Make post 100 synthesis skillup viable.

[Zarchery]

I reached Alchemy 100 back in 2006. In 2010 I leveled other crafts to 60. Last month I raised all those to 70. So I try to keep all my crafts capped. So I thought it was kind of cool when they raised the skill cap to 110 two years ago. I was chagrinned to notice that one important factor was forgotten: viable skillup recipes.

And it seems like this is uneven. Some crafts can make it to 110 but some can't. Seems like Cooking is actually doable without financially ruining you. Woodworking is expensive but I've heard it's actually doable.

But alchemy.. I can't see any way to get up to 110. Malison Medallions seem like the best thing to start with. I can probably gather enough Neutralizing Silver, Silver Chains, Holy Water, Hallowed Water, and the associated Anima to craft these things over time. But then they throw in Heliodors. I rarely see these on auction and they're so rare that I can't see any way to farm them effectively. Even when available, they're 60,000 gil apiece. And I wouldn't so much mind the expense if I thought there would be a decent chance of skilling up. But when I do any kind of synthesis where I'm below cap, the chances of actually skilling up are so random. When doing my crafts to 70, I had to do dozens of synths per level. It didn't bother me much because materials were so plentiful and usually not that expensive. But here, in Expert territory, where you're lucky to get the materials for a single synth, that's just unacceptable.

So please provide viable paths to skilling up crafts beyond 100 Here are a few ideas:

1) Recipes with common or NPC purchaseable ingredients.
2) Vastly increase the rate of crafting skill gains.
3) Some sort of crafting skill up tome you can buy with sparks, like the combat and magic skill gain tomes.

I hate that there was content released 2 years ago that is essentially meaningless because nobody can do it.

[Byrth]

Perhaps you never felt this because you were an alchemist, but skilling up crafting was designed to cost money. The loss when making Malison Medallions at the moment is trivial and perfectly bridges the gap between other synths. Single viable skillup synths used to be characteristic of pretty much every craft other than Alchemy and cooking. I mean, for years the only real option for Clothcraft was Cursed Dalmaticas, which required a drop from a 21-24 hour NM that had to be processed by a high level leathercrafter.

Here is how to level Alchemy
Sun water -> 102 (~10k/synth loss - ~660k loss for 2 levels)
Saline Broth -> 104 (15k/synth profit - 990k profit for 2 levels - Could do this earlier, but I recommend stockpiling Buried Vestiges because their supply is lower than Philosopher Stones)
Malison Medallion -> 106 (60k/synth loss - 4mil loss for 2 levels - Stockpile Heliodors while you do the other two recipes, and get the goldsmithing key item)
Hexed Coif -> 107 (550k/synth loss on NQ, 19.5mil profit on HQ - Tier 1 synth it after hitting 106, likely HQing 2 and NQing 30ish, net profit of 22.5mil)
Hexed Gages -> 108 (450k/synth loss on NQ, 19.5mil profit on HQ - Tier 1 synth it after hitting 106, likely HQing 2 and NQing 30ish, net profit of 25.5mil)

There's no reason to go above 107 at the moment (considering Gages/Coif -1s are the best profit we get), so there's no reason go past this point, but:
Dija Sword -> 110 (About 500k/synth profit at the moment)


And "nobody can do it" is a bit dramatic. I did it before Adoulin by burning Ethereal Squamas and making a few Killer's Kilijs.

[Zarchery]

Well see it's not so much the cost of it that bothers me. I must've burned off 5 million gil doing the other crafts from 60 to 70. It's the scarcity of materials. I'm going to need several dozen Heliodors to do alchemy to 106. I can't even get one.

[Byrth]

It's possible that you have an AH botter on your server. On Lakshmi, about 1 sells per day and there are 2 on AH right now. It looks about the same for Carbuncle on FFXIAH, except that there are none on AH.


The most important thing to keep in mind when you do skill synths for Alchemy at the moment is that you are capable of being Tier 1 on any synth that's 1 level above you. So the math that I worked out for Hexed Coif/Gages up there is true, but even the Malison Medallions is likely to see 2 HQs on average (which I've sold for 3mil each) and would likely break-even for you.

It's certainly not something you can blitz in a weekend, but if you started hoarding ingredients for all stages now, I bet you could hit at least 107 in 3 months.

[Alk]

I'm completely with you OP, balance between crafts, skill up bridges and new recipes has been completely off ever since they raised the cap tp 110, perhaps even before.

To give a few examples, new recipes each craft got last 5 updates

March:
Alchemy 2
Bonecraft 3
Clothcraft 1
Cooking 1
Goldsmithing 0
Leathercraft 1
Smithing 1
Woodworking 2

Februari:
Alchemy 0
Bonecraft 0
Clothcraft 0
Cooking 5
Goldsmithing 0
Leathercraft 0
Smithing 4
Woodworking 0

Januari:
Alchemy 2
Bonecraft 0
Clothcraft 4
Cooking 0
Goldsmithing 0
Leathercraft 6
Smithing 6
Woodworking 0

December:
Alchemy 1
Bonecraft 1
Clothcraft 1
Cooking 3
Goldsmithing 1
Leathercraft 0
Smithing 1
Woodworking 1

November:
Alchemy 0
Bonecraft 1
Clothcraft 0
Cooking 0
Goldsmithing 1
Leathercraft 1
Smithing 2
Woodworking 0

Now let's sum it all up:
Alchemy 5
Bonecraft 5
Clothcraft 6
Cooking 9
Goldsmithing 2
Leathercraft 8
Smithing 14
Woodworking 3

For whatever reason SE tend to favor smithing. Cooking and leathercraft seems to do well (?) while goldsmithing and woodworking is largely ignored or forgotten.

