Crafting: A Community of "How To"

[Aeni]

I decided to mirror this thread to Yyg's for Macro, but with an eye towards crafting.

Since crafting is far and away different than when it was first released, I decided to just leave that other thread to die, because I didn't want new players to get confused with the tips and strategies in that one with what we have post 1.21.

Anyway, I'm still not sold on the new crafting system, but that's probably because I don't understand the new mechanics as well as any new strategies. If you can all share your wisdom, it be fantastic. Bear in mind that if you have everything to 50 in crafting, it won't be the same experience as someone leveling up through the 20s to the 40s, so the strategies and techniques may not be for the best (i.e., you're only goal at 50 is quality over quantity, aiming for HQ, which isn't the same goal as someone in their 20s getting to 50)

Thanks

[Malacite]

Re: Crafting: A Community of "How To"

The new system is LOADS better than the original. Being the resident crafting nut, I'll take a stab at it.

Basically now your base EXP per synth is based on the rank of the synth, and is then heavily modified by the quality at the end. You get almost a 1:1 increase in EXP per point of quality (it could be a bit more or a bit less, I haven't looked closely enough - I suspect it's more though) so now you can effectively grind out lower rank synths that may have only been giving 150 or less EXP and still churn out 400+ EXP per synth with enough quality. This is great for crafts like Blacksmithing (my personal favorite) which can get expensive at the higher ranks.

You can also now actively go for HQ synths. Basically if the quality is below 300 by the time you finish, forget about it - it's not happening. You need to get it up to around 500 or more to have a decent chance - it starts to climb dramatically after 500 - in the 800 range is almost a guaranteed HQ. This is where HQ ingredients come in very handy, as a full recipe using all +1's starts with minimum 300 quality, I don't know how it varies with recipes with lots of ingredients (4 or more).

Standard synthesis actually sucks pretty hard now, as it only slightly raises quality and drops durability much more than it did before for roughly the same progress. You don't lose as much durability as you would when screwing up a rapid though - rapid really hurts, often taking away 20+. Careful synthesis, oddly enough, only seems to chip away 8 or 9 regardless of success or failure but will now *always* increase quality, and quite significantly.

Rapid Synthesis is the way to go now, if you want to HQ things - if you can manage 2 or 3 in a row without failing, you'll have between 50 and 75% progress, but zero loss of durability!!! On a success, Rapid Synthesis will never drop your durability leaving you free to spam Careful Synthesis to raise quality. This is important, because if you don't start with a good chunk of progress (50% or more) spamming careful will outstrip your progress:durability ratio. This is why standard synthesis basically sucks now, as you get a little less progress than you would with rapid, barely any quality, and it detracts a substantial amount of durability.

tl;dr - get Armorer, Weaver & Alchemist to at least 10 ASAP Blinding Speed, Masterpiece & Preserve. Maker's Muse, which was epic before patch, is basically garbage now in most situations unless a recipe is too high of a rank in which case rapid synthesis will just keep failing and deplete durability too quickly.

Finally, they bumped up the time between actions from 15 to 30 seconds (it will be removed altogether by 2.0) and now all your actions are available at once - they will be randomized if you have more than 4 or 5 set I believe but otherwise you can activate them at any time during synthesis, as opposed to hoping they show up at random before.

[Aeni]

Re: Crafting: A Community of "How To"

Thanks Mal! I didn't know Rapid Synthesis was improved so much (remember in beta? rapid was better than standard) so that I can safely drop Maker's Muse from my list of abilities. I have every craft to at least 10 already and one thing I noticed with BSM is that elemental instabilities aren't as frequent as they used to be (would drive me nuts when I would randomly get 2 or 3 unstable fires in one synth and have that happen again on the next or the next after)

Hmm ... well this knowledge is very handy and may encourage me to craft once more.

[Yygdrasil]

Re: Crafting: A Community of "How To"

I need to get Blinding Speed. Other than that. I'm Rank 20 with Weaver and I'm busting out synths that are giving me upwards of 2k exp every time. Leves are great still because of the free mats... but if you can get a bunch of +1 mats and do your own synthing stacked with Rested Bonus, food and a Guild page... you're going to be leveling faster than you know how to handle. I'm sitting down tomorrow to bust out Alchemy, Weaver and Leatherworker to 30 if I can manage it. Getting the 3 of them to 30 will make tomorrow a success.

[Malacite]

Re: Crafting: A Community of "How To"

Oh right that was the last thing I forgot to mention, they reduced the odds of elements becoming chaotic.

[Aeni]

Re: Crafting: A Community of "How To"

Mal, is it necessary to craft with an offhand? What is the purpose of the two tools? I'm not sure how much crafting has changed.

[Malacite]

Re: Crafting: A Community of "How To"

A couple of specific recipes will only HQ with the right tool, but other than that AFAIK the mainhand tool is for quality, and the offhand is for quantity.

[Yygdrasil]

Re: Crafting: A Community of "How To"

and the offhand is for quantity.

This. I remember when I was leveling Clothcraft in the early stages... I would use my offhand to make a lot more cotton thread from cotton bolls. I was making roughly 3 thread for 1 boll on mainhand and 6/1 on offhand. Of course offhand increases the difficulty... but if you're doing a lower level craft, it's a lot easier to churn out mass productions.

[Aeni]

Re: Crafting: A Community of "How To"

I hate the crafting system as it is right now.

