bunch of the easiest to craft lv50 HQ items that they look for - usually basic refined resources, sometimes one of an entry-level item of the tier. Depending on which was more cost-effective, I either did a Large Tradeleve or a bunch of regulars. Never bothered doing a tradeleve higher than the lv50 ones unless it gave HQ gear I wanted. I tried, where possible, to pick the tradeleves that allowed for multiple hand-ins to multiply rewards.
I think I levelled up... 3 or 4 of my DoH from 50 to 60 in... Maybe an hour or two, with hand-gathering ingredients? Last night I took maybe half of them that were left from 55-ish to 60 just in an evening of casual play. One of them I definitely levelled in like, two or three hand-ins at most. Just, walked up, bang bang bang, level 60.
Now, mind you, I'm not doing my log-completion crafting, or doing higher-end-of-each-tier crafting, nor Mastery crafts, so I might have just been skipping all the toughest stuff and cheesing it. I was consistently annoyed at having to wait like a half hour to gather some time-gated node material b/c there were none on the market, or b/c market price was absurd - hope that lessens in later expacs, but probably not!
I don't like time-gated anything, really, especially if I have to progress up and unlock it first; I'm above MR20 in Warframe - I don't really like time-gated content all that much... XD I haven't fully unlocked any of the tribal quests for SB/ShB/EW, so I probably won't touch that.
I have done Collectables and Custom Deliveries; the latter is, again, time-gated, but at least the return is decent and there's a fair few once more Custom Delivery content is unlocked in later expacs. Collectables I often forget about, despite being an easily-constant source of both XP, and scrip, which is much more valuable than I'd been lead to believe, what with the need for Master books and easy tool buying and such.
I thought Ishgardian Restoration finished up, so I've never really bothered to look into it much. I got it unlocked and handed in a thing or two, but, at least for whatever I was doing, the return rate of xp-to-time didn't hit nearly as big as tradeleves.
I'm doubling back at each 10lv milestone to bring all my DoH quests up to date; there are some DoH jobs for which I haven't even started the questlines, and they're lv60... ^-^; Doesn't take long to catch up when both overlevelled and simul-levelling all DoH/DoL; can walk up to a questline pre-prepped with all the hand-ins up to my level, makes it real easy. :D But it's good to know that the ShB/EW questlines give big XP - that'll make it easier to focus.
I should mention I have been crafting my own gear as well. I kitted out before starting (with whatever was easy) once I hit around lv50, then I upgraded again at 55 to the ramie stuff, upgraded the tools when possible, and I did stuff a few CP materia into the shared equipment to let me eek out a much needed CP-regainer to help me more consistently get HQs. Didn't even bother w/ food most of the time - didn't need the stat buff, and wasn't benefitting from the 3% gain on the tradeleve XP, which was by far doing the majority of my levelling.
So... Like, is everyone talking about HW crafting inclusive of the tradeleves? Do the later expansions actually get easier than this? B/c I'll be level cap by week's end of purely distracted casual play if that's the case...
👍🏽👍🏽 Glad to hear it's at least mildly helpful! Ishgardian Restoration is "finished" in asmuch as it's no longer progressing patch by patch, but all its systems/prizes are still available, you can go through its story for the first time if you haven't done it yet, etc!
So... Like, is everyone talking about HW crafting inclusive of the tradeleves?
Basically the trick is that making An Thing in HW-era crafting is simply harder– more time, more resources, more subcombines– than counterparts before/after. This does impact tradeleves as well because, well, a leve is just asking you for An Thing! I recall (unfondly) the recommendation at one point that there was a specfific CUL leve that was strongly recommended as the ideal one to do, because it only had one (also CUL, ie, highly complicated) subcombine in it. Most of the other options required more total subcombines and/or more expensive subcombines!
As another example: you mentioned timed nodes were annoying to wait for? In all the other expansions the timed node materials are pretty much restricted to endgame crafts and won't show up as required materials while leveling. (You'll see them if you play with gatherer collectables, but that system is built around that premise!)
In short, I leveled a job in SB via leves because I could buy the item for a leve off the AH for 100 gil per item, 3 items leve, and that was a very fair price for how easy the items were to get.
Oh. Wow. So it really is the most hilarious possible outcome: I just really didn't find having to set up a multi-subcombine bulk craft up all that tough; made easier by not being solely subject to market whims by simul-levelling DoL. Little bit of buying, little bit of hand-gathering. Helps that I've got flying everywhere and all aetherytes as well, but yeah.
Honestly didn't mind it. I was doing it as a fun relaxer from struggling to raise my ilvl to keep going with the MSQ without having to grind for drops from my highest lv dungeon, or grind gil for buying crafted gear.
