Some Thoughts On Professions

In case you haven’t tried FFXIV crafting yet, here is what it looks like. So there are a few things to note about crafting:

  • It’s best to level several of your professions together since they make items for each other. For example a Goldsmith makes copper ingots and other items needed by Leatherworker and Weaver. Also, of course, Mining gathers metal ores and Botanist gathers wood and grasses for Carpentry and Weaving.
  • Other games require that you learn recipes in some way. In Wow, you buy the recipes from “Trainers”. In GW2, you “Discover” recipes by dropping items into an interface to see if they make things – or you use a profession guide to discover the ones that you want to use. In FFXIV all your recipes are in the interface. In that way, it’s like a “Hunting Log” with a list of mobs that you need to kill.
  • In GW2, you get the biggest Profession XP hit from the discovery and first crafting of an item. There after, the XP gain is much lower. In FFXIV, the huge XP hit is again the first creation of an item. You may not need to do all of the recipes to level up your profession.

So leveling professions involves several things:

  1. Visit the Guild for the Profession to sign up.
  2. Get your initial “Weapon” and become the profession. Be sure and save a Gear Set for your profession.
  3. Take the first quest from the Guild Master.
  4. Continue with Crafting or Gathering to level up as you complete the quests for the Profession every 5 levels.
  5. Every few levels make sure your gear is up to date. There are two types of gear: Gathering and Crafting. And note that Weavers, Leather workers, Carpenters, Goldsmiths and maybe others make Crafting / Gathering gear. You won’t need to worry about your tools – although Carpenters make some interesting tools – since those come from Quest rewards from your profession Guild.
  6. The big thing to note is that you will need to keep track of what is required for one profession recipes so that you can either make or gather the items with your other professions.
  7. Rinse and Repeat.

But some gathering will occur by killing things.  When you look up blood or skin items you find them as drops from mobs of course. As a level 50 Red Mage, killing level 9 opo-opo’s is no problem of course, but after some searching I found someone mention that wearing gear with a higher level gathering attribute while killing mobs increases the drop rate, and it seems to work.

After killing opo-opos for a while, I changed to my level 10 Mining / Botanist gear, except for the weapon of course. Just put on the armor, not the weapon. And so I’m still a Red Mage with a much higher Gathering attribute. And it seems to work. You get more drops.

Update:

Remember that unlike other games, you can craft anywhere. You do not need to visit a special place to craft. Just switch your gear with the gear selector on the profile page and use “N” to open the crafting interface. So you can switch back and forth between Botanist and Weaver as you gather mats and craft items. The only reason to visit the guild or the shopping area is to buy mats you may not have.

As you level crafting classes, be sure and watch out for gear that helps you do better crafting or gathering. Here are a couple of examples of items that the weaver makes that helps all the crafting and gather classes. You’re going to make them anyway for the XP, so might as well wear them. Of course you may want to sell them on the Market. But I’m not clear that low level items are very profitable, but higher level items are probably quite profitable. We’ll see.

As I have searched the web for guides for FFXIV professions, there lots of pages, but no clear guides. In some sense I get it. But what I have not found is spreadsheets that roll up the mats needed during leveling. Each Tier of leveling a crafting profession requires mats and unless you laboriously add up all the mats required, you don’t know how many Moko Grass or Cotton Bolls or Animal Skins to gather when you are out there chopping out the mats.

I’m in the process of building spread sheets for each of the crafting professions that add every thing up, and I’ll share when I finish them. Here’s a partial example:

Final_Fantaxy_XIV_Characters_-_Google_Sheets_-_2018-03-20_18.34.25

Of course when I share them, they will be links to the real sheets so that you can copy and modify them to suit your needs.

Have fun with professions in FFXIV.

:ww