Crafting and Gathering Prep Guide for Patch FFXIV 7.4

If you’ve been around Final Fantasy XIV long enough, you already know that every major patch flips the entire economy upside down for a few weeks. And with Patch 7.4 landing on the 16th of next month, crafters and gatherers across Eorzea are cracking their knuckles and prepping for another round of early patch chaos. Whether you’re a long time Marketboard shark, a casual crafter trying to make your first batch of raid gear, or just someone who wants to stay ahead of the curve, patch week is always a wild ride.

As someone who has lived through more patch cycles than I care to admit, I can say with confidence that Patch 7.4 is shaping up to be a strange one. It has all the hallmarks of a normal crafting and gathering reset with new raid gear, new materials, and a fresh round of market volatility. But it also comes with something we rarely get a longer runway. The raid tier delay until January 6th changes almost everything about how players will prep. And that means that your crafting and gathering strategy needs to adjust too.

So if you want a clean, veteran friendly breakdown of what’s actually worth preparing, what’s a waste of time, and which materials will matter most when Patch 7.4 goes live, this guide has you covered. Let’s look at what’s new, what to farm now, and how to position yourself to win the opening weeks of the next economic cycle.

What Patch 7.4 Actually Brings for Crafters and Gatherers

First, let’s set expectations. Patch 7.4 is a major progression patch that will introduce a new tier of crafted raid gear, new consumables, and the final scrip set for this expansion. For players who craft or gather at endgame levels, this patch is basically the last big hurrah until the next expansion launches.

Here’s the overview of what you’ll be dealing with.

A new crafted gear tier that players will want for their early week preparations before The Arcadion’s next stage.
New raid tier food and potions, which always spike on day one.
A new final scrip set expected to be item level 750. This set is designed for players who want a more affordable path into crafting raid gear without diving into pentamelding.
New tome based crafting materials, including the usual batch of patch specific reagents.
Legendary nodes will be updated but there are no new folklore books required this time.
New master craft recipes, though no new crafting books are expected.

In other words, the pattern remains predictable. And predictability is actually a huge advantage for veteran crafters and gatherers, because it allows you to prep early by leaning on previous patch structures like 7.2 or even 6.4. The more you understand the devs’ patterns, the better you can position yourself for success in Patch 7.4.

The Raid Delay and Why It Matters for Your Prep

Here’s where Patch 7.4 gets interesting. Because of the holiday schedule, the raid release has been delayed until January 6th. That gives players two extra weeks to get their early gearing done, finish their crafting rotations, and stock up on raid consumables. On the surface, that sounds like a dream for market stability, but it has some major implications for the usual crafting and gathering rush.

Most importantly, more weeks before raid means players will accumulate far more tomestones before they need to decide between crafted gear and tome gear. With more tome gear available, fewer people will feel the pressure to buy full crafted sets. That’s a potential drop in demand for high end crafted raid gear during the first few days.

But here’s the twist. Even though demand may be reduced, the opening patch surge will still hit just as hard on day one. If you’re online during the first six to twelve hours of Patch 7.4 and you come prepared, you can still make a fortune. Crafters who are stocked, capped on tomes, pre farmed materials, and ready to mass produce will absolutely dominate the early Marketboard race. And, historically speaking, even patches with slight delays still generate huge profits for the first wave of crafters.

So the raid delay doesn’t kill the market. It just shifts the demand curve. Instead of day one chaos stretching across the entire first week, expect the hype to be strongest in the first twenty four hours. After that, armor demand will soften quickly while food, pots, and crafted intermediate materials remain valuable throughout the first week.

What You Actually Can’t Prepare

A lot of players overthink this part. Because Patch 7.4 includes entirely new crafted sets, most of the items you’ll be crafting with are not ones you can pre farm. Historically, these include:

All new tome locked crafting materials
All new intermediate raid materials
All new master craft reagents
New foods and potions
Any new legendary node items needed for the new recipes

Since these items simply don’t exist before the patch, there’s no point worrying about them. You’ll get them on patch day the same as everyone else.

What You Can Prepare Right Now

Now we’re getting to the fun part. Even if the bulk of the 7.4 materials are unpreparable, there are still several crucial resources you can stockpile right now to make your patch week easier and more profitable.

Gil

Gil remains the single most powerful resource in every patch cycle. While farming materials is nice, having raw capital lets you pivot instantly the moment the Marketboard shifts. Whether it’s buying underpriced materials, cornering a listing, or mass crafting gear the second recipes unlock, gil gives you flexibility that nothing else can match.

And if you need a little boost, yes, stocking up on FFXIV Gil once can be helpful especially if you’re planning to go all in on day one crafting.

Condensed Solutions

These have been used consistently across multiple raid recipe cycles, and all signs point to them being required once again in Patch 7.4. They’re always safe to stockpile, and they always get bought out early on patch day.

Levinchrome Aethersand

Another historically reliable material. The devs tend to reuse the X.3 aethersand for X.4 patches, so Levinchrome Aethersand is almost certainly going to be part of the new master craft recipes. If you’re going to stock one sand, stock this one.

Level 98 Intermediate Materials

If you really want to prep aggressively, you can stock some level 98 intermediates in HQ. While their exact usage in the new recipes isn’t confirmed, past patches show a strong trend of earlier intermediates carrying forward into later endgame recipes.

Generic Crafting Materials

These include:

Sanctified Water
Varieties of refined metals
Cloths
Leathers
Crystals and clusters
Culinary staples used in most potions and foods

These usually get a general bump during patch week and are always safe to hold.

Cap Your Tomestones and Scrips

This one is non negotiable. Cap your White and Purple Scrips. Cap your tomestones. When recipes drop, being able to instantly buy the new tome locked reagents is the difference between being first to market or being twenty minutes behind which is the difference between millions of gil.

Materia

Both combat materia and crafting materia will see a spike, especially if the new scrip gear requires melding to hit the necessary craftsmanship or control benchmarks. Given how expensive some tiers get post patch, buying early is smart if you plan to craft.

How Much Should You Actually Prepare

With all that said, the real answer might surprise you. You probably don’t need as much as you think. This isn’t one of those patches where you need to spend weeks hoarding mountains of materials. Because new items make up the majority of Patch 7.4’s crafting loop, there’s a natural limit to what you can pre farm.

The best approach is this.

Make a crafting list based on Patch 7.2 or Patch 6.4’s patterns.
Scale that list up or down depending on how active you plan to be on the Marketboard.
If you’re planning to craft just a few sets of gear, prepare materials for two or three sets.
If you want to go full Marketboard PvP, prepare for five to ten sets depending on the class and your personal schedule.

As long as you have tomes capped, scrips capped, some gil saved, and a clear plan, you're already ahead of most players.

Final Tips for Patch 7.4 Prep

As Patch 7.4 approaches, keep an eye on pre patch price movements. Crafters who understand the flow of supply and demand can take advantage of dips two weeks before a patch, then flip materials on day one for massive profit.

And if you really want a competitive edge, learning from high level crafters, guides, and established communities can help too. Some players even check places like G4mmo once for general market trends or material demand spikes.

The bottom line is simple. Patch 7.4 is a predictable patch with an unpredictable timeline. But predictability is all you need to prep correctly. Stock your solutions, gather your aethersand, organize your crafting lists, and get ready for another round of Marketboard madness.

Because when that patch drops on the 16th, you’ll want to be standing at your crafting station, macro ready, materials laid out, and your gil counter waiting to climb. The players who prepare now will be the ones telling stories later about how they made their entire expansion’s worth of profit in forty eight hours.