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 Post subject: Confused about Crafting
PostPosted: Sun Aug 25, 2013 8:57 pm 
Honey Muffin
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I have all the crafts leveled from the previous game, and have the basic gist of the new system. But I'm very confused on which abilities I should be using especially for HQ. I want to try to help people regear their characters but I'm apprehensive as I don't know how to HQ anything. Anyone have some pointers or suggestions?


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 Post subject: Re: Confused about Crafting
PostPosted: Sun Aug 25, 2013 10:00 pm 
Youre a Crappy HNM like Roc or something
Youre a Crappy HNM like Roc or something
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Here's what I do to HQ:

Start with Inner Quiet, Ingenuity, Waste Not, then spam Advanced Touch until I'm out of CP. Then I'll use Basic Synthesis until Im close to finishing or I get a red orb and can use Tricks of the Trade. When Im close to finished, I use Rumination to restore more CP, then use the highest level Touch skill I can until Im out of CP or nearly out of durability.


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 Post subject: Re: Confused about Crafting
PostPosted: Sun Aug 25, 2013 11:06 pm 
Onionhead
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i dont remember all the skill names, but i use the following

Usually start with HQ Touch 3, hoping to get good or excellent orb
Use the skill that adds +Double Efficiency to the next Touch
HQ Touch 3 again
And HQ Touch 3 probably again
Then the skill that recovers 30 Durability
Then I use the skill that adds Completion for no CP cost until I'm one move from completion
Then spam whichever HQ skills I have left, most likely the one that costs 0 CP
Then finish with the 0 CP completion skill again

all the while i look for chances to use the +CP recover skill when the condition is "good," unless i wanna use the good condition to get a critical HQ move

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 Post subject: Re: Confused about Crafting
PostPosted: Mon Aug 26, 2013 10:09 am 
Crumpet
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General Idea

The general idea is to get your quality as high as possible before the synth ends, obviously. The real trick though is getting as many steps in as possible, and that means restoring durability. Most material synths have just 40 Durability, while most finished items have around 60-80, depending on the level of the synth. Every single action taken upon the orb (i.e. not including buff abilities) uses 10 durability.

It's also worth knowing before you start that if you reach 0 Durability at the same time you reach 100% Progress your synth will succeed, not fail. Opposite to how it worked in 1.0.

Progress

Before you can worry about boosting quality, you need to worry about actually completing the synth. The amount of progress gained from a single action is determined by your Craftsmanship stat. This is the only thing that stat does.

Basic Synthesis: 100% Efficiency, 90% Success, -10 Durability, 0CP
Standard Synthesis: 150% Efficiency, 90% Success, -10 Durability, 15CP
Rapid Synthesis: 250% Efficiency, 50% Success, -10 Durability, 0CP
Careful Synthesis: 90% Efficiency, 100% Success, -10 Durability, 0CP
Brand of ____: 200% Efficiency, 90% Success, -10 Durability, 15CP, Elemental Aspect Required

While I'm sure there's a formula, for any synth you should first work out how much progress you gain from using Basic Synthesis. This amount will ALWAYS be the same. This is extremely useful because it means you can plan exactly how many swings it'll take to finish the synth.

Basic Synthesis will be your bread and butter for progress, but do not discount the other abilities here, depending on your goal and the amount of progress your Basic returns.

For example, if you have 10 durability and one last progress is needed, consider using Careful. It's guaranteed to not fail, at the cost of only 10% less progress, free from CP too.

Restoring Durability

Obviously you don't want this to hit 0. There's a few abilities that can help with this. Using abilities does not waste durability, but it does cycle the orb condition; just something to consider.

Waste Not = +20 Durability (-5 per step for 4 steps saves you 20) -56CP (2.8CP Per Dura)
Waste Not II = +40 (-5 per step for 8 steps) -98CP (2.45CP Per Dura)
Masters Mend = +30 Durability -92CP (3.1CP Per Dura)
Masters Mend II = +60 Durability -160CP (2.7CP Per Dura)
Manipulation = +30 Durability, -88CP (2.9CP Per Dura)

Masters Mend is handy if you actually run out of durability, but using Waste Not earlier is much more efficient than using Masters Mend later. The two Tier II versions are also both better if you're doing a high durability synth.

