Melding My FFXIV Crested Crafting And Gathering Gear: No More Orange Scrips

Last night I reached a milestone in my efforts to pentameld my Crested crafting and gathering gear from Dawntrail. That's right, I no longer need to affix any more materia requiring orange scrips to my gear. From here on out I just need to gather up purple crafting and gathering scrips.

How much materia did I burn through? To give an example, the last Craftsman's Control Materia XII I needed to attach to my Gold Thumb's Mortar took 25 attempts to apply. Considering I had a 1 in 6 chance to be successful, the RNG gods just didn't like me. While I came up with estimates for both how much gathering and crafting materia I needed, take those as suggested starting points.

I'm not finished but I think I can live with my progress so far. Here is how I'm doing.

Crested Gathering Set

Teamcraft Stats: 5629/5532/987

My Stats: 5502/5279/943

My stats will fall below the Teamcraft High Tier set just because I'm using the cosmic tools to help cut down on costs. Until I can get the next upgrade to the cosmic tools I'll need to use Nasi Goreng to hit the last gathering breakpoint. Once I meld on 3 more Gatherer's Grasp Materia XI I won't need food to hit the final gathering points breakpoint.

I currently have 8 more slots I need to fill with materia.

• Secondary gathering tools - each one needs a Gatherer's Guile XI (+20 perception) applied.
  
  
• Crested Earrings of Gathering - needs a Gatherer's Grasp XI (+9 GP) applied
• Crested Necklace of Gathering - needs a Gatherer's Grasp XI (+9 GP) applied
• Crested Bracelet of Gathering - needs two Gatherer's Grasp XI (+9 GP) applied
• Crested Ring of Gathering - needs one Gatherer's Guile XI (+20 perception) & one Gatherer's Grasp XI (+9 GP) applied
• Crested Ring of Gathering - needs one Gatherer's Guile XI (+20 perception) & one Gatherer's Grasp XI (+9 GP) applied

I also have a final empty slot in my Crested Coat of Gathering I'm not exactly sure what to do with.

Right now I'm estimating I'll need at least 50 Gatherer's Guile XI materia and 115 Gatherer's Grasp XI materia to finish off the melding.

Crested Crafting Set

Teamcraft Stats: 5811/5461/649

My Stats: 5715/5231/649

I think I'm doing pretty well, especially since the Teamcraft guide states I can skip the overmelds on the tools to save on costs as long as I meld on all the Cunning (+ crafting points) materia. If I skip the tools I just need to overmeld one Crafting Command XI materia to each of the following:

• Crested Headband of Crafting
• Crested Shirt of Crafting
• Crested Gloves of Crafting
• Crested Culottes of Crafting
• Crested Boots of Crafting

I estimate overmelding the above gear will require 100 Crafting Command XI as a starting point. Or around 25,000 purple crafting scrips.

Overmelding the final two slots on each of my 8 secondary crafting tools is a bit more expensive. A good estimate of how many Crafting Command XI materia I would need is 280. That's an additional 70,000 purple crafting scrips. Let's round up and say I need another 100,000 purple scrips to finish off the crafting set, assuming the RNG gods look favorably upon me.