Many people cheating, automated bot to farm drops to synth spheres for Escutcheon

[Halley]

They won't be worth 1g in a week if they add stackable desynthable cards that bots can go bananas on.

But currently.

When they add stackable desynthable cards, I'll be making one of every shield myself.

[Nyarlko]

They won't be worth 1g in a week if they add stackable desynthable cards that bots can go bananas on.

But currently.

When they add stackable desynthable cards, I'll be making one of every shield myself.

Awesome! Don't forget about the non-sphere-related costs tho. Just because spheres will be easy to farm does not make the rest of the shield become free even if the spheres basically are. (Which was why I started mathing out the catalyst costs. lol)

* ~1mil Guild Points < What it's going to take me for LC doing lv70 kits for avg of 56CP per kit
* Mats for annoying ROE synths, most of which are not exactly cheap
* Mats for kits, costs vary drastically between crafts. My LC kit cost me a fixed 7200gil each. GS looks closer to 30k each.
* Mats/crystals for garbage synths for leveling up the percentage on the shield. I'm estimating ~5k-6k crystals for all 4 stages based on my experience so far.
* Crystals to desynth items/cards into spheres. ~20k+ successes needed. Probably 3x-5x that to cover breaks.
* Crystals to perform the craftchains. ~20k based on the estimates in this thread.

... I'm looking at doing this all over again at least 4x more after my LC shield is done. T_T

[VoiceMemo]

I'm still leveling up the percentage on my shield, so I'm not on this part yet and can't confirm in-game myself, but it really should work as an actual skillchain. I can confirm that Warlike Patrick (BST Jug pet) can easily 4-step by bouncing between the same two Ready moves (which are Liquefaction and Impaction.) It's possible for 2x of these pets to 7-step doing the same thing.
Check what your calculator says happens for: Liquefaction > Impaction > Liquefaction > Impaction. If it spits out an error, then it's a problem with the calculator and it just hasn't been made to handle somewhat rare-use cases like juggling T1s rather than aiming for the highest tier SC possible.

Site I use accounts for beast pets too. I really don't see how those are possible via the elements, seems to violate the skillchain property of first to second property rule.
https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Category:Skillchain

Now IF you meant, Impaction to Liquifaction(liquifaction burst) then to Impaction for (Fusion) that would work.

[Nyarlko]

Site I use accounts for beast pets too. I really don't see how those are possible via the elements, seems to violate the skillchain property of first to second property rule.
https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Category:Skillchain

It still works in-game. :3 My personal explanation is that the newest attribute is accounted for as a secondary attribute for continuing skillchain purposes. So Liquefaction > Impaction = Fusion (w/ secondary Impaction), etc. So long as the next WS can chain with either Fusion OR Impaction, the skillchain will continue appropriately.

Try checking Brain Crush > Tail Blow > Brain Crush > Tail Blow and see if an error pops out. If it doesn't give the SC I gave above, then the calculator is most definitely wrong.

[Selindrile]

My views on the rest of this whole debate aside, all of the calculators and wiki entries do say that it's impossible to go from T2 > T1.

I just tested Brain Crush > Tail Blow > Brain Crush in game, and got:
Brain Crush > Tail Blow (Fusion) > Brain Crush = Nothing

I could not seem to make your chain work in game, but I'm open to trying more if you're sure that such a thing is possible.

[Nyarlko]

My views on the rest of this whole debate aside, all of the calculators and wiki entries do say that it's impossible to go from T2 > T1.

I just tested Brain Crush > Tail Blow > Brain Crush in game, and got:
Brain Crush > Tail Blow (Fusion) > Brain Crush = Nothing

I could not seem to make your chain work in game, but I'm open to trying more if you're sure that such a thing is possible.

It does work is the thing though. :x I don't know why it wouldn't work for you unless your timing was off...

[Selindrile]

My timing was the same as other three steps I had no issues with.
I remain skeptical until I can see someone produce it in game, on a video or in person.

[Nyarlko]

So, tested for recursion using skillchains w/ Selindrile witnessing (thanks again Sel! ) but was unable to reproduce what I swear I've been seeing for the entire time that I've been back. ._.;; I'm chalking it up as senility on my part for now, and now it's going to bug me until I can prove to myself that it does not work, but oh well. ><;;

Correcting my prior chain:
Impaction > Liquefaction (T1 Liquefaction) > Scission (T1 Scission) > Detonation (T1 Detonation) > Compression (T2 Gravitation) > Distortion (T3 Darkness) = 1+2+2+2+5+15 = 27 spirit for 9500 gil, 3,704 chains, still ~32mil total catalyst cost.

