There are a couple of items available to help with gathering once you have ascended (from level 10 on up.) You can spend some of your hard-earned Kinah (Q) and buy a vitality or aether gathering hat, called a Gatherer Hat or Aether Gatherer Hat.

The Gatherer Hat comes in Novice (Q 5,687) – Experienced (Q 25,289) – Veteran (Q 148,648) and Advanced (Q 962,797) versions. As they increase in price, they also increase in skill level and character level requirements.

Gatherer Hats are available from the Vitality Extraction and Aether Extraction item vendors in the Vitality and Aether Extraction areas of the Artisan’s Hall in Sanctum for Elyos, or the Aether and Vitality Extraction Training area for Asmodians in Pandemonium.

With so many expenses competing for your attention a Gatherer Hat may seem too costly. After all, you still have to expand your cube and warehouse space, pick up some new armor or weapons, and pay to level up your crafting skill.

If you feel that you just can’t afford a Gatherer Hat, there’s hope. Here’s a free alternative: macros.

You can set up macros to help locate, target, and extract vitality and aether. Macros work extremely well for items that may be difficult to see, such as fish in the water. (Think Miraju Holy Ground or the waters around Eltnen Fortress.)

Go to U to open Macros, then Create New Macro, and type in, for example:

/Select Ruko
/Attack

(Make this two separate lines, just as shown, capitalizing the words and adding / at the start of each line.)

A Gatherer Hat, it is true, goes one step further than a macro and tells you what gatherables are available in any given area, but it may be cost prohibitive for lower level characters.  It is also amusing when using macros to put your character on autorun, periodically click your macro, and find your character suddenly veering off to one side and running head-long into a barrier in an attempt to reach the item the macro is set to gather.

So, if you’re feeling the pinch from a lack of Q (kinah,) give the macro solution a try. It is very simple, yet very effective.

You level the skill with Work Orders you obtain from the trainer. If you want to save some Kinah when making these Work Orders, make only the exact number of items required.

Two reasons to make only the exact number of items required: 1) You save Kinah; 2) You increase your chances of receiving recipes as rewards.

The Work Order gives you extra materials, just in case of failure. For example, you receive eight (8) caprauna to make 6 caprauna juice. If you make all eight Work Orders successfully and turn in the completed Work Order, you do not save any extra created items towards the next Work Order, and you do not gain any additional Skill. Oops! This last part is incorrect, as a commenter pointed out. You do get skill increase from making the extra items. (Sorry, I was getting confused after too many late nights gaming.)

What I meant to say was that another reason that you might want to only make the minimum items necessary to turn in the Work Order is: by doing this way you increase the number of times you turn in Work Orders as you level up your skill, and thus you increase your chances of receiving some good recipes as rewards for completing the Work Orders. (I knew there was another reason.)

Save your Kinah; don’t buy more mats than you need to. I find the failure rate is fairly low, at least from Skill levels1 to 100, and by turning in more Work Orders I received a fair number of interesting recipes as rewards, which is much better than buying them off the Broker. You still have that option if you don’t get what you want as a reward from the Cooking Trainer.

If you are purchasing mats for one Work Order at a time, purchase enough mats to make seven, but resist the temptation to click the “Make All” button; make only 6. If you succeed you are done! If you fail on any of your attempts and you  need to make more, then do so.

For each 10 Skill levels (1 to 10, 11 to 20, etc.) you make the same Work Order over and over, so I usually buy enough materials to make sixty-five (65) to seventy (70) items for all 10 Work Orders at one time. This doesn’t save any Kinah, but it saves running back and forth to the Vendor table. (Even though it is not that far to go, it can be annoying.)

Here’s another Kinah-saving Crafting Tip:

The first Work Order is free, requiring no extra mats. In Cooking, for example, Gritty Inina does not require you to purchase extra mats. Making this can get you up to Skill Level 10, right? Well, if you are feeling really hard up for Kinah, try making the same first Work Order to level up further.  Reliable sources have confirmed that you can level up to the mid-30’s or even 40 using the same first Work Order. It does kind of s-l-o-w d-o-w-n your leveling, but it is free.

Try this same trick at other skill levels, too. Some of the higher level Work Orders require fewer, less expensive mats than those at lower levels. When you find an inexpensive Work Order, keep making it as long as you continue to gain skill level.

Let me know how this works for you.

Happy leveling!