Guide to Leveling Miner, Botanist, and Fisher in FFXIV Patch 6.5

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 to obtain gear as you level throughout the expansions.

The most commonly used method to level gatherers is the Diadem, a gathering-only zone that provides players with an easy way to level with little gear. The Diadem can be accessed through the Ishgardian Restoration. You can start the Diadem at level 10 on 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 make gil. The items you gather can be approved and exchanged for items used in crafting inside the Restoration, which is arguably the best method to level crafting at the moment. On top of that, because it is such a good method for crafting, the items 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 islands while 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 only way to farm certain items is by killing the enemies scattered around using the limit break-like gauge you build up over time.

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

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

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

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

For Fishing, leves work similarly to crafting. You can fish or buy a specific fish and 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. They are also not great for making gil. What they offer instead is scrips, a special currency used only for crafting and gathering that can make this method very efficient. Collectables are often your best way to level beyond level 70.

Scrips are useful for gear, materia, and to be able to unlock endgame crafts and nodes. Each expansion has its own scrip traders, 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. This activity can only be accessed for 15 minutes every two hours in real-time. You do not need any gear to Ocean Fish. However, gear can be useful at level 80 when going for achievements and certain fish.

To participate, players register for a voyage that is essentially a fishing dungeon. You sail on a boat and catch as many fish as possible to gain points. Alongside these points, there are various bonuses such as score X points, catch X fish while a spectral current is present, and so on. You then obtain experience 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 item for you. The experienced gained scales based on your level.
• Class quests - do not neglect your class quests! They grant you various items, skills, materia, gear, and experience buffs.
• Custom delivery - these also give experience, but I would recommend using them for scrips as they are weekly and much faster than using normal collectables.
• Regular gathering - this grants similar experience to the Diadem but also requires better gear. If you have no leves and are not level 60, this would be the go-to method to level.

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

While leveling up, be sure to also consider the different methods of keeping your gear up 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 finish your 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, I recommend just using the Diadem to level straight to 60. There is no need to worry about gear, as the first item at level 10 scales the experience given to you until the second item is available to gather at level 60.

Once you hit level 60, you will want to catch up on your class quests to 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 recommend normal scrip farming or powering through the first few levels and purchasing some vendor gear at levels 61-63.

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

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

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

On top of the main three methods, you can also complete Facet quests for your class. These are located in the Crystarium and are fairly similar to class quests. These give a lot of crafting and gathering experience, in addition to some scrips. For gathering, there are two facets: one for Mining/Botany and one 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 previously completed "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 and scrips, so be sure to complete them. Outside of that, do more collectables to level to 80.

The best methods to level here are collectables and the equivalent of the Crystarium quests, which are called Studium quests. These can be found in Old Sharlayan 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 "Inscrutable Tastes," a blue quest given by Morgayne in Foundation (x10.1, y10.5) that unlocks Collectables.

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

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