Was thinking of what I said about crystal costs, so here's the additional info for the breakdowns I did earlier:

T1>T1(T2SC) = 10mil catalyst ~ 16,667 chains ~ 33,334 crystals
T1>T1(T2SC)>T2(T3SC) = 41mil catalyst ~ 4,762 chains ~ 14,286 crystals
T1>T1(T2SC)>T2(T3SC)>T3(T3SC) = 135mil catalyst ~ 2,778 chains ~ 11,112 crystals
T1>T1(T2SC)>T2(T2SC)>T2(T3SC)>T3(T3SC) = 138mil catalyst ~ 2,440 chains ~ 12,200 crystals
T3 > T3 = T3(T3SC) = 267mil catalyst ~ 3,334 chains ~ 6,668 crystals
My corrected 6-step = 32mil catalyst ~ 3,704 chains ~ 22,224 crystals

By current Asura avg price of 76.5k/stack for crystal clusters (so 532g/ea crystal), crystals are an additional 3.6mil-17.8mil IF you buy every crystal you use. Multiply that by 4x-5x to get the actual total crystal cost including crystals to desynth the Cards/Items while including breaks. Each crystal used above also corresponds to a sphere being used, so after working out crystal costs, my conclusions so far are:
* The simple T1>T1(T2SC)>T2(T3SC) model is actually the best value, as there's only a ~5mil projected difference in gil cost compared to my budget 6-step but a massive difference in crystal/sphere costs which would be a massive difference in time spent farming AND chaining.
*The 4-step is the most reasonable high-roller model to use if you have the extra 90-100mil to blow lying around which would buy you ~30% less farming time spent. Whether it's worth it or not depends on the new increased drop rates for those 6x items listed + drop rates on Cards + new quantities produced per desynth.
* Oh, and the 5-step is strictly worse than the 4-step, with higher overall costs all around. :x

[VoiceMemo]

So, tested for recursion using skillchains w/ Selindrile witnessing (thanks again Sel! ) but was unable to reproduce what I swear I've been seeing for the entire time that I've been back. ._.;; I'm chalking it up as senility on my part for now, and now it's going to bug me until I can prove to myself that it does not work, but oh well. ><;;

Correcting my prior chain:
Impaction > Liquefaction (T1 Liquefaction) > Scission (T1 Scission) > Detonation (T1 Detonation) > Compression (T2 Gravitation) > Distortion (T3 Darkness) = 1+2+2+2+5+15 = 27 spirit for 9500 gil, 3,704 chains, still ~32mil total catalyst cost.

Was thinking of what I said about crystal costs, so here's the additional info for the breakdowns I did earlier:

T1>T1(T2SC) = 10mil catalyst ~ 16,667 chains ~ 33,334 crystals
T1>T1(T2SC)>T2(T3SC) = 41mil catalyst ~ 4,762 chains ~ 14,286 crystals
T1>T1(T2SC)>T2(T3SC)>T3(T3SC) = 135mil catalyst ~ 2,778 chains ~ 11,112 crystals
T1>T1(T2SC)>T2(T2SC)>T2(T3SC)>T3(T3SC) = 138mil catalyst ~ 2,440 chains ~ 12,200 crystals
T3 > T3 = T3(T3SC) = 267mil catalyst ~ 3,334 chains ~ 6,668 crystals
My corrected 6-step = 32mil catalyst ~ 3,704 chains ~ 22,224 crystals

By current Asura avg price of 76.5k/stack for crystal clusters (so 532g/ea crystal), crystals are an additional 3.6mil-17.8mil IF you buy every crystal you use. Multiply that by 4x-5x to get the actual total crystal cost including crystals to desynth the Cards/Items while including breaks. Each crystal used above also corresponds to a sphere being used, so after working out crystal costs, my conclusions so far are:
* The simple T1>T1(T2SC)>T2(T3SC) model is actually the best value, as there's only a ~5mil projected difference in gil cost compared to my budget 6-step but a massive difference in crystal/sphere costs which would be a massive difference in time spent farming AND chaining.
*The 4-step is the most reasonable high-roller model to use if you have the extra 90-100mil to blow lying around which would buy you ~30% less farming time spent. Whether it's worth it or not depends on the new increased drop rates for those 6x items listed + drop rates on Cards + new quantities produced per desynth.
* Oh, and the 5-step is strictly worse than the 4-step, with higher overall costs all around. :x

All these calculations assume ZERO breaks which is impossible, you will break some. So the projections are still low. It all depends what cards actually do in todays update. The cards may drastically change calculations.

[Halley]

If theyre seriously dumb enough to make stackable sphere cards with higher than 1% drop rate on things that aren't apex mobs (a lot of qualifiers there) shield becomes free. Catalyst is negligible if that happens.