If it really does get easier, then that's fantastic; I'll be able to get up toward making my own gear upgrades!
Yeah, uh, HW is actually the WORST for DoH/DoL -- HW expected you had endgame crafting gear from ARR, which basically doesn't exist at level 50. Stormblood was a GIFT in comparison.
I asked in other comments as well, but I'm curious: is this inclusive of tradecraft leves? Or is it a case of 'oh yeah, the tradecraft leves are great, but no one counts them b/c they're limited by allowances/etc'.
B/c that's how I got through all of HW DoH, basically; I'd just slam out a bunch of HQ hand-ins for whichever one had a repeatable hand-in, best xp, and/or most accessible resource.
In the case of Culinarian, I literally only did and handed in the lv50 tradecraft hand-in - the one for stuffed cabbage rolls. Blitzed the time-gated botanist node for the cabbages, the rest was super quick to farm/vendor-buy, churned out like 30 of those, and handed them in one-leve-by-one (ended up being more XP for the same number of allowances and less crafts than the same-item Large tradecraft leve.). Jumped from 50 to 60 in like an hour or two.
IDK if that's normal, valid, or will get harder/easier in later expacs or not, but if it gets easier than that, I might very well be DoH/DoL capped by the end of the week...
I should mention I have been crafting my own gear as well. I kitted out before starting (with whatever was easy) once I hit around lv50, then I upgraded again at 55 to the ramie stuff, upgraded the tools when possible, and I did stuff a few CP materia into the shared equipment to let me eek out a much needed CP-regainer to help me more consistently get HQs. Didn't even bother w/ food most of the time - didn't need the stat buff, and wasn't benefitting from the 3% gain on the tradeleve XP, which was by far doing the majority of my levelling.
In general the pain comes from the questlines, which require HW items that in general just are way more resource-intensive and require intermediary crafts at later levels, some of which will require time-gated materials and all which can be hard to find or expensive on the market board. The actual leveling isn't the part that causes consternation, it's the unlocking of necessary skills via the quests that's a bit of a pain.
Especially once you see how all DoH quests are handled from Stormblood onwards.
Btw apologies if I missed it but don't forget your daily Grand Company turn-ins, those will continue to be solid chunks of a level especially if you turn in HQ items
Yeah! I used GC turn-ins to level a lot in ARR! Really great source of seals, got less useful b/c of the time-gating. When I found the HW tradecrafts and had a full complement of allowances, it got... Real easy to forget about GC turn-ins. XD
Hm. Wobblegong suggests differently, that the pain comes from the difficulty of any single craft containing both many subcombines and many individual resources, and much more prevalent use of time-gated nodes for crafts below level-cap/at-the-time-endgame.
All of which I had no issues with. As I'm simul-levelling all the DoH/DoL and keeping my crafted gear on point, I've had no issues with the market prices, as most of the time it's either a ~20min wait or simply a quick trip to go get it myself.
This also means actual questing won't be an issue either, as I'm absolutely levelling well past an expac's given questline, and pre-crafting the whole expac's needed hand-ins before starting, so there won't be any of that pain either, thankfully!
So it looks like I'm completely avoiding the all the pains of HW DoH/DoL levelling - in the grinding and actual XP gaining, by raising everything evenly and spamming HQ hand-ins on low-end tradeleves, and in the questing, by using the former to overlevel and precraft for the latter!
:D Looking forward to moving into the next expacs in crafting now!
If I didn't have to wait until at least tomorrow for plugins to updaaaaaate.
I tried to say the same as Wobble in general but I am glad to hear you have a system in hand already ^^ further on the crafting will become more streamlined with the materials and the intermediaries so you aren't necessarily required to just find a trade leve to spam
That's great, honestly. Thanks for sharing your knowledge. I'm actually looking forward to pursuing DoH/DoL into level cap now!
Ooh, level cap is the easy part. Making use of those levels, that takes at-level master crafting, and getting there from level cap was more challenging than leveling the classes.
Yes, as the others have said, Heavensward was the worst even from the perspective of a crafter leveling through it these days. Endwalker master crafting is nasty too, but the impression I’ve gotten from veteran crafters is that at its worst it’s still not as bad as Heavensward.
As far as leveling goes, I’m seconding the recommendations from others, but also Grand Company supply and provision is a great daily XP source for crafting and gathering. That was my principal XP source in fact. I just handed in an HQ sample of whatever was in demand, got a level, and went on my way.
A couple other words of advice: as you level, never bother doing master crafting at level. Instead level past it and use gear from the next expansion. Also, at level 70 and 80, you can get very nice crafting gear with crafter’s scrip (and the same for gathering) so it will pay to get into collectables. (The Shadowbringers crafting quests also give you scrip.)
