Is Crafting/Harvesting worth it?Follow

As a money making engine, they're not worth the time. You make more money running dungeons.

However, as their own "thing" I consider them a worthwhile pursuit. If you enjoy slower paced activities or want something as a hobby in the game that you can do while you watch TV, the gathering classes are quite excellent. Fishing especially is low effort. It's time consuming, but it can be done while reading a book or whatever. The other two gathering classes are a bit more involved, and crafting requires a lot of attention to do successfully.

They're not for everyone, but I enjoy both crafting and gathering for their own sake,

I have a couple Disciples of the Hand classes to 50 and I make money just fine crafting HQ stuff and melding materia. I don't have hours to run dungeons as a casual player and selling items has made me millions.

Eh...I am going to side with people saying no. After getting all but 1 to 50 and spending about 1 mil in melds for crafting gear, I use them very little. Right now, the best money maker for me is using 1.12k phil tome mats and making HQ quality 40 durability items like rose gold ingot or vanya silk. It sells extremely slow, though. :\

I made a lot of money when leveling crafting, though. Once I got carpentry out of the way and could HQ things reliably, I would buy in bulk for leve quests and craft + sell any extras that I didn't use for the quest after I out leveled it. Made decent amount of money because people bought the leve items off the MB when they were rushing to craft.

Also, I'd say it's profitable if you are VERY diligent. For instance, CUL is extremely profitable...if you are willing to farm up all the materials required to make the high end food. Everyone needs food at endgame which creates a constant demand and, due to all the materials required, has a little less supply.

Edited, Jan 18th 2014 5:22am by HitomeOfBismarck

I have Botanist, Miner, Blacksmith, Carpenter, Leatherworker, and Goldsmith at 50, and have recently reached 25 on Fisherman. I use them to make HQ gear for myself (for use while leveling, it's painfully easy to get better gear than anything crafted one you hit level 50) and that's about it. I don't have a need for gil so I don't bother to try to make money with them. I suppose I could if I wanted to, it's just not worth my time to bother. I enjoy crafting and gathering, so that's why I level them, not for the money. The competition is beyond stupid. People will sell stuff on the MB at prices lower than you can get from NPCs just to force you out of the market. Taking advantage of that particular stupidity to make money is easier than crafting for it.



Edited, Jan 20th 2014 2:43am by Turin

This right here, same thing for me. What actually started the death of the harvesting jobs was the leve patch pre 2.1. I was leveling botany prior, spent a lot of time doing so. Anything i gathered i sold for really good profits. This is because the best way to level at that time was to grind it out. Once they made it so you got a ton of experience with leve's everyone and their brother was leveling to 50 fast and and the prices died.

Having 0 gather/craft Jobs would be very expensive.

The people I see saying they are not worth leveling mostly have them leveled, and use them to support their activities, however rarely. I suggest asking someone with 0 crafting and gathering jobs how well they get by. I'd be curious what the answer is.

I would think you would have limited options relying on dungeon income alone.

I think the key for someone with 0 crafting and gathering jobs is making do with what they have. Are they going to be able to afford to overmeld HQ 2 star gear at end game? Probably not. But they also don't need it since they can basically go from AF to Darklight to mix of CT/Allagan/Relic, and they won't need materia ever at all. At that point, what kind of things do they need gil for? Travel (airships, ferries, teleports), gear repairs and food.

If you had to, you could probably cut out food altogether. Travel costs are a way to turn money into time, so you could choose to save your money by spending time moving around on personal mounts instead. So the question is whether the gil from dungeons, duty roulette bonuses, other daily activities (levequests and such), and selling philosophy items is enough to cover gear repair costs. You could probably even supplement that income by buying NQ ilvl 45+ accessories off of the MB to spiritbond them so that you can sell the materia you get.

If a player chooses to level gathering and/or crafting classes, they will eventually realize some long term gains from spending less on gear repairs, making their own food, etc. But I would only recommend that if the player actually enjoys gathering or crafting, particularly gathering. Forcing yourself to level a gathering class because it will reduce your costs with crafting can be a draining grind. If you want to burn yourself out and quit the game, forcing yourself to do gathering when you don't want to is a good way to go about accomplishing that goal.

Edited, Jan 20th 2014 12:43pm by svlyons

I love my gathering and crafting jobs and the game wouldn't be the same without them. And for me, my highest crafting job is only 32 right now. I unlocked FSH on a Thursday morning and had it maxed out by the following Monday night. If I plowed through BTN or MIN I'm sure I could 1-50 them in a week of serious gathering.