Alright, so the end of my trade leveling is very, very nigh, and it’s time to set my goals.
As you see, I’m well deep into Endwalker, and my main is almost at level cap with most of the trade jobs – that is, the path is trodden, I know the twists and turns, and I’m set with the best ways to level my alts through.
The problem is: it’s all about leves (aka craft-and-deliver repeatable quests). I’m not proceeding until I have enough leve allowances, and the allowance income is 6 per 24 hours. I found myself in a gauntlet when I have all my allowances spent on every alt, and grinding them out by 3 or 6 every day is not a great and/or satisfying way to progress. No, it feels like I’d better accumulate at least 30 per alt before I engage into gathering pumping up – then a crafting release. So: I suddenly find myself caught in the moment of a time sink – that is, wait for it.
As I’m very close to level cap, it’s time to think about my trade priorities and plans. First of all, making gil. On the way I figured that raw mats sell best, with the smallest delay, crafted items – not so much. Even if it’s cool to receive a huge chunk of money when your crafted gear sells, I have several items hanging maybe since December, and on account that I revisit and fix prices. All in all, I need to experiment with sales of this and that, and I haven’t done housing at all yet, but it seems that gathering pays off the best. I do not intend to get involved into high end gear craft, so I think I’d set with lower recipes and mats.
Gil itself is not a vital priority: I don’t want to be a fatcat or something, no, just several millions to feel comfortable and satisfy my every need – which is vanity items like glams, dyes and housing.
I figured that I will need some proper grind for purple scrips, and I hope I could settle with ilvl 590 and be happy. I don’t know yet about trade tools that are coming in 6.35 – I do want to explore this feature, and hopefully 590 will be enough. So far, ilvl 540 is very challenging for crafting even ophiotauros HQ gear (no-master recipes which you can equip at level 90).
The whole journey’s not over yet, but I’ve seen almost everything, and it’s been a quite exciting adventure :) I regret nothing, and I intend to keep my crafter/gatherer jobs up to date from now on, on every alt – to support my main jobs and save gil for the things that I could make myself. Besides, trade jobs unlock a lot of fun and exciting lore through deliveries, tribes, job quests and all, so it’s worth leveling at the very least for that reason.
Oh, and I’m slowly leveling my retainers too. I picked combat jobs for all of them, because farming leather is the primary headache within the whole trade thing, and I’m not shy to spend 100k for a minor stack, as it saves a lot of time. The pace is not that fast, as I’m slacking to get them some proper gear. Currently they equip level 30 items, while they’re approaching level 50 already. I think I’ll craft them level 50 items and will update their sets with every 10 levels.
So cool, all this :)
Gnomecore 
You can give your retainers tomestone gear if you have the tomes and you don’t know where to spend it, i don’t like the 2000 limit the put on them so before reaching the limit i spend it.
Also .. there is a fat cat mount :-) but in the store.
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