The FFXIV gathering guide

Gatherers are the Disciples of the Land. The three jobs pull raw materials out of Eorzea, and crafters turn them into everything else.

• Miner (MIN) works ore, stone, gems, and fossils out of rocky nodes. Its mats go to Blacksmith, Armorer, and Goldsmith.
• Botanist (BTN) harvests logs, plants, produce, and fiber. Those feed Carpenter, Weaver, Culinarian, and Alchemist.
• Fisher (FSH) catches fish and sea life by rod or spear, mostly for Culinarian and Alchemist.

All three also pull the elemental shards, crystals, and clusters that nearly every recipe needs.

Reach level 10 on any combat class and visit the guild. There's no main-story requirement.

• Miner: Miners' Guild, Ul'dah (Steps of Thal).
• Botanist: Botanists' Guild, Old Gridania (the Greatloam Growery).
• Fisher: Fishermen's Guild, Limsa Lominsa (Lower Decks).

Gathering jobs share their armor and accessories, so only the tools differ. Once you have one gear set, swapping between them is cheap.

• Gathering sets your success rate and how many items you pull per swing. Aim for 100% on whatever you're farming.
• Perception raises your Gatherer's Boon chance (a bonus item, like a crit) and how high you can push a collectable's rating.
• GP (Gathering Points) is the fuel for your abilities. It refills over time, and Miner and Botanist get a little back on every successful swing.

One thing that trips up returning players: HQ gathered materials went away in Endwalker. Everything you gather is normal quality now, and collectables took over the quality turn-in role.

Walk up to a sparkling node, pick an item (it shows your success % and boon chance), and swing. Each attempt spends one point of Integrity.

• Normal nodes give you 4 attempts. Timed nodes give you 6.
• Spend GP on boosts (extra yield, higher success, collectability) before it runs out.
• At 0 Integrity the node is spent and disappears.

Your Gathering Log tracks what you can gather and roughly where, and it gives you a little XP the first time you find something new. Truth of Mountains and Truth of Forests, learned at level 46 and always on, are what let you see the timed nodes in the next tab.

Most nodes are always there. Timed nodes only show up at fixed Eorzea hours, for a set number of Eorzea hours. Miss the window and you wait for the next one. They hold the scrips, endgame crafting mats, and folklore rewards, so they sit at the center of a gatherer's routine.

• Unspoiled: about a 2 Eorzea-hour window (older A Realm Reborn ones run 3), usually twice an Eorzea day. This is your daily bread and butter for scrips and endgame mats.
• Ephemeral: about a 4 Eorzea-hour window, in clusters of three. These feed Aetherial Reduction (see the next tab), and they make for relaxed, passive income.
• Legendary: about a 2 Eorzea-hour window, twice a day, usually folklore-locked. The rarest mats and the steepest stat requirements. Set an alarm for these.

Timed nodes stay invisible unless Truth of Mountains (Miner) or Truth of Forests (Botanist) is active, and that turns on by itself when you're on the class. Ephemeral nodes don't show a minimap arrow, so use Lay of the Land or Arbor Call to pin them down.

Many legendary nodes also need a Tome of Regional Folklore, bought from the scrip vendor for around 1,600 Purple Scrips. Fieldcraft marks folklore-locked nodes so you know to grab the tome first.

This is what the tool is for. The Now page shows what's open this minute and what's opening soon, with live countdowns. Star the items and fish you care about to build a watch list, and turn on an alarm to get a nudge a minute before a window opens.

A collectable is a gathering item with a collectability rating. That rating is a quality score, and it decides how much XP and how many scrips you get. There are two kinds:

• Rarefied collectables go to a Collectable Appraiser for scrips and XP.
• Ephemeral collectables get fed into Aetherial Reduction for aethersand and crystals.

The whole system unlocks with the level-50 quest “Inscrutable Tastes”.

Turn on Collector's Glove before you touch the node. Instead of just pulling the item, you spend a few actions raising its rating while you watch your Integrity:

• Scour is your main collectability gain.
• Meticulous costs less and can refund Integrity.
• Scrutiny spends GP instead of Integrity to boost your next action.

When the rating's where you want it, hit Collect. Fishers do it differently: with Collector's Glove on, a catchable fish rolls a collectability value based on your Perception.

As of Dawntrail there are three gatherer scrip tiers.

• White is retired. Any you still have swap 1:1 for Purple.
• Purple is the workhorse, used for leveling gear and folklore tomes.
• Orange is the level-100 currency for cap gear and top-grade materia.

You earn them by turning in Rarefied collectables, from weekly Custom Deliveries, and from Ocean Fishing. Spend them at a Scrip Exchange on gear, materia, folklore tomes, crafting mats, bait, even the odd mount.

This is the gatherer's version of desynthesis. You shatter ephemeral collectables into aethersand, crystals, and clusters. It unlocks at level 56 with “No Longer a Collectable”. Higher collectability means better aethersand odds, so most players either aim for a mid rating for a shot at it or max the rating to lock it in. Aethersand feeds master-recipe crafting and relic tools, which makes ephemeral farming quietly lucrative.

