Gatherers Leveling Guide in FFXIV (2024)

This guide will explain the ins and outs of leveling your three gathering classes:Mining, Botany, and Fishing. This page will also explain good methods toobtain gear as you level throughout the expansions.

The most commonly used method to level gatherers is the Diadem, a gathering-onlyzone that provides players with an easy way to level with little gear. The Diadem can beaccessed through the Ishgardian Restoration. You can start the Diadem at level 10on your gathering class, but it will first require you to be level 60 in the main story.

The main reasons to use the Diadem are to support crafting endeavors and to makegil. The items you gather can be approved and exchanged for items used in craftinginside the Restoration, which is arguably the best method to level craftingat the moment. On top of that, because it is such a good method for crafting, theitems can have a lot of value, meaning you can make huge profits while leveling.

Inside the Diadem, you can level by circling around the giant floating islandswhile hitting gathering nodes as you go. Instead of being able to farm specific items,the nodes are organized in chains that give a range of different items. The onlyway to farm certain items is by killing the enemies scattered around usingthe limit break-like gauge you build up over time.

To learn more about the Ishgardian Restoration, check out our dedicated guidelinked below.

Leves are faster than Diadem but come with the downsides ofnot supporting your crafting, not making much gil, and needing to be more up-to-dateon your gear. Using gathering leves also uses up your limited leves, which are bettersuited to be used for your crafting classes.

There are often more leves than the three leves listed on the levemete, meaningthere is not always a 'best' leve to pursue because it might not be available. Whattends to be best is to grab a bunch of them and clear them all at the sametime to avoid having to travel back and forth.

To make up for the lack of gear, it is easier to use food that grantsa gathering buff and to use lots of Cordials to be ableto regularly use Sharp Vision II/ Field Mastery II and increaseyour gathering chances. Using these methods will help ensure you do not fail theleve.

For Fishing, leves work similarly to crafting. You can fish or buy a specific fishand then turn it in for experience points instead of finishing an objective.This means you can very quickly and easily buy your way through the leveling process.

Collectables are not the fastest method or easiest for your gear. Theyare also not great for making gil. What they offer instead is scrips, aspecial currency used only for crafting and gathering that can make thismethod very efficient. Collectables are often your best way to level beyondlevel 70.

Scrips are useful for gear, materia, and to be able to unlock endgamecrafts and nodes. Each expansion has its own scriptraders, but they share the same items and require the same collectables.For information on rotations to use, check out our gathering collectables guide.

Ocean Fishing is a unique piece of content only available for Fishers. Thisactivity can only be accessed for 15 minutes every two hours in real-time. You do not needany gear to Ocean Fish. However, gear can be useful at level 80 when going forachievements and certain fish.

To participate, players register for a voyage that is essentially a fishing dungeon. Yousail on a boat and catch as many fish as possible to gain points. Alongsidethese points, there are various bonuses such as score X points, catchX fish while a spectral current is present, and so on. You then obtainexperience points and scrips at the end of the voyage alongside a total score.

There are additional methods worth looking into and using at times:

• Grand Company daily turn-ins - once a day, your Grand Company will request an itemfor you. The experienced gained scales based on your level.
• Class quests - do not neglect your class quests! They grant you variousitems, skills, materia, gear, and experience buffs.
• Custom delivery - these also give experience, but I would recommend usingthem for scrips as they are weekly and much faster than usingnormal collectables.
• Regular gathering - this grants similar experience to the Diadem but also requiresbetter gear. If you have no leves and are not level 60, this would be the go-tomethod to level.

This next section offers suggestions for the best way to level up your gatheringclasses at each level.

While leveling up, be sure to also consider the different methods of keeping your gearup to date. We offer advice on this in our guide linked below.

Just simply go out into the open world and gather. Make sure you finishyour class quests to give yourself some starting gear.

If you would like to use leves, you can start them at level 20. Aside from that, Irecommend just using the Diadem to level straight to 60. There is no need to worryabout gear, as the first item at level 10 scales the experience given to you until thesecond item is available to gather at level 60.

Once you hit level 60, you will want to catch up on your class queststo help yourself get some gear. From there,complete your weekly custom delivery turn-ins for Zhloe.

This will grant you enough scrips to purchase the level 60 gear and tools.From there, save any remaining scrips for later.

If you are unable to do custom deliveries for the week, then I would recommendnormal scrip farming or powering through the first few levels andpurchasing some vendor gear at levels 61-63.

From here, you can go back to the Diadem if you want to supportyour crafting. However, collectables start to be more worthwhile now that you have moreconsistent sources of gear from scrips. The leves for this region are locatedin Kugane (x12, y10).

As mentioned previously, there is often no best leve, and yougenerally save more time by simply picking up all or as many leves as you needand going from there.

As for gearing at level 70, simply either do custom deliveries or farmscrips until you have what you need to continue onwards. There is a level 70set available that you can use on all classes, making it easy to get all of themat once.

On top of the main three methods, you can also complete Facet quests foryour class. These are located in the Crystarium and are fairly similar to classquests. These give a lot of crafting and gathering experience, in addition tosome scrips. For gathering, there are two facets: one for Mining/Botany andone for Fisher.

To unlock the Facet questline, players must talk to Katliss in the Crystarium(x11.0, y8.5) and accept "The Crystalline Mean." Players must have previouslycompleted "Inscrutable Tastes," a blue quest given by Morgayne in Foundation(x10.1, y10.5) that unlocks Collectables.

These quests will be the best way to gain a huge amount of experience andscrips, so be sure to complete them. Outside of that, do more collectablesto level to 80.

The best methods to level here are collectables and the equivalentof the Crystarium quests, which are called Studium quests. These can be found in OldSharlayan after progressing through some of the main story.

To unlock the Studium questline, players must talk to Qih Aliapoh in Old Sharlayan(x4.0, y9.4) and accept "The Faculty." Players must have previously completed "InscrutableTastes," a blue quest given by Morgayne in Foundation (x10.1, y10.5) that unlocksCollectables.

These quests give a huge boost to your experience as they didin the last expansion, so make sure to complete them!

Once you get to level 90, you can start looking into endgame gathering. Using thescrips you have farmed, you can purchase folklore books to unlock endgame nodes.Additionally, you can start looking into endgame gearing using our guide below.