FFXIV Gathering Guide - Learn the Basics of Disciples of Land

Final Fantasy XIV gathering guide

Gathering in Final Fantasy XIV is a term that includes three character classes, also known as Disciples of Land. Those professions are botany, fishing, and mining. In this guide, we will talk about the similarities and differences between them, as well as which one of the gathering classes to choose and how to level it up efficiently. This is an entry guide explaining some basic concepts regarding gathering. FFXIV Gathering Guide is not all you can find here.

If you want to know more about leveling each of the 3 gathering classes, including a list of items to collect and a full walkthrough, including recommended guildhests, check out guides for a botanist, miner, and fisher on our website.

First of all, it’s important to understand the design of the Final Fantasy XIV economy system. It was created in a way that enforces cooperation between different crafting and gathering professions. Of course, in the end, you are able to level every one of them on a single character, but it takes a very long time. If you're a player who doesn't want to do all of that, you should choose the classes to develop wisely. The gathering classes also have some cross-class skills.

Having strong crafters and gatherers will matter if you want to have a healthy in-game economy. Those are the classes that make the most Gil, what can be extremely useful, both while leveling new classes and jobs, or for getting the optimal gear and some other endgame activities.

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Gathering classes

There are no classes that are purely self-sufficient. Every one of them has its own role to play, but they’re just small cogs in a bigger machine. This leads to a situation where the gatherers provide some materials that can be later processed by the crafters. But at the same time Disciples of Land (DoL) need some tools that can be produced only by certain Disciples of Hand (DoH). The interconnectedness of different classes is one of the core concepts of Final Fantasy XIV and it's making the economy really interesting. One gathering class is required to collect mats, like cotton or copper that another class later uses to craft a complete item.

It's really hard to progress all the available classes on a single character. It definitely takes a lot of time and effort. We believe that it's better to focus on one job that you like the most and then level up the DoH, DoL professions that will be the most useful for crafting the needed gear and gathering mats for it. For example, a warrior can use the items crafted by blacksmith and armorer, while they need a supply that miner can get. It's not going to solve all the problems, but it's a good base point to start.

Let’s look at some of the basic synergies between gathering classes and crafters.

Botanist (BTN) will supply goods for a carpenter, culinarian, leatherworker, and weaver.

Fisher (FSH) will provide materials for alchemist and culinarian (well, fish are food).

Miner (MIN) will gather components for an alchemist, armorer, blacksmith, and goldsmith.

Keep that in mind, when you choose which one of them you feel like leveling up first.

To get access to any non-combat class in FFXIV you first have to get to level 10 on your primary class. Then you have to visit the correct guild and get it there. The Botanist’s Guild is located in Gridania, the home of Miner’s Guild is Ul’dah and the Fishing Guild is placed in Limsa Lominsa. After you unlock the classes with the proper quests, all you need to do to switch between them is equipping different main hand items, weapons for Disciples of War and Disciples of Magic or tools for Disciples of Hand and Disciples of Land.

Gathering materials requires going to certain places called nodes (in case of fishing, they’re simply called fishing locations). Then you have to use the class-specific skill and gather what you can. Each node can be used six times and then they run dry for some time. Every five levels you’re going to unlock a few new nodes.

General tip: if you’re leveling a crafting class at the same time (what is a good idea) it’s important to always look at the materials you will need for crafting. Then you can always gather the items that you will later use on your Disciple of Hand. It’s a good way of optimizing the time you spend on leveling your character.

It’s important to note that all the gathering classes can share most of their equipment. They need different tools, but the rest of the gear remains the same. While completing your gathering equipment, you will find out that it affects two stats (or attributes): Gathering and Perception as well as the pool of Gathering Points.

Gathering – influences the likelihood of successfully gathering an item. By far the most important stat of the three in the early game since it increases your gathering chance.

Perception – increases the chance of getting a high-quality item during the gathering process. Mostly useful in the higher levels.