Another ability of importance is Inner Quiet. Using this at the start of your synth for 18CP can get you around 40CP back near the end. Inner Quiet also boosts the amount of quality you get after each touch too.

Touch (Quality) Actions

Anyhow, as for HQing stuff, there's a little bit of luck involved. If you manage to land a doubled up advanced touch on a "rainbow" (Excellent) orb, you'll get 1200+ quality in one shot. Speaking of touch abilities, it's also handy to know the efficiencies of those. Remember that the actual amount of quality you gain from touch is determined solely by your Control stat, multiplied by the potency of the ability. The success rates are completely fixed, no stats, nor the condition of the orb, affects it.

Basic Touch: 100% Potency, 70% Success, -10 Durability, 18CP
Standard Touch: 125% Potency, 80% Success, -10 Durability, 32CP
Advanced Touch: 150% Potency, 90% Success, -10 Durability, 48CP

As Ratios, Assuming 100% Success:

Basic Touch: 1500 Potency = 15 Steps (-150 Durability) = 270CP
Standard Touch: 1500 Potency = 12 Steps (-120 Durability) = 384CP
Advanced Touch: 1500 Potency = 10 Steps (-100 Durability) = 480CP

Then when you consider the success rate of the three abilities, it's no contest. What this tells us is that as long as you can afford the CP cost, it is always better to use Advanced Touch. That is, unless your goal is to stall the synth, which I shall explain in a second.

On another note, Great Strides (2x Touch Potency) costs 32CP. You probably shouldn't really ever be using Touch without Great Strides up, unless you can't afford it. With Great Strides up you get 300% potency (2x Advanced Touch) for only 80CP instead of 96CP, and you get it for half of the durability cost. Only reason not to is if you're stalling.

Orb Condition

There are four kinds of orb conditions, listed in order:

Poor (Purple)
Normal (White)
Good (Red)
Excellent (Rainbow)

Each of the orb conditions acts as a multiplier to your next touch action, if you use it. I do not know the exact multipliers yet (i'll work them out later) but I can tell you that the rainbow orb multiplier is pretty huge.

Red seems to be about 1.5-2.0x, and Rainbow seems to be 3-4x. Rough guess from experience.

These orbs now cycle on every step taken, including using abilities. This means that if you get Rainbow orb, you cannot use Great Strides (double quality next action) in time; the orb will change back to white. Stats do not change how often you get each orb, it's random. You ideally need your quality boosting actions already up when your get a good orb.

If you get a Poor condition orb, consider using any ability you were already planning on using, even Great Strides. The orb will cycle (usually back to white) once you use your ability. You can use Observe for 12CP if you have nothing else, but it's less of a waste to use one of your other buff abilities.

Tricks of the Trade

This level 15 alchemy ability restores 20CP if you use it while the orb is Red, but also cycles the orb again, so you miss the chance to use it to boost your quality. While 20CP is nice, you must consider whether it's currently worth using the red orb to boost your quality.

Once I know exactly what the red orb multiplier is, I'll be able to provide the math between using Tricks vs. using Touch. Stay tuned.

Stalling the Synth

So the really important thing to boosting your quality is getting Red and Rainbow orb more often. Unfortunately, these are random. However, this means that the longer you can prolong your synth, the more chances you get of having these orbs.

Every ability you use counts as a step. While your orb is white, consider using your buff abilities in succession. Many abilities that work on "the next action" will actually last several steps. For example, Great Strides doubles the effect of your next Touch, but lasts 3 steps. This means that you do not have to use Touch straight away. This is important because it means after using Great Strides, if the orb is still white, and you're early on in the synth, there's no need to waste it. Use another couple of buffs afterwards, and stall the synth. If you're lucky, that red or rainbow orb might appear after two steps, with your Great Strides still active.

