Synthesis Kit Clarification

[Siviard]

I just saw the Dev post about the Synthesis Kits, and I have a question about it.

Since Kite Shield was used as the example in the Dev. Post I'll use that as well.

Based on the help text in the example shown, my question is: Do you HAVE to be Lv. 50 Smithing in order to attempt the synthesis? Or can you be close to Lv. 50 Smithing and attempt the synthesis in the hopes for a Smithing skill up?

[Lithera]

I think they act just like if you went and gathered the items your self and then did the synth with possible skill up and all. Until you hit 50 then you're on your own.

[kingfury]

I'm actually very pleased with this "Kit" approach and hopeful for this new system of things since it solves some of the major issues I've ALWAYS had with synthesis in FFXI.

Personally, I would be starting from lvl 1 in just about any synthesis skill so I'm hoping they allow a lvl 1 smithing the chance to succeed with a lvl 3 Kit occasionally (meaning it would most likely fail more times than succeed). One can only assume that with synth support and synth+ gear that a lvl 48 Smith could attempt that lvl 50 Kit with occasional success.

[Kazalthor]

the way it is currently with crafting , if your with in 10 levels of a recipe you can attempt it, with support and gear you can get with in a 4-6 levels of the recipe with a 40-60% chance of success and skill up. my question for the kits are they the materials to make the item, so process the kit instead of getting the lumber and such.
i spent alot of time in last 9 years crafting and if this is going to be square enix way of leveling the playing field so some one with a months free time can catch up with me in crafting ill not be happy.

[Rubeus]

Yes, the kit will basically act as all you'll need to make said item. So for example with a crystal you'll catalyze the kit and it'll become a kite shield, no other materials required. Yes, they'll give skill-ups and be able to be done within 10 levels. They've already stated they're adding these to be able to help people raise crafting skills. It'd be pretty silly if you had to be lvl 50 to make a kite shield kit when the kite shield is a lvl 50 synth already. In other words, it's less inventory space required to synth items you plan on vendoring in order to skill up from. They've addressed both of those concerns.

edit:
@kingfury: you could actually successfully make a kite shield at around 42 without support or gear. Fairly reliably, probably around 50-80% of the time.

@kazalthor: the kits only go to lvl 50 right now. You have nothing to worry about.

in general:
If anything, I hope the kits they make cover all the guildpoint items as THAT would truly make life easier. Having a kit for every 5 ish levels sounds pretty fair to me, I wouldn't like it if they had them for every single item (that doesn't really solve any inventory issues otherwise). Whenever you get 2-3 levels from the kit, just jump to the next one. Besides, lvl 50 isn't really all that amazing. A lvl 50 goldsmith can't even work with gold yet except to make the ingots (no earrings or rings), for example. This won't hurt the market, except for making vendor-purchased gear 1k on AH instead of 75k from a vendor, with 0 on AH all the time, if they go in the direction of gear and low-grade consumables. It isn't like people get into bidding wars over grilled hare.

[Kazalthor]

with all this new attention to crafting , wonder if they are gearing up towards crafting being relevant again. i'm a leather crafter 105, to be exact. for the longest time the only recipes to get to 110 included items that are no longer farmed ( sealord hides off bismark)
then they gave us these nice new recipes to bridghe the gap, and they were nice gear (ish) then one update later they added r/e gear that made them none relevant, so you still spent tons of gil on items you cant really sell to general population just for sake of getting to 109.

[Rubeus]

Well, I know that if data mining is to be believed (it isn't always; the dats support National ranks up to 15, including Jeuno, for example), the craft ranks go Expert > Authority > Luminary > Master > Grandmaster > Legend, capping at 160. Regardless, those ranks are already implemented into the game's data, so who knows? I know Matsui said he'd like to reinvent the crafting system from scratch in an old interview, so maybe we'll get something like what FFXIV has where you can use skills and stuff while crafting, except dumbed down for ps2 ARM code. I think that'd be pretty cool, personally. Although it won't mean much if you can only max 1 craft and synergy requires like 8 people to make "the best stuff."

Crafting will always play second-fiddle to people who "worked super hard on a mission line >" but I think we could stand to have some really awesome stuff from crafting. Maybe that's the direction they'll take with empyrean reforged?

[Blah]

Here's a better question, are the kits just going to be for weapons, armor and the like or are they going to let us use them to make say rainbow cloth or vellum? Yeah yeah I know the idea is to save us space and all but sometimes you just need the item for a quest or 2 not the weapon or armor per se.

[Lithera]

I think that will have to be a wait and see thing blah

[Blah]

*crosses fingers*