Every gather spends Integrity (your attempts on the node) and lets you spend GP on abilities. What you press depends on what you want out of the node — raw quantity, or a high collectability rating. The shapes below are stable; exact potencies and stat breakpoints shift each patch, so treat the numbers as current-Dawntrail ballpark, not gospel.

For plain materials you want the most items before Integrity runs out, so front-load your biggest GP spend — the boosts only apply to attempts you haven't taken yet.

• King's Yield II (Miner) / Blessed Harvest II (Botanist), 500 GP: +2 items on every remaining swing. Cast it first on a node with several attempts left.
• Bountiful Yield II / Bountiful Harvest II, 100 GP: +1 to +3 on your next swing only, scaling with your Gathering stat. It's the most GP-efficient booster when it lands +3.
• Gatherer's Boon is your bonus-item proc. Push its chance up with Mountaineer's Gift / Pioneer's Gift, then Nald'thal's Tidings / Nophica's Tidings (200 GP) adds an extra item every time the Boon fires.

A typical high-GP line: lock in the Boon, cast King's Yield II / Blessed Harvest II, then feed a Bountiful before each of the next few swings — roughly 800 GP on a node you've stretched to six or more attempts.

Rarefied collectables pay by their rating, so you're chasing the item's cap (1,000 at level 100) for the top scrip tier. Flip on Collector's Glove, then raise the rating while babysitting Integrity:

• Scrutiny (GP) supercharges your next appraisal off Perception — press it right before a gain.
• Meticulous Prospector / Meticulous Woodsman is your workhorse gain, with a chance to refund the Integrity it would have cost.
• Scour is a bigger flat gain that always eats Integrity — the fallback when you need one more push.
• Brazen Prospector / Brazen Woodsman is a gamble that turns reliable when Collector's High Standard procs — that's your cue to Scrutiny into it for a big jump.

The go-to loop is Scrutiny, then Meticulous, repeated until the rating caps, taking the Brazen jump whenever High Standard lights up. Cap it, then Collect. With Integrity left over, buy more pulls: Solid Reason (Miner) / Ageless Words (Botanist) spends 300 GP for another attempt and, at max level, has a 50% chance to grant Eureka Moment. While that buff is up, Wise to the World is free, grants yet another attempt, and restores an Integrity on a collectable node. Chain those and one node gives up two or three collectables instead of one.

Ephemeral collectables you're reducing for aethersand don't need a perfect rating — just clear the sand threshold. With no GP at all you can spam Scour to a few hundred (around 400 is the usual mark) and start Collecting. A higher rating nudges the sand odds and quantity, but it's rarely worth burning GP past that if sand is the only goal.

GP is the whole game. Open a session on GP food for a bigger pool, keep a Hi-Cordial (400 GP, a few-minute recast) rolling on cooldown, and don't let the bar sit full — it regenerates on its own, so idling at max just wastes it. Clearing the GP threshold that unlocks a node's bonus attempts is often worth more than any single yield ability.

Fishing is its own little game. Pick a spot, choose bait (used up on a bite) or a lure, cast, and watch the tug on the line.

• A light bite (!) wants a Precision Hookset.
• Medium and heavy bites (!! and !!!) want a Powerful Hookset.

Hook at the right strength and you land more of what you want and fewer trash bites.

• Patience trades hooking efficiency for a much better shot at big fish.
• Mooch and Mooch II reuse a fish you just caught as live bait. A lot of rare fish sit at the end of a mooch chain.
• Fish Intuition unlocks a specific target once you catch a set of “predator” fish first.
• Snagging pulls non-fish loot like treasure maps and minerals. Turn it off when you're after a specific fish.

This is what makes fishing deep. A lot of rare fish need a specific Eorzea-time window and the right weather. Often they need a weather transition too, where the previous weather has to be one thing and the current one another (you only need to be there for the final state). Fish Eyes waives the time requirement on older fish, but never the weather, and never on Legendary fish.

Big fish are the trophies. You line up the time, weather, bait, and mooch, then fight a stubborn catch rate. Some fall on the first cast, some take weeks. Spearfishing (level 61) is a separate node-based minigame, and Truth of Oceans reveals its hidden “swimming shadows”. Ocean Fishing is a timed group voyage on a fixed real-time schedule, a new boat every two hours, with its own spectral-current scoring.

Every rod-catchable fish now lives in the Fishing directory with its weather, time, and bait conditions and live catch windows — follow the tricky ones and they'll show up on Now and Following alongside your gathering items.

Big fish are the trophies — the rarest catch in each zone, with Legendary fish the hardest of all. A hunt is really preparation: line up the Eorzea-time window, the weather (and any required transition), and the bait, often through a mooch chain, then grind the catch rate. Some fall on the first cast; some take weeks.

