Crafting Specialist Guide for FFXIV

Crafting Specialists are the equivalent of job stones for combat classes with the caveat that you can only have three Specialists at any time with the ability to change a Specialist three times a week. They come in items such as Soul of the Carpenter and provide you additional benefits.

These benefits are:

• An additional 20 Craftmanship, 20 Control and 15C CP.
• Access to the skills Careful Observation and Heart and Soul, these skills do cost a Crafter's Delineation to use.
• A range of Specialist-locked crafts which change each patch.

Knowing how each of those benefits impacts you and your goals will allow you to fully take advantage of the Specialist system. It's aim is to provide additional minor benefits and does not limit your non-Specialist crafts in any ways.

To unlock the Specialist system you must first be level 55 in any crafting class. From there you can accept and complete the quest Beloved of the Builder by speaking to Lydirlona in Mor Dhona (X:22.3, Y:6.8).

This quest will start you off with three empty souls called Soul of the Crafter which you can then turn into a class-specific soul. You will meet Alderan during the unlock quest who is located in Ishgard, The Pillars (X:14.6, Y:10.7). He will allow you to "Request certification", meaning to pick a Specialist.

Additional Soul of the Crafter's can be purchased for 480 White Scrips from any Scrip Exchange. It can be handy to have a few of these stored away for if you ever need to make a quick swap.

Now that you know about how to unlock Specialist and their benefits we can cover their main uses that you have available with these benefits:

• The additional stats can allow you to have more efficient rotations making you use less HQ materials, cheaper food or just generally make items (and therefore gil) faster. The benefits of this vary massively depending on the patch and your melds but it generally requires expensive 'High Tier' melds for you to have further benefits so it is not for everyone.
• The Specialist skills are incredibly useful for Expert Crafting which is a type of crafting that requires you to manually craft due to the extreme difficulty of these crafts. These skills can massively increase your reliability.
• The Specialist-locked crafts generally refer to items related to extreme trials such as a new barding, furnishing or glowing weapon. These crafts are only Specialist locked on the patch they are released.

There is no right answer for what Specialists you should use and it entirely depends on what your goals are with crafting. Do not forget you can always change them easily.

If you are unsure, my recommendations would be:

• Blacksmith if primal weapons have been added as those require Specialist.
• Alchemist is a popular Specialist due to single button potion and foodless potion macros as well as it having pre-crafts that are commonly used in most crafts.
• Culinarian if you plan to make plenty of raid food.
• Armorer for primal bardings.
• Any class you want to use expert crafts on.