Gathering Grind + Planning

I'm going to be churning through grinding gathering classes in my "down" time. My main questions revolve around the grind, and what to farm when. Is there any specific sequence that works best between FSH/MIN/BTN in terms of what to do first? I kind of feel like they are all independent so it may not matter, but I'd rather have confirmation of my thoughts :3

I've looked up some basic "Get these things, then these things" kinds of guides, I'm just not sure if anyone has more insight on this. Many places also say to not spend the seals on the boost books above certain levels, and I read in this forum section that some people say just do it anyways. Not sure who to listen to fully.

Thanks for the help :)

If you're going to use the xp boosts just make sure that you are going to be gathering the entire time, otherwise it's kind of a waste. Between that, picking up leves for gathering, and the actual gathering itself it shouldn't take too long. I did mining and botany after fishing, but that was before the xp boost to leves, when things were really grindy.

But as far as what areas, the leves progress the same way battle leves. Certain areas for certain levels. Once you get to 50 then you can start memorizing what rare nodes pop when and where. Until then, it's just getting through it all.

Something else to think about as well, the gathering gear you have along the way, convert all of that into materia, you'll likely need it for melds once you get to 50.

I did leves the whole way for gathering and botany, but I didn't do very many leves for fishing.

There are guides out there about what to do to extract max exp for leveling crafting/gathering jobs. I just looked them up online. You'll want to start doing the Ixail (sp) beast tribes though as soon as possible out in North Shroud. These quests are a beast to leveling up a crafter, not sure if you can turn them in as a gathering job. Also if you get to rank 7 you can start getting oakknots? which are like a token. You can make a lot of money right now selling Ehcatl Sealant. As for what to farm, I think for miner/botanist the ore/lumber at your current level sells well. If you have the time and the shards you can turn those into the basic crafting units aka ingots/lumber for a price increase. Also pay attention to what you need for crafting/gathering leves as you level as these materials normally sell well because ppl want to just buy and turn-in rather than waste their precious time.

Thanks for the input guys. I figure I'll dive into finishing off my mining first.

Badawin - Might be a little noobish, but for the melding, are the lower rank materia still useful at all? like the I and II? I'm not even sure what kinds of melds are going to be necessary for 50 gathering and all the * rank nodes.

The lower rank materia are useful if you plan on spirit binding later as you can socket them into gear and increase their spirit gain. as for the lvl 50 melds theres a crafting guide in this forum section that has optimal melds for the lvl 50 gear. i think its up-to-date with 2.4 but not sure.