Tipton Sackholders replied

711 weeks ago

UPDATE: Some of this guide is outdated and it's a huge mess with the changes, so I am starting a new thread and letting this one sink into the abyss. Don't use it.
New thread: http://prestigexiv.guildwork.com/forum/t/4f838efd205cb20a5203ea69-12-crafting-guide-quality-forever




This is a quick guide on how to get started on the crafting grind with relative ease. I am not covering how to make +1 gear because that is a completely different can of peas and things will be changing soon. Keep in mind that this info is based on my experience and even though I have 264 crafting levels as of this writing (309 now… I have no life!) my highest craft is only 40 (50). Some things might not apply in the 41-50 grind (Nope, same all the way to 50). Have your own grinding tip? Add it!


CRAFTING LEVEL
The #1 most important thing in the crafting grind is to make sure you have the right crafting tool in your hand. The #2 spot is taken by your crafting level. Your level vs. the level of the synth is what determines difficulty. In some dated synths (which will be removed sometime in the future) your other crafting levels can effect your current craft, like so:

You can still complete leves/synths with requirements like these, but it will be much harder to do. Your crafting level also determines what level of gear you can wear, which brings me to…


CRAFTING GEAR
Your gear is not as important as you might think. Yes, it is better than nothing but technically if you have the right crafting abilities equipped you don't actually need it. When the patch that changed the names of gear came out and my equipment macros broke I took ARM from 35-40 technically naked and didn't even notice. Until a friend laughed at me for running around in my fancy green underwear that is. While you can craft naked too if you really want to, I wouldn't recommend it until you get the hang of how the crafting system works.

As for stats, since it depends on what you are doing (old/new recipes vs. what craft) and what crafts you want to level, I say don't stress about it and have a nice balance of Craftsmanship, Magic Craftsmanship and Control when you can. Once you hit level 30 you will find that gear isn't really balanced well, but I still wouldn't worry about it. Just put on what you can. Base stats, such as STR/DEX/ect, currently only effect quality, which can help with the patch 1.21 exp bonus.

If you want to save some money/bag space, the stats on crafting tools are only applied if you actively use them in a synth. If you are only focused on level grinding you can skip upgrading offhands because you probably won't be using them anyway. That isn't to say they cannot be useful in some situations, of course.


EXP BUFFS
As of patch 1.21 rested status has replaced the Guardian buff and works on all classes, crafting included. To get this amazing increase in exp simply log out at any one of the city inns. The quests to unlock them take a few minutes tops.

All food gives a 3% exp bonus now, even low level food and food that has nothing to do with crafting classes. Every little bit helps so if you have it, eat it. Drinks give bonuses to crafting skills.

Engineering Manuals still exist, and they still give an exp bonus until you hit a specific number, depending on the manual. These costs seals, but are worth it if you have nothing better to spend them on.


QUALITY BOOST (Patch 1.21)
The most important exp buff as of 1.21 is from Quality. Getting a few hundred quality can net you a 90+% exp bonus. Because of this abilities that boost Careful Synthesis are much more valuable than they were before. If you are lucky enough to manage 400+ Quality you can get 2-3k per successful synth. It is a good time to be a crafter and this is likely to be nerfed at some point, so if you ever had a desire to get a craft up now is the time.

The easiest way to go about getting this exp boost is still the same. Standard or Rapid (with an ability to boost it) to 50% and judge what you should use from there. Careful Synthesis can only raise the progress bar by 5% and usually you will lose more durability than you gain in progress. Because of this, make sure to balance your usage of Standard and Careful to make it to the end successfully.


MATERIALS FOR SYNTHING
As of patch 1.21 +1 materials no longer give a durability bonus. In my tests, any extra quality brought from +1 materials does not count toward the exp bonus, so save +1 materials for HQing, rather than exping unless you don't care.


CRAFTING FACILITIES
At every crafting guild (all 3 support types) and repair NPC (only common support and costs more) you can buy support for your synthing. They last for an hour and the cost is based on your crafting level, increasing every multiple of 10. If you are performing synths that are non-dated or do not give a warning when you try and start it, don't bother. However, if you see this warning…

check the synth to see which rank of support you need, located just above the required mats when you are about to start a synth…

and buy access to it.

It is still possible to complete a synth that gives a warning without buying support, but it will be more difficult.


CRAFTING MINIGAME
I could fill your head with a bunch of extra details on the ins and outs of the game, but that usually just stresses people out and you don't really need to know it. Here are the bare bones basics:

Progress
Shows how close you are to finishing the synth.

