Savage is right around the corner and because I see so many people asking about this, I wanted to put together a list of what I think is worth prepping and why before Savage comes out! Like most of these articles, I’ve prepared a TLDR and TeamCraft list at the bottom for you to reference so if you just want the items without the explanations, scroll down there and check it out!
An important disclaimer is that everything you read are educated guesses based on trends that are mostly consistent from previous expansions. That means that some things might not actually pay off if Square decides to change stuff up. Throughout the article, I’ll mention when I’m not 100% sure about some of the stuff so you can make your own judgement call.
For savage crafting, there are 3 main things that people need: crafted raid gear, pots, and food! The majority but not all of the materials needed for these can be prepared now. I tried to take a fairly balanced approach with this to not overwhelm people. By no means should you feel the need to do everything mentioned in this article. It’s just some expectations and guidelines to follow if you want to save time and headache on savage day and beyond!
Recipes
The first and most important part of this for most people is to prepare to unlock the master recipe books. Otherwise you won’t be able to craft any of the new stuff. Trends suggest it will cost 1,200 purple scrips per book.
The most you can get from a single collectable turn-in is 198 purple scrips for the level 99 turn-in of your choice. You’ll need 8 books, 1 per disciple of hand job which means we need 9,600 scrips in total. This means we’ll need 49 turn-ins to be able to afford all of the books. We can hold up 4,000 scrips so if you walk into patch day with your scrips capped, you only need 29 turn-ins instead!
With capped 4000 Purple Scrips:
29 of the level 99 Purple Scrip Turn-In
Or 33 of the level 97 Purple Scrip Turn-In
With no Purple Scrips saved up:
49 of the level 99 Purple Scrip Turn-In
Or 57 of the level 97 Purple Scrip Turn-In
Save yourself the trouble (and inventory space) and make sure to be capped
Timed Node Materials
The new savage gear will also require intermediates made using a mixture of the current timed legendary node materials as well as materials we can only get with Allagan Tomestones of Aesthetics. You can and should be gathering the timed node materials now. If you don’t already, you’ll have to grab the folklore books from the purple gatherers scrip exchange! As far as the tome mats go, I highly recommend making sure that you’re walking into the patch with your aesthetics tomes capped!
The timed node materials are:
Timed Mats
Harmonite Ore
Turali Alumen
Fine Silver Ore
Blackseed Cotton Boll
Ipe Log
Nopaliflower
Aethersands
Sunglit Aethersand (Potions and Food)
Mythloam Aethersand (Gear)
Mythroot Aethersand (Gear)
Mythbrine Aethersand (Gear)
How much you stock up depends on your needs. For reference, previous gear would take:
5 time node intermediates, 2 alkahests (Gemsaps in Dawntrail), and 1 aethersands for weapons, chest, and leg pieces
3 timed node intermediates, 2 alkahests (Gemsaps in Dawntrail) and 1 aethersand for head, gloves, and feet pieces
2 timed node intermediates, 1 alkahest (Gemsap in Dawntrail) and 1 aethersand for all accessories
So we can estimate a full set will take 34 timed node intermediates, 17 Grade 2 Gemsaps, and 11 aethersands. Each intermediate will take 5 of the timed node material (and 2 of the tome material) to craft while the Gemsaps take 1 timed mat and 1 aethersand to produce 3 at a time. This means that a full gearset will be around 176 timed mats ( and 18 aethersands) in a varying assortment depending on which weapons and gear you’re crafting.
You can use this number as a guideline to think about how much you want to stock up. Think about how many gearsets you’d like to comfortable be able to craft for yourself and to sell without worrying about going out to do more gathering or having to head to the marketboard. Depending on which gearsets you end up making, you may end up using more of some mats and less of others so consider adding a buffer to whatever amount you end up on just to be safe. You can always sell a surplus later and still make some good profit or keep around for gearing alt jobs in the future!
Pre-Crafts
Level 88 Intermediates
Just like Endwalker, I expect all of the level 88 intermediates to be used throughout the course of the expansion (as well as for relics assuming we get those and the early crafts of 8.0 haha). These are:
Ra’Kaznar Ingot
Black Star
Claro Walnut Lumber
Gargantua Leather
Thunderyards Silk
I recommend stocking up on all of these now. You may want to make sure that they are high quality to be safe. Without knowing what the recipes are like, it helps to have high quality for an easier time crafting. Once we have recipes and macros ready, you’ll know if you can afford to quick synth these depending on your melds to save time.
Each piece will likely only use one of these which means 11 level 88 intermediates per gearset.
Gemsaps (Alkahests)
Alkahests have a new name in Dawntrail and they’re called Gemsaps now. If it’s consistent with Endwalker, Grade 1 Gemsaps will be used for pots while we’ll be getting a new Grade 2 Gemsap for gear.
Grade 1 Gemsap of Strength
Grade 1 Gemsap of Dexterity
Grade 1 Gemsap of Vitality
Grade 1 Gemsap of Intelligence
Grade 1 Gemsap of Mind
I don’t personally plan on crafting a TON of pots but if you are, I would definitely consider stocking up on all of these. No doubt the Dexterity Potion will be competitive and have high demand with all the Viper players going around.
Each Gemsap craft should give you enough to make 9 potions (3 gemsaps at a time and 3 pots at a time) so you can plan accordingly based on how many pots you want to be able to make. If you want to make 150 pots, that’s 17 gemsap crafts for example.
Sanctified Water
A new addition that is sort of an unknown is Sanctified Water. The current Grade 1 Gemdraughts (new tinctures of Dawntrail) all use 2 of this. In Endwalker, this was just a gatherable material instead of an intermediate so I don’t know what to think about how it might be used.