Aside from the minor issues (i.e., ARM's Rapid Synthesis animation is Careful and vice versa) the most notable drawback is the fact that durability degrades at the same rate no matter what level you are in relation to the level of the synthesis. This is where that EXP gain is an issue and can easily be addressed (Yes, you will hate me for saying this, but the EXP gain for crafting is too much right now)

-Rank differences from player to the recipe in relation to synthesis should be the sole arbitrator of success, not whether or not you used some ability.
-Quality gains should also be more consistent with the rank difference (right now it's heavily RNG, something that I swear Yoshi-P said he wanted to move away from as we get closer to 2.0)
-HQ mats should not contribute heavily into quality and should be scaled back somewhat.

What I really want the crafting system to do is encourage SKILL and rely less on RNG and luck. You can accomplish this with knowledge of gear, abilities and the orb color as it relates to the synthesis. Rank differences should also play heavily into the system, which should normalize the EXP gains (in other words, people can risk huge losses to reap huge rewards on higher rank recipes, or stick with appropriate rank recipes that reward consistent EXP gains ... right now there is hardly any penalty for the risk takers)

I can't believe I can fail hard on a recipe I am 20 ranks past without pushing 300 quality and at the same time, I can hit 500 quality gains on a recipe that is a lot more difficult. To me, that is indicative of a failed system.

[Malacite]

Re: Crafting: A Community of "How To"

Uh, no.

Being well above a rank (or rather, being high enough to equip gear that dramatically raises your crafting stats) has a tremendous influence, especially on Careful Synthesis. It sounds like you ran into a string of BS luck, as I'm able to sky rocket quality on lower level synths easily. They also set it up so that you really do need HQ materials to reliably HQ items, something I don't entirely agree with.

[Aeni]

Re: Crafting: A Community of "How To"

Uh, no.

Being well above a rank (or rather, being high enough to equip gear that dramatically raises your crafting stats) has a tremendous influence, especially on Careful Synthesis. It sounds like you ran into a string of BS luck, as I'm able to sky rocket quality on lower level synths easily. They also set it up so that you really do need HQ materials to reliably HQ items, something I don't entirely agree with.

I've consistently been blowing up on Iron Plates trying to get some HQ mats and they are well beneath me (Even with the 300-400% boost, there's barely any EXP at all) I can't even push 400 quality, let alone 600 which is only a 20% or so increase for HQ chance. 600 on quality is so rare that it's ridiculous. If they require people to have HQ ores to make HQ ingots to make HQ plates to make HQ items ... that to me is disturbing, to say the least. That translates to about roughly no better chance at HQ than what it was in Patch 1.1

And yes, EXP gain is too much for crafting. Why should you be pushing 2K EXP per synth when the best anyone can hope for through combat is roughly 1/2 that on chains. Crafting is a choice, not an activity. That is why they separated the classes into the categories we see: Hand, Land, War and Magic. If crafting and gathering are just activities in the game, they should throw out that part of the "job" system.

[Yygdrasil]

Re: Crafting: A Community of "How To"

All that means is that the rank 50 gear will be hard to HQ... that's all. Once you're rank 50 and have boosted crafting skill you'll be able to consistentl HQ any gear besides the top tier. You don't want to make r50 gear too simple to HQ or everyone would have it by now.

[Aeni]

Re: Crafting: A Community of "How To"

All that means is that the rank 50 gear will be hard to HQ... that's all. Once you're rank 50 and have boosted crafting skill you'll be able to consistentl HQ any gear besides the top tier. You don't want to make r50 gear too simple to HQ or everyone would have it by now.

I'm not asking for HQ to be easily obtained and the method I prescribed wouldn't boost that chance either. But what is the point of being able to HQ low level items if no one in their right mind is going to shell out the gils for it? With the leves and rest bonuses blasting people through the 20s and 30s like they were still at level 5, gears don't last long, so people won't bother with HQ items. So, HQ at 50 will STILL be important, especially since the alternatives will be Rare/Ex drops from raids.

It seriously was not that difficult to craft prior to 1.19, you know ...

Final Fantasy 14 Synthesis Guide




Not sure how relevant the formula is - I suppose you could update by just changing the values a bit.

[Aeni]

Re: Crafting: A Community of "How To"

I remember a few months ago, in a response to a question in an interview, Yoshi-P was basically saying that he was going to be tight lip about whether or not various "superstitions" surrounding the crafting system was true or not. One of them had to do with moon phases and directional facing of players (one of those myths that carried over from FFXI)

Anyway, I wanted to know whether or not there has been documentation regarding time between synthesis action when you are crafting. The attached screen explains what I'm trying to get at (circled in green) Does it matter whether or not I wait and at any point along this interval point or can I just "spam"? I find it odd that they increase the time bar when it was already more than adequate to make a decision on what action you were going to take (c'mon, 30s is eternity to make up your mind on an otherwise mostly RNG-luck based activity)

What is everyone's synthesis habits?

[Mezlo]

Re: Crafting: A Community of "How To"

How are people getting 1k a synth? Is it just rested bonus and then you are synthing an item 3 levels above you or whatever? Can you give me an example of your level, what you were synthing, what level it is, etc? I got crp to 27 through leves, all others 20+, and I hate synthing. But if i can get 1k a synth, I might be back on the band wagon!