Gathering Points – the resource expended to use some of the gathering skills, similar to Magic, Tactical and Crafting Points. You shouldn’t have any problems with them in the early levels, but later it’s important to get a lot of them because you will sometimes have to use multiple abilities while harvesting one node. Upgrading your gathering set will get you more of them.

Design-wise botany and mining are extremely similar, while fishing is the most special of the three. Botanist and miner have almost identical skill sets. Icons and names are different, but their effects are the same. Just one works for harvesting plants and the other for extracting minerals.

The best ways of leveling up your gathering professions will slightly differ from the things you would do for experience on a combat job. Crafters and gatherers don’t have any skills that could help them in combat. While it’s not the biggest of deals for crafters, they can safely sit inside a city and create items at a crafting station, the situation is a bit tougher on Disciples of Land.

To gather specific items you will often have to visit some dangerous places. That’s why all three of those classes have access to Stealth – a skill that allows them to sneak past formidable and aggressive enemies, and get to the right nodes or fishing spots.

Gathering nodes

Gathering nodes are the sources of items that you can gather. They can be divided into four types: botanist node, mining node, fishing location, and spearfishing location. The nodes are gated by levels. To use the higher-level ones, you have to get enough experience in the proper gathering class.

To use the nodes players need to have the proper gathering class equipped because the level 1 skill will be necessary. Another thing you’ll need is a proper gathering tool. They are respectively: hatchets and scythes for botanists, pickaxes, and sledgehammers for miners and fishing rods and bait will work for fishers.

Some special types of nodes have been introduced to the game. Unspoiled Nodes only spawn at a certain time of the day in the in-game Eorzean time, an Eorzean day lasts 70 real minutes. They last for 2 hours of the in-game time, which makes it about 6 actual minutes. Harvesting them is more challenging. It requires players to always be aware of their spawning timers and to organize their time around it.

Ephemeral Nodes are somewhat similar, but they spawn for four in-game hours and are used to gather collectible items. You can also reuse them by harvesting some other nearby nodes. The last special type is Folklore Nodes. To access them you have to buy Tomes of Regional Folklore for Blue Gatherer’s Scrips.

Gathering process

While having the right tools equipped, you can use your level 1 gathering skill to find nodes. Then you can approach an adequate node and you will enter the gathering screen. The nodes have limited amounts of attempts that you can use before they run out. Then you have to move to another one. The used nodes will respawn as you use other ones.

 Triangulate - the basic botanist's skill that allows them to find nodes

 Prospect - The level miner's ability that lets them find nodes

The gathering screen will show you what items you can try to extract from that node and what are your percentage chances of succeeding at each one of them. Nodes will often have multiple options of different level items, which will influence the projected success rate.

During the gathering process, players can use some of their abilities. They usually increase the chance of successfully acquiring a material, either normal quality or high quality. Some of those actions cost Gathering Points (GP). To get more of them you’re going to need strong gathering gear. While botanist and miner can make use of GP since level 4, the fisher can only use them after hitting level 51. Fishing, in general, is the most random of those classes, is based more on luck and patience, than on managing your resources.

After a successful attempt, you add the item to the inventory and get experience points. The gain is higher when the item is HQ or when you gather an unknown item – this way you will unlock it and if you see it in a gathering node in the future, it won’t be unknown anymore. All the items you gathered are automatically added to your Gathering Log. At all times, you are able to open it and check what items you have found and where you did it.

At the same time, if you level up and try to harvest higher level nodes without upgrading your gear, the success chance will get lower and lower. That’s why it’s important to pay attention to your statistics, especially Gathering. By the way, don’t throw out your old gathering clothes, because they are the same for every Disciple of Land, so you might use them when leveling another one of those classes. The only things unique for each gathering classes are their tools.

The situation is different for fishing, as there’s no gathering screen. You just have to use some of your level 1 fishing skills and wait.