• Patience II trades most of your hook efficiency for a big boost to landing large-sized fish. Under Patience, answer a light bite (!) with Precision Hookset and heavier bites (!! / !!!) with Powerful Hookset — a few fish break that rule, so check the entry.
• Prize Catch guarantees your next fish is large-sized — clean fuel for a mooch without the Patience penalty. Identical Cast re-hooks the exact fish you just landed, perfect for repeating the base of a mooch chain.
• Surface Slap boots the fish you just caught back out of the pool so unwanted bites stop crowding your target. Fish Eyes waives a fish's time-of-day requirement — but never its weather, and it does nothing for Legendary fish or anything from Endwalker onward.
• Angler's Art stacks build as you land large fish, and Thaliak's Favor spends three stacks for 150 GP — that's what keeps your GP alive through a long camp.

You have a lot of levers, and the good ones stack.

• Fieldcraft Leves give you 3 allowances every 12 hours. Crank the difficulty and over-gather for the evaluation bonus.
• Gathering Log discovery hands you a chunk of XP the first time you gather each new item.
• Collectable turn-ins are the backbone from the 60s on, and your main source of scrips.
• Custom Deliveries are a weekly stack of XP and scrips (Wachumeqimeqi in Dawntrail).
• Grand Company provisioning is a daily turn-in for XP and seals.
• The Diadem (Ishgard Restoration) is very fast for Miner and Botanist from 10 to 60, and your level-10 gear carries the whole way.
• Ocean Fishing can carry a Fisher most of the way to 100.

Pop a Survival Manual (+150% XP) before a session. It stacks with everything above.

• 1 to 60 (MIN/BTN): lean on the Diadem, topped up with leves.
• 60 to 90: collectables and Custom Deliveries, with leves to fill gaps.
• 90 to 100: Wachumeqimeqi Deliveries and level-appropriate collectables.
• Fisher: Ocean Fishing on the 2-hour cadence, leves in between.

Each gatherer carries a main hand (pickaxe, hatchet, or rod) and a secondary (sledgehammer, scythe, or gig). Your armor and accessories hold most of your stats. At the cap you have two options:

• Orange Scrip gear is the budget baseline. It's solid, but it's job-specific and can't be fully melded.
• Crafted gear is the best you can get. It takes every materia slot and works on all three gathering jobs, if you can afford the Market Board price.

Gathering drives success and yield, Perception drives your Boon and collectability, and GP fuels abilities. The catch is that stats only matter at breakpoints. Cross a threshold and you unlock a bonus like extra yield, extra Integrity, or a bigger Boon. The points between thresholds do nothing, so you meld to hit an exact target. Those breakpoints move every patch, so check a current gearing guide for the nodes you're chasing instead of trusting a fixed number.

An unspoiled or legendary window runs about two Eorzea hours — roughly six real minutes — which is long enough to clear more than one node. Plan a short route: hit the first node, then mount straight to a second timed node sharing the window (or a regular node nearby) before the clock runs out. Fieldcraft's countdowns are built for exactly this — line up which windows overlap so you're never standing around waiting on one.

Your retainers can gather for you. Assign one to Miner, Botanist, or Fisher (up to your own level in that job), hand it a tool, and send it on gathering ventures — it comes back with materials whether or not you're online. It's the most reliable passive income a gatherer has.

• A retainer's Gathering stat only has to clear the minimum an item asks for; past that it does nothing for quantity.
• Perception is the stat that matters — on targeted ventures it drives how many items the retainer brings back each run.
• Ventures open up a little after the level-17 story beat; a spare set of scrip gear is plenty to kit out a gatherer retainer.

Gil follows demand, and demand follows crafters. The evergreen earners:

• Scrips into materia and gear — turn Purple and Orange scrips into the melds and cap gear that crafters and gatherers re-buy every tier.
• Aethersand from ephemeral reduction feeds master-recipe crafting, so it sells steadily instead of spiking and crashing.
• Current timed mats spike hardest the week a patch drops and everyone is leveling crafters — that first window is where the money is.

Chase the new-content spike, then let retainers grind the steady stuff in the background.

Eorzea runs on its own clock, much faster than ours. One Eorzea hour is 175 real seconds, so a full Eorzea day is 70 real minutes (about 20 times real speed). Fieldcraft's clock ticks in real time, so every countdown you see is already converted for you.

Eorzean weather looks random, but it isn't. It runs on a fixed formula tied to the real-world clock, and it's identical on every server, which is why tools can forecast it far ahead. It rerolls every 8 Eorzea hours (about 23 minutes of real time), at Eorzea 00:00, 08:00, and 16:00.

Timed nodes are gated by time. Rare fish are gated by weather, and by those weather transitions. Knowing the forecast lets you plan around a window instead of standing there waiting for it. The Weather page lays out the upcoming blocks per zone, and the live Eorzea clock sits in the header on every page. All of it is worked out in your browser.