The Final Fantasy 14 world is not all about fighting monsters and undertaking quests. There are other fun things to do there as well. One of them is crafting. As the name suggests, it enables the player to create items from some raw materials. It can be a tedious process, but once mastered, it does confer subtle advantages. One of them is to supplement your inventory at a lower cost. That’s because you don’t need to spend a lot of gil just to buy what you need, and you can even sell some of the things you produce. Another one is to supplement your leveling up. And that’s because you earn some experience points when you craft items.
To start this Final Fantasy 14 crafting guide, you first need to know that there are 8 playable classes which can do crafting, and they are considered as Disciples of the Hand. These classes are: alchemist, armorer, blacksmith, carpenter, culinarian, goldsmith, leatherworker, and weaver. At any point in the game, you can start practicing as one of these classes if you can equip their respective tools. For example, an alchemist would use an alembic as the primary tool, and mortar as the secondary tool. To get these tools, look for the appropriate NPC in each starter city. Otherwise, search the shopping areas for them. At this point, it should also be noted that better tools normally result in better quality products.
Once you have the right tools for your chosen class, you then need the proper raw materials. You can obtain these materials in one of three common ways: from shopping areas, from adventuring, or from other players. Among the three, adventuring is perhaps the most effective way, because not only will you get the materials you want, you will also get gil and experience points along the way. However, if you want to do things faster, you will need to buy from stores.
After that, you need to learn the basic mechanics of crafting. It is true that you can simply select the Synth option from the right side bar of the game, but you must also understand the main hand and off hand options, which simply indicate whether you want to use your primary or secondary tool for the crafting process. In addition, you need to use the different options effectively, namely the Standard, Rapid, Bolt, and Wait. They inversely affect the so-called durability (failure bar) and progress (success bar) of your synthesis. But for all that complexity however, one will inevitably craft an item, the quality of which depends on one’s expertise.
It can be seen from the above discussion that crafting requires considerable patience. This is a necessary trade off for its benefits. But to make it easier, a player might research or else obtain some recipes from another Final Fantasy XIV crafting guide, which will help eliminate the trial and error process. Recipes ensure that the products of the crafting can be used, or otherwise sold to others, to earn some gil. It is also advisable to use the primary tool for most of your crafting, and only use the secondary tool for those synths in which multiple items can be gained. This will make your leveling up faster.