 Bait – select the tackle you’re going to use

 Cast – throw your line and start fishing

 Hook – after something got caught (there’s pretty clear rod animation that acts as an indicator) you pull your catch out

Fishing is much more of a minigame than the two other gathering classes. Also, there’s no way to know what fish got caught before pulling it out. In order to increase the chance of catching the exact fish you want, you have to choose the right location and use the optimal bait or lure.

Leveling FFXIV gatherers

You get some experience for your successful gathering attempts, but of course, there are some other sources of exp too and they make it much less difficult for Disciples of Land. Especially if you're willing to gather HQ items for those tasks, to get the extra bonus experience.

Another way of leveling up your Disciple of Land is by completing Levequests. They are repeatable, simple tasks that often grant really nice experience rewards. You should do a lot of them if you’re trying to exp your botanist or miner - they make it much easier. To finish this kind of quest you’re going to have to bring a specific item to the Levemete. If you want to know which ones are the most worth doing, read the class-specific guides posted on our site. This way you will be able to reduce the amount of time spent running from zone to zone to minimum. It will allow you to reach a high level as soon as possible!

The preferable way of doing that is gathering the item first, but there’s also a possibility of buying it from another player and turning it in, for rewards. For more information about picking the best leves for every gathering class, you can check out our guides. You're going to get new ones every few levels, starting at level 1 then level 5 then 10, later at level 15 et cetera. Another source of exp worth mentioning is the Grand Company turn-ins.

After the two expansion packs Heavensward in 2015 and Stormblood in 2017 raised the level cap to respectively 60 and 70, they also introduced new ways for crafters and gatherers to get experience, including Beast Tribes Quests and the collectible turn-ins, also referred to as scrip system. The latter one will be incredibly important for leveling past 50. At level 50 you’ll get the skills necessary for gathering collectibles. These methods are free from the leve allowances restriction. Especially the collectibles are worth your while, as they can sometimes give you extreme, insane experience gains and valuable rewards on top of that! Remember to try and get to your late game gear as fast as possible. In general, if you want to decrease the difficulty of your gathering attempts, make sure to upgrade your gear regularly. 

FF14 and all its classes

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn is a 2013 re-edition of Square Enix MMORPG. Players can follow the fascinating storyline and travel through beautiful regions of Eorzea. The game offers a lot of interesting features, such as dungeons, trials as well as some more peaceful endgame options, like housing and collecting cosmetics called Glamours.

There are plenty of classes that you can play in FFXIV and the most special part is that you’re going to be able to level them all on a single character. The combat classes (that can later advance into different jobs) are divided into:

Disciples of War: Gladiator (GLA), Marauder (MRD), Archer (ARC), Lancer (LNC), Pugilist (PGL) and Rogue (ROG). They can specialize in 

Disciples of Magic: Arcanist (CAN), Conjurer (CNJ) and Thaumaturge (THM)

Jobs that they can later advance into are Warrior (WAR), Paladin (PLD), Dragoon (DRG), Monk (MNK), Ninja (NIN), Bard (BRD), Black Mage (BLM), Summoner (SMN), Scholar (SCH), White Mage (WHM), Blue Mage (BLU), Dark Knight (DRK), Astrologian (AST), Machinist (MCH), Samurai (SAM) and Red Mage (RDM). The game is based on the classic MMO role-playing with every job being either a tank, healer or DPS.

While the non-combat classes are divided into Disciples of Land – the gatherers described in this text and crafters – Disciples of Hand: Alchemist (ALC), Armorer (ARM), Blacksmith (BSM), Carpenter (CRP), Culinarian (CUL), Goldsmith (GSM), Leatherworker (LTW) and Weaver (WVR).

Players have the possibility to enjoy crafting, gathering and much more. Including a great story, learning to master quick rotations of combat skills and lots of awesome content. FFXIV spawned a great community of friendly people, who love the game and often help new players get started.