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Land and Hand: Crafting and gathering in Final Fantasy XIV's relaunch
When I was playing Final Fantasy XIV's pre-launch beta, it was gathering that made me realize I was in real trouble with this game. Normally I consider gathering to be a necessary evil, a part of the game that exists and only occasionally overlaps with what I like to do. But the first time I started chopping away as a Botanist, I knew that something special was going on here. Of course, gathering and crafting also needed an overhaul. The former was a frequently luck-based minigame that could be intensely frustrating to decipher with few skills that seemed to do much, and the latter was obtuse even if you ignore the fact that you didn't have a recipe book. So the relaunch had the unenviable task of reworking both systems while at the same time retaining what made them such a breath of fresh air. If you liked Final Fantasy XIV's crafting or gathering before, I'm happy to say you still will -- and odds are good you'll like both even more because the new systems in place are solid improvements of what came before.
Final Fantasy XIV talks about the new stealthy gathering
It's not always easy being a gatherer in Final Fantasy XIV. Sure, you get all of the features of a full-fledged class, and that's pretty nice. You are sent out into the wild amidst hordes of ravenous beasts, however, and you aren't given many defensive options beyond "try to throw a rock at things." At least, that's the case at the moment. Patch 1.19 is bringing a major change to the way Disciplines of the Land handle their trade, with a new ability known as Coeurl Step. Named after the cat-like monsters found across the series, the new ability permits gatherers to enter an undetectable state for various tiers of levels at the cost of a severe drop in movement speed. Stealth can be maintained even while gathering, however, allowing players to sneak right past aggressive monsters and take their bounty from the land with ease. While Coeurl Step is exclusive to the gathering classes, there are few players who haven't picked up one gathering class or another, so most of the playerbase will benefit from the option to go incognito.