Quality
Effects the chance that your synth will result in a high quality item and also increases the amount of exp you gain by a reasonable amount if you can get it high enough when performing non leve synths.

Durability
Lowers with each action, except when activating abilities. If it hits 0 the synth breaks. If you fail a lot it might be best to switch to another synth. However…

If you are getting "100% Progress 0 Durability" losses then you are on the right track. Embrace the fail and keep trying.

Yellow Bar in the Upper Left Corner
Time limit per action. If it runs out you lose a turn and take a Durability hit.

Synth Orb
It can have 4 colors that show synthesis conditions and the likelihood that you will succeed. White is the safest, then Yellow, Red and Rainbow (pulsing multi-color). If performing a difficult synth using Wait on Rainbow is a good idea because it has the highest chance of failure and also the highest chance to trigger an unstable element, Aetherial Sparking or both. More on that later.

Once the minigame starts, you have 4 static options to choose from:

Standard Synthesis

The safest type of synthesis. Can add up to 25% Progress upon success. Has the lowest amount of potential durability loss upon failing. This is what you will be using most of the time if you are focused on success, but remember the huge bonus Quality gives since the 1.21 patch.

Rapid Synthesis

If you succeed it can boost your progress significantly, up to 35%, though there is a very small chance that it can boost it less than a Standard Synthesis on a success. It also has a higher potential durability loss than Standard upon failing. If you are focused on success I'd recommend only using Rapid when you have an ability active that can boost it.

Careful Synthesis

If you succeed it has a chance to boost your Quality up to 75% (Possibly higher, but that is the highest I have got) and boosts exp on successful synths a very significant amount as of patch1.21. It has the lowest potential durability loss (9ish) upon failing. Also keep in mind that successful Carefuls can only boost progress up to 5%.

Wait
Skips a turn for a chance to change the color of the synth orb or stabalize an unstable element in exchange for durability loss. The loss starts at 1 and adds 1 each subsequent Wait. So the first Wait takes 1, the second takes 2 for 3 total and the third would take 3 for 6 total. Using any synthesis type or ability resets the durability loss back to 1.

Equipped Abilities
Under Wait abilities that you have equipped can randomly pop up if you scroll down. I'll talk about those later.


There are 3 different outcomes when you perform a synthesis action:

Average
Not good, not bad. Can have a little bit of everything.

Success
Extra progress/quality and little to no Durability loss. Also has a pretty good chance of calming an Unstable Element.

Failure
Extra Durability loss. Has a decent chance to cause Unstable Elements and Aetherial Sparking. Every turn you take increases the chance that you will have failures, so the farther you are into the synth the more likely you are to explode.

Unstable Element
Causes some nasty stuff depending on the element. Such as this "successful" synth with an Unstable Ice element (by far the most annoying one)…

To get rid of it you can Wait and hope it stabilizes, use abilities in an attempt to get a successful turn and hope it stabilizes or hope that you have equipped the right "Brand of (element)" and that you are able to activate it. You could also attempt a double Unstable Element…

By failing so hard you create a second Unstable Element they cancel each other out and clear the Synth ball. You take a huge Durability and Quality hit, but if you have some to spare it's a very easy way to get rid of them.

I should probably note that there are some positive aspects to certain Unstable Elements, but the cons outweigh the pros by a considerable amount and are usually not worth the risk.


Aetherial Sparking

As of patch 1.21 Aetherial Sparking is much more common because as Yoshi P has said, "failure is important." It increases durability loss and try to make your life miserable, but use the all powerful Harmonize or any other anti-sparking ability and you can get back to normal crafting.


DOUBLE DOWN
Replaced Touch Up. Halves your quality for one chance to HQ an item and destroys the item if you fail it. Since failing cuts a majority of your exp, don't use it if you are grinding exp.


CRAFTING ABILITIES
As you level up you gain crafting abilities and more slots to equip them in. Since the timing of their availability is random it is best to slap on as many abilities as you can to help you succeed. All non-one-turn-only abilities can last from 3-5 turns. Leveling crafts that you might not be planning to focus on to 10 is a good way to get more abilities to use. Here is a list of some that I use that are focused only on safe success. Keep in mind that this list needs to be updated for the 1.21 Quality exp boost:

Tender Touch - Carpentry 10

An often overlooked ability and one of my favorites considering how many different ways you can fail a synth action. It's great to use when attempting a double Unstable Element or squeezing out the last bit of progress you need when you only have 10 durability left.

