How’s Your Botanist Skill?
The first thing to check is whether your Botanist gear is good enough. To be able to perceive a resource is determined by your…Perception Rating! How annoyingly logical!
The pre-requisite Perception Rating for these Unspoiled Mature Trees is 173.
Activate Truth of Forests
Spruce Logs come from Level 50 Unspoiled Mature Trees. Unspoiled nodes are only around at specific times and once you’ve finished gathering there, it disappears until next time.
On Any Gatherer Job
To see the Unspoiled Mature Tree you’ll need to activate Truth of Forests.
This is a skill all gatherers can activate now (at Level 46). So, if you’re quarrying or fishing, activating Truth of Forests allows you to be aware of nodes not relating to the gatherer job you’re currently on.
Verifying Truth of Forests
Once that is active you’ll see a new passive “buff” next to any others you may have on the go. Now you’ve verified it is definitely on.
Seeing the Nodes
Now you can see these tricky trees, hurrah! That’s the first bit done.
When Can Spruce Logs Be Found?
Eorzea Time
As I said earlier, you can only find Spruce Logs at certain times. Now, by “times” I mean Eorzea Time. That is important to remember as we hunt down those trees.
To find out when a resource is available, load it up in your Gathering Log.
Spruce Time
What Time Does Spruce Log Spawn?
From that tooltip we can see the answer is:
- From 9am to 12pm Eorzea Time
Set an Alarm (or Two)
Hanging around waiting for a tree to let you chop it is no fun, is it? To avoid that, we simply set ourselves an alarm to tell us when it spawns.
How to Set an Alarm
/alarm command and the UI above is loaded.- Press Add Alarm
- Make sure you change the Clock Type to Eorzea Time
- Plug in the start time, which for Spruce Logs is 9am.
- If you want advanced warning, you can set a reminder in (real time) minutes. I go for 5 minutes to let me finish the current task.
Recurring Alarms
If you need to gather quite a few logs for your carpentry skills, one visit may not be enough.
If you want it to occur when 9am next arrives, then look under Repeat. It defaults to “Off”, but you can choose “Daily (Eorzea Time)”.
Note: alarms are cleared once you log out. So you’ll need to re-set them next time around.
Listen for Your Alarm
Once the time arrives, you’ll get a little notification “tinkle” and a message on your screen. Now you can go and find those Spruce Logs!
Farming Spruce Logs
This is the only way to gather them. However, if you keep the alarm running, you can keep going back to farm Spruce Logs every Eorzea day.
If you need a lot of it, maybe create a Macro to set the alarm so you don’t have to go through the process every time.
Where are Spruce Logs in FFXIV?
Great, but where do you go?
Check Your Gathering Log
You Sense…
Seeing Through the Snow
The weather in Coerthas can change dramatically. I had snow that appeared to be coupled with fog.
At times like this, it can be useful to show nameplates on objects under Character Settings. Also, thankfully, the Unspoiled Mature Tree sparkles more than normal gathering nodes:
Gathering Spruce Logs
Unspoiled nodes behave differently to normal ones. If you begin gathering – even just clicking it without taking any resources, you cannot unselect it. If you do, the Unspoiled Node (and your precious Spruce Logs) will disappear until the next 9am Eorzea Time rocks up.
Pre-Gathering Checklist
Before you start gathering, take a few seconds to check a few things.
- Are you equipped with the best gear you have in your Armoury? If you have materia hanging around, add it in.
- Do you have any gathering food that could help with yield (Perception, especially)?
- If you are in a Free Company, do they have any gathering buffs to help you?
- Has your GP bar completely refilled?
Begin Gathering
The rest now follows nearly in the same way as other nodes.
Use your Botanist skills to increase your yield and perception. However, if you don’t have 100% chance to even gather a log, fix that with your abilities first. It’s better to come away with a few logs than none, after all!
No Quick Gathering
Unspoiled Nodes do not support quick gathering so you will have to click each time you want to hack the tree. As you can see, this tree has Dark Matter Cluster and Spruce Log options:
Ending Gathering
Once you have used all your gathering attempts, there are two outcomes. The first, most obvious, is that what you have gathered will be in your inventory.
The second is that you’ll receive a notification to say You no longer sense the mature tree.
The magical resource has now vanished until 9am the next Eorzea day.
Botanist Quest
Being able to harvest Spruce Logs is actually required for the Level 50 Botanist quest Seeds of Hope. So either this guide will be your practice for the quest, or you’ll need to find it after the quest once you’ve forgotten you did it!
Recipes for Spruce Lumber
Spruce has a lot of different uses, with a large part being in the crafting of housing decorations. But the list includes weapons, crafting tools and glamours too. So, here are a couple of links to help you:
- Spruce Log Recipes: Click/Tap Here
- Spruce Lumber Recipes: Click/Tap Here
As there are so many uses for this type of wood, there’s no wonder that this Level 50 Botanist resource is still in high demand.
TL;DR Get out in the Cold and Harvest Spruce Logs
Whether you want them for crafting, or to make 
gil from them on the Market Board, Spruce Logs are still a resource in demand. But now you know where and when to find them. If you’re interested, please check out my FFXIV Guides. Whether you do or not, just remember to enjoy the journey and don’t just think of the destination. Have fun in Eorzea, friends.
