FFXIV gathering rotations

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.