Grandmastery - Carpentry

A single use ability that increases the chance of success of the next action. Not 100%, but pretty damn nice anyway. I like to use it paired with Rapid Synthesis early on, though it works on anything.
UPDATE:

I've been using this ability for months and only recently have I discovered it had a chance to fail to activate. Either I am lucky or it is very rare. I assume Life's Purpose also has a failure chance like this, but I have yet to see it.

Perfection - Carpentry 36

Did I mention Carpentry is awesome? This ability will give you a 100% success rate on your next action IF it successfully activates. Unfortunately, it has a chance to fail. At least it doesn't effect your Durability when it does. Personally, I would never waste this on a Standard. Depending on what you need Rapid or Careful is the way to go.

Maker's Muse - Blacksmithing 10

Increases the success of Standard Synthesis. Pretty straight forward.

Fullfillment - Leatherworking 10

Increases generic success. Not my favorite, but maybe I am just unlucky. I tend to use it at the start of a synth.

Preserve - Alchemy 10

Makes the Synth ball white. An amazing ability. If you use another ability before it runs out the ball stays white. Great to stack abilities on the 4th or 5th Preserve turn, or at the very end of the Synth to stack on the last turn.

Harmonize - Cooking 10

Another underappreciated ability that I love. It decreases your invisible risk stat that is always present and has quite a few fun uses. Since it is a single turn ability it will not cancel any other active ability (unless you use it on that abilities' last turn) so you can stack the effects. It also does not take any Durability to use so you can use it to have a chance to turn your Synth ball into a different color without a penalty (one of the few abilities that have that function). Another great use if you are trying to get rid of Unstable Elements via Wait is that if your Wait loss gets too high you can use Harmonize to reset it back to 1. In case this ability wasn't awesome enough for you, it also has no chance of failure.
EDIT: Fun fact, Harmonize either stops Aetherial Sparking or has a high chance to stop it. If you don't already have this overpowered ability, now might be a good time to grab it.

Life's Purpose - Cooking

Just like Grandmastery, only this one is "most effective on materials". Still works decently enough despite that though.

Less is More - Armorer 45

Works exactly like Grandmastery and Life's Purpose, with two ways to fail, and Tender Touch in that it lowers durability loss (to a minimum of 1 if the synth action is not a critical success) for the next action if it activates. Like the others, it can be used to reset the wait timer. It seems to fail on activation far more than Grandmastery and Life's Purpose, but that could be a coincidence.

Hasty Hand - Everything

Not one to use for safety, but I did want to mention it. It can only be used as the first move and has two ways to fail. One, reduces Durability by 50% and two, reduces Durability to 0%. If you succeed you get your synth item very fast, but it also halves the amount of exp you gain. if you have a crap ton of mats and gil to burn, using it is actually a really fast way to grind. I don't know if the hit your wallet will take is worth it though considering the risk.


GRINDING TIPS
There are many different grinding styles. Here are a few:

Leve Grinding
+ It's free.

+ You get gil and mats for turning them in and a bonus for a high quality turn in.
SOME ADVICE: If you are leveling more than one craft some of the reward mats are nice for that. You can also avoid having to do some pain in the ass leves for that other craft. For example, you can do BSM quests to get ore, then use that ore to rank up ARM.

- You have to use leves. This isn't a huge deal if you don't use them anyway.

- If the dated recipes still exist and if you still have crafting books, DO NOT TURN THEM IN for useless points. The Dev team trolled crafters by keeping leves that still use them in the game. You can still buy the use of facilities to make it easier though. New recipes suppossedly do not use the facilities. There are both new and old recipes mixed in the leves.

- If "dated" recipes still exist by the time you are reading this, your level for other crafts can also determine the difficulty if you choose to rank up on them. Since many leves as of this writing still use dated recipes you might find warnings about how you need to level another craft. You can still complete these leves. They will just be a tad harder than the others.

- The leves granted are random, so you can get stuck with a crap selection. Especially in the 20-39 range which are all lumped together. Not only that, some leves of different rank share the same exact name, so you could accidentally pick the lower rank one if you are in a hurry.
FUN TRICK: Pick up leves you don't like and only turn in ones that you do. They will never appear in the roster so long as you have it in your journal making picking out the good ones much faster. Make sure you don't keep a leve with a higher level version though!

- Travel time really eats into your crafting time and you have to travel to turn in the leve.
FUN TRICK: You can pick up leves that you don't want to travel to and do them anyway. If you succeed in the leve, abandon it to pick it up again. You don't get the final reward, but it saves you time. If you failed it, retry and get more exp out of it without having to move. Failing too much eats away your leves fast though, so keep that in mind.

