Oh, I understand how the mechanics work, my gripe is just the grinding for materials. What the guide fails to mention in the link you sent is that materials come in four forms.

Organic (XP Boosters) - Claws, teeth, pelts etc
Inorganic (Huge XP) Circuit Boards, Engine Cores, Metal Scrap etc.
Mineral (Item Catalyst for evolution)
Monetary (should be used for getting Gil) - Credits, Perfumes

So Organic materials give awful XP, but they can raise how much XP an item is worth by up to 3x. But you need to feed the item a lot of them to get this boost. With 3X XP, some low level Inorganic materials can raise an item by several levels with minimal cost. So like a Bomb Core that normally gives 525 XP will now give 1575 XP.

The problem I'm having is that Organic components are not easy to come by. Sazh's section mainly had him fighting machines, so I was earning no organic components. Even in the current chapter where I am fighting organic enemies, they drop one or two of their items at most with a 5-star rating in battle, but I need something like 10-20 of the item to get that 3x boost. I only get that much if I find a treasure sphere that contains it, which is rare and often not the best components, or if I buy them, of which I still haven't unlocked the shop that sells organic components.

So for the moment, in order to really delve into equipment, I have to grind a little excessively for my taste to earn enough items to make weapon crafting worth my time. Eventually, you do gain two shops that sell the best components from either classification, but these items are stupidly expensive. So endgame turns to you grinding monetary items to sell back for gil, so you can buy the best components, so you can raise the item levels more efficiently.

This also falls into my argument about how XIII is still an excessively grindy game.