I’ve enjoyed crafting in other games, so I started it up in FFXIV also, but it quickly became apparent that if I really pursued it, that it’d become the whole game for me. I felt overwhelmed and stopped playing.

But during my “break” (if you stop playing during the free month and are only gone for a little over a week is it really a break? ) I though about how I’d enjoyed the adventuring side of the game and figured if I just focused on my 1 job then I wouldn’t feel overwhelmed, so I subbed up, logged in, and got rid of all my crafting materials and gear so I wouldn’t even be tempted to try crafting again.

I got my Black Mage to 50 and was running the highest dungeon roulettes for the tomes for gear, but I never even finished my i120 set, much less upgraded it to i130 before Heavensward released. I played through that, hated how the BLM had been changed but still stuck with it for a couple of months before swapping to Summoner instead. Eventually started just leveling up all the adventure jobs to pass time, and once I was pretty well established in the game, only then did I give crafting a look again.

I made extreme use of the Ixal beast tribe to level my 1st job, but didn’t do much more than the tribe’s daily allotment of quests, so it still took a couple of weeks per job to get from low level up to 50. By then the Moogle tribe had been released for the 50-60 journey also, so I could level a higher job from 50-60 while simultaneously leveling a lower job via the Ixal tribe, so that worked out. Still took a few months as I just did the daily allotment of quests, but I think that kept me from burning out on it either.

Thing is… I eventually did get everything to 60, even without rushing. And then when the next 2 expansions came out, the same thing happened again both times . So.. I dunno if it’s helpful to you, but for me at least, I can say that there’s really no need to rush — the game will let you “catch up” on your own at your own pace so there’s truly no need to “do it all right now.” That way lies burnout….