- The synths for the leves are static, so even if you only do the leves closest to your rank you get less and less exp as you level until you hit the next multiple of 5 (10, 15, 20, 25, etc) to unlock new leves.
SOME ADVICE: When you hit a multiple of 5, do leves that are around your level +5 and save the mats they give you. As you get closer to unlocking the next leve set and the exp starts to tank use the materials you have been hoarding to rank up on higher ranked recipes through the last level or two.

––––-As of 1.21 some leves no longer give exp because Square Enix changed the level value of certain synths. if you get a leve like this, do not take it again.


Milking Your Mats
+ The new exp bonus for extra quality allows you to get more exp for less. So you use less material in the long run, saving gil, and save some time gathering.

+You can use your own mats or leves.

+This is currently the fastest way to grind.

- You have to pay attention to get the Quality value high. Try not to fall asleep after the first few hours.
SOME ADVICE: If you are having trouble finishing a high quality synth, try Standard Synthing safely to around 50-60% progression. Evaluate how much Durability you have from there then Careful Synth to 100% if you think you can make it.


Spam the Button While Watching TV
+ Not as boring!

- Have to use your own mats.

- Have to use lower exp gain synths to get the most of it. After all, you are not paying attention!
SOME ADVICE: Around 400exp gain or less per success usually evens out in your favor. The lower the level of the synth the more success you will have. Personally, I stop when successes gain me less than 200exp. Pick synths that have little mat/shard cost for better results.


Rings to Riches
Equip rings to Spiritbind for materia. You can sell the materia to people who want to try for the Gambler's Crown achievement or you can use it to try for it yourself. If you are lucky enough to be able to do this with Electrum Rings (or any other high level jewelry) without breaking the bank you can get some very nice materia.


Repairing
Repairing gear 10 levels above you is a very easy and fast way to get some guaranteed exp. When you grind, pick a spot that people will go to repair their gear. Repair NPCs are a good spot. Near Ifrit's cave is also good during peak hours.


Fail to Victory!
+ You can get exp for failing! Hoorah!

SOME ADVICE: Pick really high level synths. If you fail, you'll still get a decent amount of exp.

- High level synths take more expensive mats usually.

SOME ADVICE: Eliminate the expense. Use leves.



READ THIS: Some leve quests no longer give any exp, even if you are below the level of the leve. Like the ALC level 30 "Exports of Import" in Ul'dah, because Beeswax is not a level 7 synth. Thanks Square Enix!


last edited 700 weeks ago by Tipton
ARC/BRD (Main) / THM/BLM (Secondary)

Silvano Conri Admin replied

711 weeks ago

Awesome guide! The only thing I would mention that you haven't is the max % increase for each of the three synths; 20%, 30% and 10(or is it 15?)%, so people can see what the differences are. I like how you took screens of your fails for the guide instead of successes :P

Tipton Sackholders replied

710 weeks ago

The only thing I would mention that you haven't is the max % increase for each of the three synths; 20%, 30% and 10(or is it 15?)%

Good call! I will add that in. I don't really know the max % for Careful though… never payed attention! Don't suppose there is someone out there that knows for sure?
ARC/BRD (Main) / THM/BLM (Secondary)

Tipton Sackholders replied

709 weeks ago

Updated with some minor corrections and updates. Nothing too spectacular.
ARC/BRD (Main) / THM/BLM (Secondary)

Tipton Sackholders replied

708 weeks ago

Added info on Aetherial Sparking, because why not, and the ability Less is More.
ARC/BRD (Main) / THM/BLM (Secondary)

Silvano Conri Admin replied

705 weeks ago

Added to the wiki~

Tipton Sackholders replied

705 weeks ago

I might be adjusting things as they add changes to crafting. Not sure if that messes things up for the wiki or not, so I thought I would ask if that was ok?
ARC/BRD (Main) / THM/BLM (Secondary)

Silvano Conri Admin replied

705 weeks ago

You can either edit this or the wiki.

Tipton Sackholders replied

705 weeks ago

Ooh. Didn't know that. Will have to try it sometime >>
ARC/BRD (Main) / THM/BLM (Secondary)

Tipton Sackholders replied

704 weeks ago

Updated the guide a bit for patch 1.21. Quite a few little changes. Still more to discover too, I'll bet.

Some leve quests no longer give any exp, even if you are below the rank of the leve. This is because Square Enix decided to fuck around with the level of some synths, making what was once high level synths into worthless garbage. I will try and note them as I get them, though to be honest I hope I do not find any more.

ALC - Level 30 - "Exports of Import"


last edited 704 weeks ago by Tipton
ARC/BRD (Main) / THM/BLM (Secondary)
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