The Savage Tinctures of Endwalker all used either a timed node or tome mat, 1 alkahest, and an aethersand. I’m going to be prepping a few of these myself (100-200) just to be safe and I know a lot of other people are expecting it to be used as well!
Sanctified Water
Tungsten Ink
I’m definitely curious about the application of the new intermediate, Tungsten Ink. Despite only being a level 94 craft, thematically this fits with being used for both book weapons and paint brushes which since that’s how it works now.
Tungsten Ink
Bi-Color Gem Materials
Currently, the Grade 1 Gemsaps all use 2 Ambrosial Water from Endwalker, 2 of a unique Shadowbringers gatherable, and Lesser Apollyon Shell. I expect these to be used in the new gear. While I recommend stocking up on Gemsaps directly, it wouldn’t hurt to stock up on gems so you can at least walk in capped in case more are needed. The Grade 1 Tinctures also use 2 Axe Beak Wing so maybe having some of that wouldn’t hurt as well. That said, I’m personally going to rely mostly on having capped gems and I’ll take the loss if I do end up needing a lot more than anticipated.
Lesser Apollyon Shell
Axe Beak Wing
Cap Bi-Color Gems
Untimed Gatherables
I expect some untimed gatherables to be used. In Endwalker, every alkahest for a stat used the same gatherable from Shadowbringers throughout the expansion. In Dawntrail, we’re still using those same gatherables for the Grade 1 Gemsaps. Those are:
Sweet Alyssum
Light gerbera
Lime Basil
Fernleaf Lavender
Tiger Lily
Each Grade 2 Gemsap will likely take one of these per craft. That means 17 per gearset so outside of the amount you’re already gathering to prepare Grade 1 Gemsaps, you probably don’t need a whole lot of these. 2-3 retainer ventures for each of these should be more than enough (100-150)
That said, unlike previous expansions, I do not expect the new pots to use these. Instead, we already see the Grade 1 Gemdraughts using new materials in Dawntrail:
Windsbalm Bay Leaf
Pearl Grass
Wind Parsley
Kozama’uka Chamomile
Eucalyptus
I’m expecting the new pots to use these as well and while they currently take 2 for the Grade 1 Gemdraughts, that could change to only 1 with the new recipes. Having 100-200 of each of these wouldn’t hurt and should be pretty easy to gather.
Crafting Food
Almost certainly most people will benefit from some sort of Crafting food! It’s likely that the EW staples such as Calamari and Tsai are both still useful but there may be benefits to having the newer stuff, notably Rroneek Steak since that was a popular stat combo and usually CP food is going to be the most useful stat to have for beefier macros.
Rroneek Steak (CP and Control)
Salmon Jerky (Control and Craftsmanship)
Gateau Au Chocolat (Craftsmanship and CP)
Calamari Ripieni (CP and Craftsmanship)
Tsai tou Vounou (CP and Control)
Cunning Craftsman’s Tisane (CP Pot)
I would say to not goo too crazy on these. Some of the EW foods may be cheap already but I’m not really going to prepare more than probably 20-30 of the Rroneek Steak myself since I still have a ton of Tsai and Calamari left over from EW. I’ve also added the Cunning Craftsman’s Tisane since the EW equivalent was useful in a lot of macros so this might be useful again, especially depending on your melds.
General Advice
Outside of this, make sure you’re using the 690 crafting gear, folklore books to actually gather the timed mats (1200 scrips per book for mining and botany), and enough melds to be comfortable.
The balance has both mid tier and high tier melds for both crafting and gathering. I see crafting as more important personally since you can make up for weaker gathering melds with time (assuming you meet the perception threshold to gather the materials) but having both melded helps.
Here are links to both meld guides from TeamCraft on melding:
https://guides.ffxivteamcraft.com/guide/crafting-melding-guide
https://guides.ffxivteamcraft.com/guide/gathering-melding-guide
Crafting benefits a lot from shorter macros and less time spent making higher quality intermediates in addition to the possibility that you may not be able to craft something at all! I recommend considering the mid-tier melds for most people and only going for high tier if you think you’re going to be crafting a lot!
I tried not to give crazy numbers when I did since prepping really just depends on what your goals are and how much you expect to be crafting! That’s why I tried to focus on per-gearset metric since that’s ultimately what a lot of you will be delivering!
While it’s not a craft, consider preparing orders in advance. Nothing feels better than having guaranteed sales on savage day. Just don’t overload and take on more than you can chew especially if this is your first time getting into savage crafting!
Also keep in mind that everything on this list is something you can prob spam gather for gil if you don’t feel like crafting gear directly! I’m probably going to spend more time selling intermediates than gear itself outside of direct orders since I’ve found that comfy in the past for example.
Here’s the TeamCraft list for everything mentioned in the article (unless I missed something haha)
https://ffxivteamcraft.com/list/tGpkjBfy1HrPuFzqmlQE
TLDR
Definitely Get
Timed node materials (requires folklore books)
Aethersands
Enough purple scrips and turn-ins to buy master recipes immediately
Cap Aesthetics Tomes
Some HQ Level 88 Intermediates
Melded Crafting Gear
Highly Consider
Capping bi-color gems
A little Rronneek steak if you don’t have EW crafting food staple leftovers
A few Cunning Craftsman’s Tisanes
Grade 1 Gemsaps
Melded Gathering Gear
The untimed gatherables mentioned in the section with the same name
Taking gear pre-orders for guaranteed sales
Probably Used
Sanctified Water
Tungsten Ink
Let me know on discord if you have any thoughts or questions. I hope this helps you to be more prepared and less overwhelmed on savage day!