While I still have materials to process (a couple hundred, which feels like just so much given that it’s maybe three times as much material needed for my last craft which involved five full sets of gear and this is just two), I’ve hit the point in my Final Fantasy 14 crafting and gathering projects where all that’s left is to hit macros. Currently, it takes about half an hour to do twenty-four of these long-crafting macros, so I’m trying to pace myself and do about an hour of them a day around everything else I’ve got going on. If I can do that every day this week, I should have everything done this weekend in time for… well, in time for nothing, really. It’s not like I need a lot of these materials around. Most of them only get used for this crafting and gathering gear and whatever gear drops in the next expansion will almost certainly use entirely different materials. As far as I can tell from looking at past expansions, the final set in an expansion’s patches (which is what this set will be for the latest expansion) uses a mix of brand new materials and older high-level-but-not-starred materials. I have no idea if that will remain true for this expansion, so I don’t know what to do but maybe keep stockpiling things and hope that I can flip the materials later if they prove unnecessary. I don’t know if I’ll be able, though, since the need for them will be almost entirely gone once new gear exists. I mean, the stuff used in the crafting and gathering sets I’m making will probably still sell given that there will continue to be people like me who are showing up a bit late to the party but still want to get the full experience, but I have no idea about any of that older stuff. It’ll be a gamble.

Still, given that I’m trying to become my FC’s Gear Sicko, it might be worth it. I pitched the whole raid crew from last week on a bit of a bargain for crafting new gear for the squad. Only one person has reached out about being interested in it, but that kind of tracks since I’m pretty sure all the other players are sitting on enough money to just buy the stuff at whatever the asking price is rather than go through all the gathering and crafting hassle to make the stuff. I also have that kind of money, but it’s not fun. I want to show up in a set of gear with my name on it! I want to feel the rush of finally equipping that last piece of gear and watching my item level finish adjusting itself to the new cap (since it’ll be a while before the new raids drop and the raid gear will be slow-rolled anyway, like it always is, allowing you to get one piece a week). I also want to help my FC mates who mostly do the combat stuff since I know how much work it takes to do this kind of crafting and income generation. Not everyone has a brain wired like mine, which rewards me for doing repetitive tasks and derives a great deal of joy from organization, so I can understand that not everyone has the mental space for all this effort. I also know that I’m still in a period of my life where not thinking about things is a good thing to do (therapist approved, for the time being) and that having a project to prepare for is also going to help me navigate the likely-to-be-emotionally-difficult holiday season. There’s no downside, really, so long as I can get the help I need to make this happen without entirely taking over my life.

Which is the general pitch I’ve made: if they help me acquire the materials I need, either by gathering them from timed nodes or by grinding for the currencies we’ll need to buy the purchase-only ones, I will take care of all the button-clicking. I’ll figure out the crafting rotations, set up the macros, stockpile the necessary stat-boosting food, and spend the time required to turn all of this stuff into the gear we want. All of which will bear my name. I’ll be contributing to the gathering as well, of course, since I’ll have literally the best possible gathering gear and the dedication required to set up a rotation and timers when all of our external tools are still down following the update, but I expect that it will be easier to make all of this happen, even for multiple sets of gear, with some assistance, than if I was doing it on my own. Especially because someone else can gather stuff while I craft, which will make every passing hour twice as useful and while I’ll need to do double the crafting, it’s still a much better use of time than me needing to craft AND gather everything AND do combat stuff in order to earn the other currencies. And it only gets better as we add more and more people to the mix. With two people, two hours of dedicated gathering and crafting would have taken me four hours. With three, it’s up to six. I’m sure you can see the pattern emerging and do the simple math yourself. Sure, the amount of player-hours stays pretty constant, but it’s the difference between getting it done in a day versus getting it done in a week.

I think the big limitation is going to be how long it takes to process materials. Right now, I can process about forty-eight three-star materials an hour to High Quality. I could do more if I used lower quality items, but I’m cutting things close enough as it is that I don’t want to take any unnecessary risks. After all, the biggest waste of time and resources would be producing a piece of gear that isn’t High Quality or failing to produce something at all. Better to take it slow and get it all set up. Even if I’m going to be lagging behind the gatherers. I mean, given how much stuff we need and the generally poor exchange rate on special currencies to crafting materials, I probably don’t need to worry about that until we’ve got four or five people doing the work unless they all get started while I’m at work. I mean, I probably won’t be taking a day off for this, since the patch drops on December 16th and I’ll be taking a lot of time off in the following weeks, so I might have a lot of catching up to do. I’m certain that my new crafting gear, when it’s all set up, will help expedite the process at least a little bit, but the way the numbers works out means that it might not help enough to actually reduce the time it takes so much as just hit the higher targets. I have no idea, to be honest. I’ve never been in this position before and everyone I talk to is telling me to just wait or just buy stuff, so it’s difficult to really get a read on what things will be like as the patch drops and all the cutting-edge folks start diving in. Hopefully it’ll be fun, if nothing else.