The MMORPG, Final Fantasy 14, has a lot of crafting classes that a player can take up. These include Blacksmith, Carpenter, Goldsmith, Leatherworker, Weaver, Armorer, Culinarian, and Alchemist. All of these can be pretty useful to the player to make gil, gear, housing items, and consumables like potions and food.
Leveling up these classes is a far different experience than the combat classes. They cannot level up with the games' story and there aren't dungeons, hunts, and leveling roulettes for crafters. Luckily though, there are plenty of opportunities to level up fast. You just need to know where to find them and how to best utilize the resources.
Updated December 30, 2021 by Allison Stalberg: Endwalker has come out and players are working to get their crafting classes up to the new level cap of 90. Having these classes at the level cap early offers a lot of gil profits, as players are also buying level 90 gear and new expansion items. Due to this, many players are actually leveling up their crafters before leveling up their non-main combat classes. After all, like every expansion before, there are crafting questlines to complete.
16 What Is Crafting?
Like it sounds, crafting is the creation of in-game objects. Nearly everything in the game can be crafted by a player from food to furniture, gear, chocobo barding, orchestrations, and dye. The better question may be what can a crafter NOT make? A crafter cannot make most of what gathering classes can collect like sea creatures, raw wood, maps, and ore. Hairstyles, mounts, emotes, houses, certain gear sets, materia, tomestones, Mogstation items, and most minions are also not craftable. Everything outside of those items can be crafted with a high enough crafter level and the right resources.
15 Why Does Crafting Matter?
Crafting is not the only way to get in-game items. Many players skip crafting and just buy the items from the Market Board. However, unless a player is somehow rich without crafting, crafting is everything in terms of saving and making gil. It usually costs less gil to make an item rather than buy it. This is because all the players of Final Fantasy 14 are trying to make a profit. Crafting equals profit.
Taking part in crafting also makes a difference in gear. Those with the best of the best gear in the game are often crafters who made the gear themselves. They have the ability to make something high quality, which gives them even more stat boosts than the plain gear.
14 The Different Crafting Classes And What They Do
- Blacksmith: With its guild located in Limsa Lominsa, the Blacksmithing class makes equipment for multiple combat classes such as Pugilists/Monks, Marauders/Warriors, Machinists, and Gladiators/Paladins. Since they work with a lot of metal, players who take on Blacksmithing best also pick up the Miner gathering class.
- Carpenter: Picked up in Girdania, this class can make furniture and a range of equipment for multiple classes. For example, they can make fishing rods for Fishers, shields for Gladiators/Paladins, masks for casters, and grinding wheels for Goldsmiths. Since they use a ton of wood, players who take on Carpenter should also pick up the Botanist gathering class.
- Goldsmith: The Goldsmiths have their guild in Ul'dah, and they can create accessories for every class in the game such as earrings and necklaces. They can also make weapons and gear for a wide range of classes like scepters for Thaumaturges/Black Mages, hora for Pugilists/Monks, and needles for Weavers. Like Blacksmiths, Goldsmiths is best paired with the Mining gathering class.
- Leatherworker: Located in Girdania, the Leatherworker's guild makes accessories, clothes, certain weapons, and furniture. They are actually best paired with the Weaver crafting class as their recipes often overlap.
- Weaver: Weaver can be picked up in Ul'dah, and they can make a ton of wearable items for all kinds of classes. They can craft clothes such as robes, shirts, ribbons, bardings, and pants.
- Armorer: Not to be confused with Blacksmith, Armorers have their guild also located in Limsa Lominsa. Their recipes cover more classes than Blacksmith, able to make frying pans for Culinarians, heavy shields for Gladiators/Paladins, bucklers for casters, and alembics for Alchemists.
- Culinarian: Known to be the most difficult crafting class, Culinarian can be picked up in Limsa Lominsa. They make food that can give buffs to players for a certain amount of time. Unlike other classes, they do not craft any equipment. They are best paired with the Fisher gathering class.
- Alchemist: The Alchemist class can be picked up in Ul'dah. Like Culinarian, they can make consumables (but they are potions rather than food). Additionally, they can craft wands for Conjurers/White Mages and books for Arcanists/Summoners/Scholars.
13 Do LeveQuests
While the main story can let you completely level up one combat class, there is no such crutch for the crafting classes. Luckily, there are LeveQuests. Some NPCs give out these special quests all across Eorzea that can be used by both Gathering and Crafting classes to gain a lot of experience.
The best way to utilize LeveQuests is to do them once you have reached level 15 in a crafting class. It is around that level where players trying to grind through crafts will notice a low input of experience points. LeveQuests can help with that through the extra experience of quest completion.
12 Get Into Ishgard Restoration
Ishgard Restoration has not always been around and new crafters should be quite thankful that it exists now. It is available to crafting classes once they hit level 20. The moment a crafter hits level 20, it is recommended to dedicate themselves to Ishgard Restoration. The amount of experience you get for each item turned is major.
To add even more reward, you also get scripts that you can spend on cool mounts, minions, housing items, and gear. As you level up though, the crafting may get more tedious and/or expensive. Don't worry though, there are plenty of other ways to gain experience when at those levels.