On a similar note, however: try not to waste steps on certain abilities. Waste Not will last for 4 steps, but using Great Strides and Inner Quiet afterwards will waste two of those steps, not good. The order you use your buffs is important!

To stall your synth further, basically use any ability that uses only a small amount of CP. The Basic Touch ability can be useful for this. 18CP gets you a little quality as well as cycling the orb. Much better than using Observe for 14CP. But consider your durability, because using Basic Touch will lose -10. Depending on the amount of CP and durability you have left, you may want to use Observe anyway. By this point of your synth you probably know which you're going to run out of first.

Gear

CP, CP, CP, CP, CP, and more CP. Get those CP accessories up to date, get some HQ ones, put some CP materia on them. After that, Control for boosting your quality helps. Craftsmanship isn't needed so much due to the ease of boosting progress. Unless the synth needs a minimum amount.

In my experience, Electrum Rings of Crafting are easy to spirit bond, easy to make, and always convert into Tier III crafting materia. Good source of the stuff.

My Current Regime

I don't have a lot of the other crafts high level abilities, so I might be missing out on something. hopefully the above notes will help you pick out something I can't. Anyway, considering all of the above, my regime for HQing stuff so far goes like this:

- Great Strides immediately, have 3 steps to use it.
- If the orb is still white, use Inner Quiet.
- If the orb is still white, use Waste Not.
- Use Advanced Touch now (last Great Strides step). Use it earlier if a good orb comes up before.
- Use Waste Not / Inner Quiet if they were missed.

- With Waste Not active (should be 3 steps left), use progress abilities. The amount to use depends on how much progress you get from each hit. If you get a colored orb during this, use a Touch. The goal is to get the synth within 1 more hit. Try not to waste too much CP, or any at all, doing this. On a low level synth, you might not need to do this at all.

- Repeat the first 4 steps as long as you can with the CP you have.
- Once you run out of all options, have no CP or durability left, you can just Basic/Careful Synthesis to completion. Priority to Careful if you're pretty close since it can't fail.

If you get a red orb:
- If you have Great Strides up, use Touch.
- Whether to use Tricks depends how much it will help you. If Tricks will help you upgrade from a Basic Touch to an Advanced Touch, use Tricks.
- If red orb is a 2x multiplier, using Advanced Touch is better than using Tricks.

If you get a rainbow orb:
- Use the most powerful touch action available to you immediately.
- If you're lucky, you already had Great Strides up. Do NOT use it if you don't.
- Do NOT waste a rainbow orb on any buffs, abilities, or anything else.

Once you run out of CP:
- Use Rumination. If you've done a lot of Touch after Inner Quiet, you should get ~40CP back.
- If you're lucky, the orb may go red and you can Tricks of the Trade another 20CP back.

Once you only have 10 Durability left:
- If you can afford it, Masters Mend. If this leaves you with 0CP though this is a waste.
- If you can't quite afford that, Waste Not can help you get 1 more low level Touch in, because it will only drop to 5 Durability. If you're lucky, you'll get a red orb.

If your Durability is low and progress isn't high enough to complete:
- Use steady hand if you can afford it, only 22CP. Won't use any durability. This will boost the success rate of Rapid Synthesis to 70%. Gamble your last hit away.
- If you're not that far, use Standard Synthesis for 15CP.

Once you're out of both CP and durability:
- You're done. Give the synth that one last swing to finish it.


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 Post subject: Re: Confused about Crafting
PostPosted: Mon Aug 26, 2013 10:10 am 
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Thanks for all that info, this answers a lot of questions for me also!!

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 Post subject: Re: Confused about Crafting
PostPosted: Mon Aug 26, 2013 10:31 am 
Meat Miq'abob
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wow so much stuff to consider. i haven't done any higher level synths yet, this will be help full.