The Jan update is of special interest as SE added a big amount of recipes in the 101-109 range to cloth, leather and smithing ONLY. It's safe to say all other crafts should've gotten a similar addition, but didn't.

On April 7th there was also a small update where we got new JSE weapons, these weapons are "crafted" by an npc by trading him 2 old weapons. Both these weapons are player crafted using very old recipes, with the 2nd one being in the lvl 90 craft range. Now I'm not gonna do the math on these but going through the list of the npc I quickly realised about 3/4 TOTAL comes solely from smithing.. SE what is your obsession with smithing?

Lastly to add my own experience to this, I'm a bonecrafter main and just like Zarchery described Alchemy it is almost completely unreasonable to skill up beyond a certain level because the materials are either not sold, very overpriced or can't
be found in the quantities you'd need. In the case of Boneworking that level is 105 as going further requires obscene items such as Hahava's mail, Simian horn, Staghorn coral and Sealord leather..

If anyone from the other craft professions can add their own experiences here I'd appreciate it, it's time SE acknowledged this issue and started to work towards some balance. I'm completely fed up with every new update being Smithing Fantasy XI.

[Demonjustin]

Smithing is Armor and Weapons mainly, which make up the majority of everything crafted and sold outside of food/meds. Cooking gets new foods, leathers have some armors too. Goldsmithing is accessories mostly and that's dead, we've gotten no new craftable worthwhile accessories in a while from what I can think of, the only craftable thing at all I can think of accessory wise we still use are the +7 rings, and those are sure to die soon with Dawn II coming in the next few updates I'm sure. Woodworking is staffs and clubs more than anything, but those are dead too because Tamaxchi and Lehbrailg +2 exist, those two alone crush every staff or club on the market and aren't to difficult to obtain.

[Byrth]

Now, as I've already stated, Alchemy skillups are already viable all the way to 100. It wouldn't even take very long. However, I don't think the craft is necessarily "good" and certainly isn't worth taking to 110.


To fix Alchemy's general uselessness problem, instead of giving us gear they should make all consumable items have near-instant readying times (0.5 seconds), make the maximum "medicated" status half an hour, and add more craftable medicines.
1) Icarus Wing-ish item that grants 200 TP base. - Initial AM3
2) Versions of Stalwart's/Ascetic's tonics that grant their respective bonuses for 2 minutes. - Zerg tools
3) Revitalizer (with very rare ingredients) - Questionable for balance reasons.
4) AoE versions of status removal medicines - Status debuffs are almost exclusively AoE these days, so it's dumb that status removal is (with the exception of Yagrush) almost exclusively single target
5) Potential amnesia removal medicine
6) Super Pro Ether - Without a massive medicated status or 20 second charge up
7) Like totes pro potion - Same deal
8) etc.

There's a lot of untapped potential in the medicine system, mainly because about 90% of the medicines were dead on arrival and have never been used widely because they are terrible. If they wanted to add these and make some of the recipes level 100+, well that'd solve both issues!

[Zarchery]

I'm up to 105.9 Alchemy right now. I'm pretty dedicated to hitting the big 110 eventually. I did Saline Broth to 104. Ir wasn't terribly expensive, but had to camp the auction house quite a lot for Buried Vestige.

Now I'm doing Killer's Kilij. I feel like I caught something of a break with regards to materials availability. Avatar, Beast, and Demon Blood is never on auction so I have to farm that. Ditto for Ameretat Vines, and when the June update made them stackable that was an absolute godsend. Dragon Blood is intermittently on AH so I camp the AH for that and make some out of Dragon Hearts too. Do a couple Fafnir runs with login points. Chimera and Fiend Blood never goes on AH either, but that stuff is super common and easy to farm. The Adaman Kilij, it turns out, is used to make an Oboro weapon for Blue Mage, so I think that made it attractive to sell. But then again, I think I personally also made it attractive to sell. I've bought about 120 so far (used half of those to hit 105.9, the others are on mule until I get 90). If you check the AH history for Adaman Kilij on Carbuncle, you'll see just about every one of them has the same seller and the same buyer. I should just contact the seller directly if I ever catch the guy online.

This is costing me a fortune though.... Still think we need better options for post 100 skillups, for all crafts.

[Byrth]

Well, you should still be doing Malison Medallions (and Heliodors should be fairly common now that they're a desynthesis product from Titanites), but you're only 0.1 skill away from capping that recipe and being able to Tier 1 Hexed Coifs, which is the biggest profit synth left in Alchemy.

Killer Kilijs are a waste of time because they're labor intensive to make and useless. You should make Dija Swords instead.

[Zarchery]

I looked into Malison Medallions. Could rarely find Heliodors. Do people actually desynth Titanites? I usually throw mine away.

Oh man. I just looked up Dija Sword. I wish I'd made this update sooner. That's like 1/7 the cost. But nothing on AH right now. I'm gonna have to camp for those and might as well make use of the Killer's Kilij materials I already have.