If you’ve ever played an MMO before, you know that they usually have professions — or non-combat classes. These typically specialize purely in gathering, building, or otherwise creating items. Crafting in Final Fantasy 14 is no different! What makes FF14 stand out, however, is the ability to level not one, not two, but all 11 non-combat classes in the game.
Leveling these Jobs can be expensive, and is always time-consuming, even if you plan on spending all of your gil. And that’s not even the most convoluted barrier to entry! This crafting guide for FF14 will take you through a basic, cheap, easily understood path to level 70 on your crafting Jobs.
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A Watched Pot Never Boils – FF14 Crafting Guide
The very first thing you need to know is that leveling in FF14 takes time. Lots of time… You need to spend hours running back and forth, picking up and delivering items and won’t see a return on your investment for some time. FF14 crafting classes rely on “cross-class abilities,” which require you to reach certain levels on other crafting classes to unlock.
That’s right. You need to level all of your crafting Jobs in FF14 to create the really rare, expensive items — which is how you eventually turn a profit. Assuming you have barely touched crafting in FF14, the following is our recommended way to begin your journey into Eorzean capitalism.
Our very first goal is to get all of our crafting classes to level 15. This is, thankfully, pretty painless (and cheap). If you are a part of a Free Company, or own a personal house, the Tradeskill Vendor you can place in either housing situation has all the materials you need to grind up your crafting Jobs to at least 15. That’s just off that one vendor alone. And some Jobs can go even higher!
The idea is to find a cheap recipe and just hit the “Auto Craft” button… while you do chores or something in the real world. You can also craft various new items for the first time. Doing so gives a one-time EXP bonus for each new item, so go down your crafting list and manually make one of each vendor salable item. It’s a good way to earn a little extra EXP for no real effort.
If you manually create items, you may also be tempted to raise your “quality” while crafting. Ignore this for now; creating High-Quality items does nothing but waste time at this low level.
Once you hit level 15 across the board, open up your Actions and Traits menu (the “P” key by default, if you’re using a mouse and keyboard). Under the “Additional” option, on the left-hand side, you can go through all your crafting Jobs and select abilities to become cross-class.
You want to take the following:
- Careful Synthesis (Weaver): 100 percent Chance of Progress Advancement for 0 CP.
- Hasty Touch (Culinarian): 50 percent Chance of Quality Advancement for 0 CP.
- Tricks of the Trade (Alchemist): This is a “proc,” or Programmed Random Occurrence. Essentially, this skill has a random chance to become usable (in this case, whenever the condition of the item you’re making reaches “Good”). You can use this ability to regain 20 CP!
- Waste Not (Leatherworker): Actions only cost 5 durability instead of 10 for 4 turns.
- Manipulation (Goldsmith): Restore 10 durability after each turn for 3 turns.
Furthermore, here are some other key abilities that you will utilize:
- Inner Quiet: Increases your Control stat every time you use an action that raises quality.
- Steady Hand: Increases the chance to succeed an action by 20% for 5 turns.
With these building blocks, we can start to really get into the nuts and bolts of crafting in FF14.
Waste Not, Want Not – FF14 Crafting Guide
You will use Waste Not to extend how long you can craft right off the bat. Utilizing Hasty Touch and Careful Synthesis will not bleed our CP pool dry, but your other abilities will. If you get to the point where CP (the crafter’s equivalent of mana) is not an issue, you can increase your durability pool even further by using Manipulation, then reapplying Waste Not.
Below is an example of a proper “rotation” at this level. It will cost you 20 total durability and 96 total CP.
- Inner Quiet
- Steady Hand
- Waste Not
- Hasty Touch / Careful Synthesis
- Hasty Touch / Careful Synthesis
- Hasty Touch / Careful Synthesis
- Hasty Touch / Careful Synthesis
If you have additional CP, you can extend this rotation further. It will cost you 20 total durability and 78 total CP.
- Steady Hand
- Waste Not
- Hasty Touch / Careful Synthesis
- Hasty Touch / Careful Synthesis
- Hasty Touch / Careful Synthesis
- Hasty Touch / Careful Synthesis
Only use Hasty Touch if you want to make HQ items; otherwise, feel free to use Careful Synthesis. If Tricks of the Trade procs, make sure you use it every time! And don’t forget you can use these actions on your other low-level crafting Jobs to make leveling them even easier.
Steady As She Goes – FF14 Crafting Guide
The next step on your crafting journey is to reach level 37 on Culinarian. This will unlock Steady Hand II, which replaces Steady Hand in your rotation. You can achieve this level easily by performing Levequests. Visit Limsa Lominsa and head to the Drowned Wench. The NPC T’Mokkri <Levemete> is your target. She will assign delivery Levequests, which have deliver items to NPCs for a lot of EXP. If the item is of High Quality, that EXP will double. Likewise, there are similar Levemetes in the other main cities.
