Leathercraft - How Bad Can It Be?

I'm a 75 thf so I am capable of farming almost all the skins necessary for leathercraft. I'm currently 35 leathercraft and have planned to use the following synths to reach 100 with mostly easily farmable materials: Waistbelt > Ram Mantle > Raptor Jerkin > Tiger Leather > Coeurl Leather > Tiger Mantle > Tiger Jerkin > Coeurl Mantle > Coeurl Jerkin > Tiger Mask > Panther Mask. I'm sure the skill ups will decrease, but can leathercraft to 100 really be this easy?

Currently 90 Leathercraft doing Tiger Masks...done over 40 synths and still not hit 90.5 >.> Given up for a while...

I practically toke the same route as you, only I did coeurl mask instead of Jerkin, worked out cheaper on my server. I farmed all the tiger hides and made them into leather. I ended up buying the majority of coeurl hides/leather stacks though... drops were slow. My THF is low. Good luck!

As with any craft, expect it to reallllllyyyy slow down once you hit Journeyman status. But it's always a good thing when you can farm your own mats at ease without having to burn a hole in your gil pouch every time you make a skill up grind session.

I also am THF main (had TH4 for quite a while too, which has been very useful). In answer to your question, yes it really can be that easy :) With some small modifications for different availability/price of ingredients, thats pretty similar to what I did. However, to give you an idea on timescale : I did LC from 30 to 85 in about 1 month (not powerlevelling, I farmed 90% of the materials).

Its taken me about 5 months to get the gloves, apron, and I'm about 2 decent GP days away from the 200k GP item (150k I will do last).

85 - 96 (where I am now) has taken about 2-3 months. On Fenrir, the materials needed aren't on the AH particularly often, and are in high demand. Personally, I noticed a massive slowdown in skillup rates from 90+, as a rough guide I would work to 0.3 skillup to 12 synths. Sometimes I have gone 24 for 0.3, other times 2 for 0.2 - but 0.3 / 12 synths is about average I would say.

I hope to cap to 100 within the next 2 months, but given the materials required, it could take longer. Also, there are some really good, cheap synths which are NOT listed on most sites (or at least, in the recipe lists) - see Peiste Leather, Peiste Mantle, Lynx Leather, Lynx Mantle.

Make sure to try and look for recipes like this when skilling, and most of all, good luck!

Tiger Masks usually are the best option from 90-95, but there are other options that you can do between those levels (some slightly more expensive) Errant Pigaches are an alternative to 91 (tho you need Velvet Cloth and Undead Skins), it just depends on your server really

Problem 90+ is the only cheap per say synth is Tiger masks and Panther masks after. Both require wyvern skins which.. are just a pain and make this slow. I've tried farming them with everything from TH0-TH4 and the drop rate is just crap on any that are duoable/soloable. Perhaps I might try to make a merit party with my Brd and pull skoffins lol. Hard to get any skins off ah unless you have the time to camp the ah. Desynth is costly but I got a couple of skins back :D

problem isn't so much leveling it as it is making gil =o hq dusk/abj obviously is nice (if u can even sell them) but the luck factor is immense obviously...

amemet mantles... Ok 75thf with npc can solo it, but not with links so u have to pull carefully, this along with competition makes it hard to farm skins. now take into effect, I personally am like 1/23 makes it not worthwhile to buy skins or to synth them since I'd make more gil selling the skins at 50-60k a pop, just a kind of funny situation lol
gl though

^ should have posted under aleks its my Leather char - you can check my craft skills there for verification

I appreciate everyone's input. I won't be back to the game for a while, but I have a hell of a list of things to do when I log back on.

Another question related to leathercraft:

It is better to synth each (insert FFXI animal) leather individually rather than using the tanning key item and a tanning vat right? I mean, the most skillup you could get on each synth would .3 but are you more likely to get skillups or is it just an easier way to lose 3 skins?

If you're skilling, don't use tanning key item. You will only get one skillup chance per synth, not material. You'll just likely lose more hides.

Its useful to have when you need to mass farm stuff though, so I would recommend having it :)

I hit 91 leather and started doing Tiger Masks. It took me 402 synths to get from 91-93. Wyvern skins were 10k a piece. It was a living hell for me. To keep from buying wyvern skins I started farming buffalo and I did bison warbonnets to 95. Much easier and cheaper for me.

95 I started doing Bison Kecks (farmed all the mats myself). Did those to 97, was quite quick.

I am now 97.5 and doing Panther masks, they are a living hell because the AH is camped for Wyvern skins by multiple people.

Glad to see i'm not the only one...

I gave up at 51 >_> *** catoblepas hides.

No skill-up streaks of 40+ are depressing and downright humiliating.

Friend and I had TH4 and farmed pretty much everything from lower lvls up to Coeurls in Zitah. I also did Coeurl Gorget at some point and tried to desynth those after to get some mats back - same with mantle. At some point I started to make Errant Feet, Griffon Leather, Blessed Pumps (pre eltoro price sky rocking) and Tiger Masks. Tried to keep it balanced and at the end yes, Panther Masks. Some days were horrible where I'd get a .1 on 12 synths, other days I'd get .4 on 12 synths. When I hit 100 I had -just- bought like 10 more synth mats, thinking i was .3 away, but on first synth I hit 100 lol.

Anyways, I just bought all the mats at the end and bit the bullet. Looking back I don't think I lost too much money - selling items on mule helps since it sells pretty slow or if you can't wait (like me at some point) just npc it for around 3.3k
I'd suggest that you farm other items once you hit ~90 and just buy the mats of AH.
Also a little note: Panther mask synth sucks if you have no space. Wool Thread 1x, Ram Leather 1x, H.Q. Coeurl hide 2x (unstackable), Wyvern skin 1x (unstackable) and crystal. Have fun taking up 6 inv slots for 1 synth. Best to have someone else hold mats for you or have a mule or something like that :/

I'm 100+3 Leathercrafter, and it definitely does take a long time. I PL'ed the hell out of the craft and shot up fairly quickly.. until the wyvern skin phase that is.

I hit 100 many years ago, so I don't remember the timeframe that any specific level ranges took me. Just keep at it, and you'll get there.

I probably wouldn't have hit 100 if I had to farm all of my materials.. so I give those of you who did/do a lot of credit!

Edit:
Times were different back then. It was much easier to PL Leathercraft back in the day (very risky though).

I used Amemet Mantles to fund most of my wyvern skin purchases. Unlike today, where a HQ Mantle sells for 150k or so.. they sold for 3.5M back when I was leveling it. Sure, Amemet Skin used to cost 500k-600k per skin, but if you could HQ one (which isn't "that" hard due to the lvl of the synth), you had 3M profit, and wyvern skins were only 10k each still.

That could buy a LOT of wyvern skins back in the day. So I would get lucky and HQ Amemet Mantle, then camp the AH and buy 3m worth of wyvern skins as they showed up lol.

I used this method to PL my clothcraft sub from 0-60 in 1 day as well.. I really do sort of miss the inflation period.