I bootstrapped myself into master crafting over the course of patch 6.3, and did a writeup of it. It was a job and a half, and wasn’t good for my sanity because I didn’t go in knowing what to expect, but it’s pretty satisfying to have all the top-end food and crafted equipment I want. In case you’re interested, I wrote up my experiences in a Google doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/12jt2i0g-3RiLXpBi9rrS8UTwNiDbrSIq01svgH4OhNw/edit?usp=sharing
Oh, don't worry! I haven't even touched Master crafting - it's not in my way, and where it has come up, I've at least found for quest-required mastery crafting, it hasn't been especially difficult, but I'll bookmark your doc and have a look when I get up to it! Thank you!
I was doing Grand Company crafting! Great source of bulk seals for many useful things, and was very handy for speed-ranking in the Grand Company as well! Haven't been doing them recently because, well... Even the lowest-level tradecraft leves in HW were just... So good if you picked the right one.
Still shocked to hear that HW crafting was supposed to be hard? Like, I had zero trouble. Absolutely casual play, half market buying, half going out to find raw resources myself b/c the market prices are sometimes hot garbage.
I didn't even do a lot of hard crafts - in many cases, I just burst-HQ-craft the lowest end lv50 craft and spammed that tradeleve in whatever way achieved the most XP, and it was dead easy. I took Culinarian from 50-60 last night just by making like 10-15 HQ crafts of stuffed cabbage rolls, and handing them all in one set at a time, and, bam. It was like 500-700k xp per hand-in, due to the doubling from HQ items, not even including XP gained from crafting the item.
I should mention I have been crafting my own gear as well. I kitted out before starting (with whatever was easy) once I hit around lv50, then I upgraded again at 55 to the ramie stuff, upgraded the tools when possible, and I did stuff a few CP materia into the shared equipment to let me eek out a much needed CP-regainer to help me more consistently get HQs. Didn't even bother w/ food most of the time - didn't need the stat buff, and wasn't benefitting from the 3% gain on the tradeleve XP, which was by far doing the majority of my levelling.
Sounds like you have it handled then! And yeah, Heavensward recipes tend to be the most complex. Stormblood will ask for a broader variety of materials as I recall, but its recipe trees are simpler and flatter, and that continues going forward. Shadowbringers gets generous with the quality provided by HQ pre-crafts, then Endwalker gets a little mean again, but not as bad as HW.
I will admit, I got bit by HW's crafting today.
I think I underestimate how many edges that plugins sand down. What would be, literally, one click to do SO many things currently requires me to literally leave the game for a browser to look up where the hell certain monster items drop from.
Between that, and not having the ability to coalesce a full raw materials list, HW crafting is gravely annoying.
I'm kind of glad, then, that these options at least exist for anyone else having to go through it.
Yeah, I run unmodded (PlayStation, I don’t have a gaming computer), and the Raw Materials List function is my friend. If you need to craft a wide variety of items (like an equipment set), the web site FFXIV TeamCraft is nice — it’ll tell you all the raw materials and where to get them, account for any precrafts you already have, and list out your timed gathering nodes. I used to make my own spreadsheets, but TeamCraft is better, although the UI is awkward.
As for getting monster drops, hunting retainers are great. As an example, a lot of Endwalker stuff I do takes Ovibos Milk, which I have a stack of over 900 of, thanks to the diligent hourly efforts of my retainers.
I do find the UI of TeamCraft misses the mark at times, but it was invaluable in helping me churn out cowries on the SanctIsle!
On PC, I use AllaganTools and its associated crafting submodule. Assemble a list of desired crafts, and it not only accounts for items on me/in retainers/etc, lets me choose their source if there's multiple, and syncs up with another addon, GatherBuddy, so all I have to do is click the next material, and it locates, map-pins, begins aether teleporting me to the closest location, and on-landing, swaps me out to the correct DoL job.
This evening, I'm crafting the entire lv61-62 SB DoH hand tools set, so 16 HQ tools at the top of my current job capabilities; the list does make it far more obvious to me how much has already changed, even at the entry level of SB. I don't have to combine my raw material trees, or find the locations online, or any of it. The list took maybe 10min. A good hour of gathering, and I'm into the crafting, which, given how few intermediate steps there are, will probably not take more than an hour either, and, bam, all my DoH tools are ready to go for SB.
Plugins really do shave off so much time, regardless of the process, huh.
As for retainer hunts, I don't do them right now b/c I hit the limit of what the first could do w/o more gear, and I didn't want to keep buying them sets (which is yet another reason I'm levelling DoH) - they're just glorified banks/market slots for me atm. Plus I didn't have the easy stream of GC Seals that I do now, so maybe I should revisit that...