If you have a lot of gil laying around, you can commission an already established crafter for a “levemete” set; they will craft High Quality items for you to turn in, and allow you to skip the tedious step of… actually crafting. Keep in mind, however, that no matter how you acquire these items, you are limited to 100 Levequest “Allowances” at a time. You only generate three Allowances every 12 Earth hours, so you will likely run out in time.
Another option is to check your Grand Company. From there, you want to “Undertake supply and provisioning missions.” These are daily missions (wherein you simply turn in requested items) that reward boatloads of experience. And, just like levequests, you get double EXP for High Quality crafting items.
After reaching level 37 with your Culinarian, you are now free to make a choice: which FF14 crafting class do you want to hit level 50 first? Every level 50 cross-class ability is useful, but the heavy hitters are Leatherworker (Waste Not II), Weaver (Careful Synthesis II), and Carpenter (Byregot’s Blessing).
The main reason to get a crafting Job to 50 ASAP is to begin using it for Moogle Quests while you work on leveling the other Jobs. Furthermore, if you want to see a return on your time and gil investment, level 50 lets you craft some neat things: glamour items, housing items, etc. Carpenter in particular is great at level 50 for various marketable products. Check the market board and see what’s selling on your server!
Free Kupo Nuts, From Lax To Max – FF14 Crafting Guide
Moogle Beast Tribe Quests only unlock after you finish the main story quests in The Churning Mists, during the Heavensward campaign — as well as all the Moogle Side Quests within. You can find a comprehensive list of every quest you need to beat right here. Finally, you need at least one crafting Job at 50. Moogle Beast Tribe Quests scale with your level — however, they are extremely easy to do with the level 50 crafting vendor gear, and reward a ton of EXP. The only downside is that you are limited to three quests daily (at first). If you are strapped for cash, know that it takes about two weeks per crafting Job to level from 50 to 60 purely via Moogle Quests.
You can, of course, speed this up via Grand Company supply runs and levequests (located in Foundation, Ishgard). But it will cost you either time (gathering the materials) or gil (buying materials off the Market Board). You can also craft Collectibles. However, this is very in-depth and outside the scope of this article. Personally, I recommend sticking to the daily quests and Grand Company turn-ins!
You never want to grind levels in FF14 purely via making things at this stage. It’s expensive, time-consuming, wasteful, and ultimately not worth it! That’s especially if you have crafting Jobs that aren’t level 50 yet.
Getting Catfished for Fun and Profit – FF14 Crafting Guide
Once you power level a crafting Job to level 60, you can repeat the above with your next FF14 Job that reaches level 50. At the same time, get ready to take your level 60 crafting Job to the Namazu Beast Tribe. They are located in The Azim Steppe (in the Stormblood expansion), but only after completing all Namazu Side Quests and Lupin Side Quests in Yanxia.
From here, it’s simply clockwork. Do Namazu dailies; do Moogle dailies;turn in items to your FF14 Grand Company; do Levequests to get your lower-level classes to 50. Again, this will take time, but you will spend barely any gil in the process.
You will, however, accumulate a lot of crafting gear in your Armoury Chest as you progress. You can use the same gear (except tools and off-hand tools) for all crafting classes in FF14, so save the armor for when one of your Jobs advances! Once all of your Jobs do out-level certain gear, feel free to desynth or sell it back to an NPC. A good rule of thumb is to upgrade your left-side gear (boots, helmet, gloves, etc.) every five levels and your right side gear (rings, necklaces, etc.) every time you reach new expansion content.
Okay, What About Endgame? – FF14 Crafting Guide
Well, with Shadowbringers coming to FF14 soon, you’ve likely missed the boat on endgame crafting for this expansion. We instead recommend that you pool your gil and materia, then stick them in the deepest part of your bag so you’re not tempted to get spend or use them. When the new expansion is out, we’ll have new guides focused on any changes you might need to consider!
However, the cycle is usually the same with every FF14 expansion: level a combat Job to max level, unlock all the areas, flight, etc, and then start gathering materials. Follow that up by leveling one FF14 crafting class to max level. Do not buy items off the Market Board to level crafting, as these are always be inflated and expensive. Instead, if you must buy something off the Market Board, we recommended you buy the final product instead of buying materials piecemeal.
With this easy-to-understand guide, hopefully you can start crafting for relatively little expense. Remember, check the Market Board for potentially good deals on materials, plan your crafting ahead of time by collecting items ahead of time, and don’t be afraid to build Normal Quality items! That’s especially true if you’re afraid you’ll fail the craft. Lost materials are far, far worse than a Normal Quality item, after all. Good luck adventurers, and thanks for reading our FF14 crafting guide!
