crafting questionFollow

with daily roulettes, the fact that dungeons now give more exp than they used too and armory bonus... how fast is lvling a craft to 50 compared to lvling an actual battle class to 0... i know pre 2.1 yo could get acraft to 50 in no time compared to a fighting class.... is that the same now (or at least equal speed) pr is lvling a craft painfully slow compared to lvling a battle class?

They nerfed tradecraft leves so that you only get a 100% bonus (twice the exp) for turning in HQ instead of a 200% bonus (3 times the exp). But it's still pretty good exp. If you have enough leve allowances built up, you can get to 50 in a crafting class very quickly. It's even faster if you have several crafting classes at 50 already that have powerful cross class abilities that allow you to HQ low level stuff consistently.

one other thing... i plan to lvl at least alchemy to 50 and all of the gathering classes.. what cross class abilities should I lvl for those? I notice all crafts have lvl 50 dross class abilities and I really dont wanna level EVER craft to 50 to get em all especially if i dont have too (i lvled all battle classes to get their cross class abilities but that only required lvling to lvl 34 max... thats a lot better than 50)

I recall reading that some tradecraft levequests got a buff, but I haven't seen anything to indicate it was done across the board. Single turn in leves have always been worth doing in the right circumstances, even before that particular patch. Triple turn in leves are better if the limiting factor is your leve allowances. Single turn in leves are better if the limiting factor is gil, material, or time.

I personally didn't do any of the ones that required traveling from city to camp to get the highest exp for a single turn in leve. Those seem to take more time or gil (if I'm doing teleports) than just doing a lower exp single turn in one that would let me stay in one spot.

For crafting, it depends on what you want to do when you get Alchemy to 50. There are guides out there for how you can HQ even 2 star recipes 100% of the time without relying on random factors, but you'll wind up having to level everything to some degree except for Goldsmithing and Armorer (and you'll need to meld additional stats to your crafting gear). The skills you want to target:
Byregot's Blessing - CRP 50
Ingenuity - BSM 15
Ingenuity II - BSM 50
Waste Not - LTH 15
Careful Synthesis - WVR 15
Careful Synthesis II - WVR 50
Hasty Touch - CUL 15
Steady Hand II - CUL 37
Tricks of the Trade - ALC 15
Comfort Zone - ALC 50

Careful Synth + Hasty Touch + Tricks of the Trade with Inner Quiet and Steady Hand will let you HQ stuff pretty consistently through the mid levels, as long as you keep your gear fairly up to date. Add in Byregot's Blessing, and HQing stuff while leveling is trivial.

what do you mean by "buy" levels?

In some cases the cost of the turn-in item from the AH is very close to the quest reward. Even more true at high levels when the reward is 500-700 gil per turn-in. You can afford to spend 700-900 gil per item off the AH if the reward for turn in is 500+!

Suggestion: Resize your map and put it somewhere on the screen that it can optionally just be open during normal gameplay.

Judging by the number of people that immediately jump on new FATE spawns I'm not the only one who has done this. Helps with completing Beastman quests and especially with map parties. There's actually no end of usefulness to having both the mini-map and full size map visible at all (most) times. You can zoom them to varying distances depending on what you are doing. Even helpful in maze-like dungeons, or to see if everyone has arrived at the zone line in CT.

Tip: The rocks in Garuda EX do not disappear from the mini-map after breaking, so you can use them to find where to stand prior to tornadoes. Just make sure to scroll your mini-map zoom to a medium distance so the whole battlefield is showing.