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 Post subject: Re: Confused about Crafting
PostPosted: Mon Aug 26, 2013 10:38 am 
Onionhead
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theres also an ability that boosts quality without using any CP, it's a decent skill to use when you're out of CP but still have a lot of durability left, or if you just want to stall

its Hasty Touch from 15 culinarian
100% quality efficiency
50% success
0 CP

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 Post subject: Re: Confused about Crafting
PostPosted: Mon Aug 26, 2013 12:03 pm 
Easy Prey
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Thanks Ket!


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 Post subject: Re: Confused about Crafting
PostPosted: Mon Aug 26, 2013 12:40 pm 
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I'm happy that I sort of was already doing the majority of Ket's post, so I'm not too far off. Only thing I haven't been doing is use Waste Not, so I'll have to make sure I add that in. I think I have it.

I also need more CP gear, that's for sure. But I'll wait until my crafts are 40+ for that. Don't need to blow materia while leveling up.

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 Post subject: Re: Confused about Crafting
PostPosted: Wed Aug 28, 2013 1:05 am 
Onionhead
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found this to work really well:

#1 Inner Quiet: boost your control, and returns a bunch of CP later on
#2 Great Strides: makes your next Touch(HQ) twice as strong
#3 Waste Not: reduces durability loss from 10 to 5 for the next four steps
#4 Advanced Touch: +Quality
this is where you juggle based on the synth, but I find myself using Advanced Touch +HQ, Standard Touch +HQ, Basic Touch +HQ, Hasty Touch +HQ, and Careful Synthesis +Progress
#5 Tricks of the Trade +CP is good if you have good condition orb, but you might wanna HQ instead
#6 Rumination: returns CP from Inner Quiet
#7 Master's Mend: to get CP back
#8 Careful Synthesis to finish up

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 Post subject: Re: Confused about Crafting
PostPosted: Wed Aug 28, 2013 10:16 am 
Crumpet
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As I mentioned earlier (though I'll TL;DR it here) -- you should really use Great Strides first, and THEN Inner Quiet. On the off-chance that you get a red or rainbow orb on step 2, you'll have Great Strides up ready for it.


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 Post subject: Re: Confused about Crafting
PostPosted: Wed Aug 28, 2013 10:36 am 
Easy Prey
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So what's the best way to level crafts now? I've been just focusing on unlocking PLD and haven't had a chance to try it. Do leves still give free materials like in 1.0? If so spamming them seems ideal. I have 60+ saved so that would be nice.

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 Post subject: Re: Confused about Crafting
PostPosted: Wed Aug 28, 2013 10:55 am 
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Sadly you have to use your own mats for leves and class quests.

There are still really fast ways to level crafts. Corwin found something where a guy mentioned getting goldsmithing from 40-50 in 12 hours. Maybe he can find a link for it.

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 Post subject: Re: Confused about Crafting
PostPosted: Wed Aug 28, 2013 11:03 am 
Crumpet
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While you do have to supply your own mats for crafting leves now, they give an ungodly amount of exp, especially if you turn in HQ items.

There's a screenshot of a guy who turned in his level 45 crafting leve and got 100,000 EXP.


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 Post subject: Re: Confused about Crafting
PostPosted: Wed Aug 28, 2013 11:15 am 
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Ketrebu wrote:
While you do have to supply your own mats for crafting leves now, they give an ungodly amount of exp, especially if you turn in HQ items.

There's a screenshot of a guy who turned in his level 45 crafting leve and got 100,000 EXP.


That must be it then. Corwin said the guy went from 48-50 just turning in a bunch of stuff.

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 Post subject: Re: Confused about Crafting
PostPosted: Wed Aug 28, 2013 12:03 pm 
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Geez, Maybe I should get on that asap before they nerf the values... I had planned to try and rocket PLD to 50 asap so I can join on any content, but I always kicked myself in XI for taking so long to get a craft to 100.

Luckily I have a retainer full of mats from 1.0. Might make it a bit easier if I got the right ones. Between that and 60+ saved leves maybe I can rocket a good chunk out before I have to farm/am poor.

Thanks!

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