11 Do The Daily Beast Tribe Quests
Every expansion has its own Beast Tribes but only a fraction of them are for crafting classes. In A Realm Reborn, it is the Ixal. For Heavensward, it's the Moogles. The Namazu are in Stormblood. Lastly, the Dwarves are in Shadowbringers. It is a great idea to do Ixal quests until 20 when you can do Ishgard quests. Then you can move on to the Moogles once you hit level 50. Finally, the Namazu at 60 and the Dwarves at 70.
What is great about these quests is that they refresh daily and are pretty easy to complete (as long as you have good enough gear). The Beast Tribes also have unique rewards such as minions, resources, and mounts.
10 Look For What Sells On The Market Board
It is very easy to get burnt out by grinding crafts all day, especially if the reward is a minuscule of experience. An easy way to spice things up is to also level up crafting classes with the goal of making a lot of gil.
To do this, see what sells for the most on the Market Board and check if it is within your power to reasonably craft many of that item. That results in easy experience with the extra reward of gil. After all, crafters often need gil to buy resources for their crafts. This is especially true at the higher levels.
9 Get Into Housing
If gil doesn't inspire you, maybe a cool house would. Nearly everything you can find in a players' house is craftable by a certain class. If you are a particular fan of this idea, carpenter is the best class when it comes to making housing items.
If you are lucky and rich enough to buy an in-game house, then just craft every housing item available to your crafting class. You can see if you like it in your home and if you don't, then you can just sell it.
8 Do Custom Deliveries
Once you reach level 60 in a crafting class and reach Idyllshire in Heavensward, then you can do custom delivery quests. This will not only get you experience, but also gil and special scripts to spend. These can be done with Zhloe in Idyllshire, then M'naago in Stomblood, and lastly with Kai-Shirr in Shadowbringers.
Endwalker's custom deliveries are in the Studium and are split between NPCs that oversee different faculty classes like medicine, anthropology, and astronomy. The deliveries are unlocked after completing the main quest, "The Faculty." Each custom delivery client has a little story and it is recommended to do all of them. The quests refresh every week.
7 Complete The Crafting Log
If it is recommended to not start LeveQuests until level 15, then what should crafters do to level up until then? The answer is just crafting one of everything in your crafting log.
As a beginner, this is bound to level a player up fast. The resources required for these low-level crafts are also super cheap and easy to get. The higher levels will get players less experience and will be more difficult and expensive to make. That is why many move on to LeveQuests at level 15.
6 Do Grand Company Turn-Ins
Everyone forgets about Grand Company supply missions, which is strange since it is a great way to gain company seals and experience points all at once. With the company seals, players can get gear, housing items, experience boosts, and more.
In any of the three Grand Company's, there is an NPC who will collect one specific item based on your crafters' level each day. Like the Beast Tribes, this is a daily activity players can do in the game.
5 Eat Food
Food is the easiest experience bonus item available in the game. It doesn't usually matter what kind of food because they typically all give the same three percent bonus experience boost. Many players just buy a ton of orange juice or mineral water from an NPC, such as a bartender, and drink it before crafting or turning in any kind of quest. It's dirt cheap and eating it only takes one second and there is little to lose.
4 Use Commerical Engineering Manuals
On top of food, Commerical Engineering Manuals are a way to grant temporary experience boosts. These can be bought with 30 White Crafters' Scrips in most cities and areas where crafting quests are located such as The Firmament, Mor Dhona, and Idyllshire. In comparison to food, these items give way bigger bonuses as well. They grant a 150 percent experience boost. However, this effect is halved once the player reaches level 70 and above. The item's effects last for 18 hours.
3 Do Weekly Challenge Logs
Every week, starting on Tuesdays at 1 a.m. PDT, a challenge log is reset. The log has many categories, and this includes missions for crafters that can get a fair amount of experience is completed. What crafters should look into completing for experience are both levequests and crafting challenges.
Completing these challenges gets an experience reward between five to 15 percent of the experience of the current level. Outside of experience, the player will also get some gil for the challenge completions.
2 Take Advantage Of Free Company Actions
Not every player is in a Free Company, though most are. Free Companies can give players some resources that are unobtainable otherwise. Players in Free Companies are ranked. At rank five, they can buff everyone in the Free Company. These buffs can last for an entire day at most.
There are all kinds of Free Company actions, but what the crafters want is the "Helping Hand" action. That action increases experience gained by crafting. The increase does a little better than food, as the experience is boosted by five percent instead of three.
1 Be A Sightseeing Crafter
A less conventional method of gaining experience for any class is through sightseeing and exploration. Whenever a new area is discovered or a view is put in the sightseeing log, the player is rewarded with experience. What makes this unconventional is that the experience gained is very minor. However, it is a method to gain experience nonetheless.
It may be worth changing into a low-level crafter and just combing through maps to see what has not been filled out on the map yet. Go to those places, discover them, and it's free experience for little effort.
Final Fantasy 14 is currently available on PC, PS4, and PS5.