Escutcheons final stage

[Stamos]

As it stands now, it is almost impossible to finish these Shields. Unless you want to dedicate insane amounts of hours farming Spheres. Not sure why you would gate a crafting shield behind something that isn't really crafting. Needing 100,000 to 128,000 spirit means you need to do between 3500~ 6 step skillchains, or 6000+ 5 step skillchains.

Items are rare, so you cannot farm multiple, the areas they are farmed in are mostly dungeons with slower repops. Also, you need a KI to desynth these items, so the spheres will not be placed on the AH to negate the farming.

Please consider adjusting this. Thank you.

[saevel]

They shouldn't be rare and should be more common to obtain, otherwise this is really silly 2004 stuff.

[Nyarlko]

They are intended to be equivalent to building a Relic or Mythic. I'm honestly not surprised that it's designed to take forever to do the final stage, just like the old days.

[Sassykitty]

This is all so true but SE people who have finished their shields are controlling the market now. They have split everything by 50 percent to the point people trying to make gil to finish their shields pretty impossible. I mean I get it they have final shields but I thought the point of these shields is to make it easier for crafters not destroy everyone who is crafting and let selective few decide the market. It's like 10 years ago when only certain people had highest crafts.

[Urmom]

Should note that given the huge time investment the only people making significant progress are the people having a small group of bots in a party where one is at the popular kill camps murdering everything and one is in a safe area crafting. Given that this is very much a if you aint first you're last situation the existence of these people or even just really hardcore no life gamers pretty much completely invalidates the purpose of anyone else making shields. Why spend enough time farming to make a shield when the HQ market is already saturated and you could've farmed over a billion gil in the same amount of time? Possible more since you have to compete against these people

[Dzspdref]

After having done the first part of 100% on a shield and gotten the Crafter's Crystal, then trading it to Mweh in Port Jeuno for that very long chat, then farming a bunch of Fetich stuff in the mines and getting some spheres, even then the explanations she gave were not that great. After all that find out a beginning spiritsynth nets you 1 spirit, then if you take too long to choose, you get another 1 spirit, not any chain. So 120,000~ish later synths for this? Even relics were barely 20,000 total dynamis coins, with multiple coin drops many times. This is nuts.
.
But to answer Urmom's last question: Why spend enough time on these? Few ways to answer this.
1] For the sense of accomplishment and self-gratification for your craft, even though it may be just a finality of "i have something to do in this game" thing for some.... or;
2] You have no life, are crazy bored or manic, or are part of a multi-bot RMT group doing this to get control of the markets again like in 2008. As Halley said, it's almost 2018, needa change this up a bit or decrease the amount of spirit needed, or increase the spirit gained from a spiritsynth. ... Let's not forget still need to synth the 70k crafter's points too.

[VoiceMemo]

SE please consider changing the break rate for the sphere synths, out of 72 synths i had 16 impaction spheres, 7 fragmentation spheres and 1 light sphere and 48 breaks. All breaks lose the materials, so moglification doesn't seem to apply. 48/72 break synths is a 66% break rate which is very high. I don't mind doing work collecting materials like for relic, empy, or mythic but those don't have breaks you kill you get the resulting drop.

Please either change it so it breaks less or you have the chance to not lose materials.

[VoiceMemo]

SE please add the materials stored in the synthesis focuser II to the currencies menu so we can see what is stored in it without going to the focuser. Much like how you can view your fewell amounts.

[Sfchakan]

Or just remove Fewell amounts entirely. So few players use a portable furnace and likely just top off at the NPC next to the furnace between attempts.

[Nyarlko]

Or just remove Fewell amounts entirely. So few players use a portable furnace and likely just top off at the NPC next to the furnace between attempts.

:O No nerfing synergy! I'm still waiting on the synergy update they promised me and don't want them to get any ideas that anything should be removed. For the record, I frequently trade fewell to refill depending on the recipes that I'm doing. If only 1-2 elements are going down, it works fine.

[Dzspdref]

Can we please have the synthing attempts at making spheres be a LOT more successful and a lot less failures? Farmed over 25 Frayed Arrows, of these I had 6 successful sphere synths, the other 19 were break-fails. The same rate has applied to using Fetich gears, and Orcish Mail Scales in King Ranperre's Tomb. Please PLEASE raise rate of success on these? I think 20% success on making these is just WAY too low for needing to make nearly 50,000 +/- of these. That's farming nearly 350,000 items AND crystals each! That's nearly equivalent to making a Relic, Empyrean, Mythic, AND an Aeonic weapon, TWICE EACH!

[Nyarlko]

Can we please have the synthing attempts at making spheres be a LOT more successful and a lot less failures? Farmed over 25 Frayed Arrows, of these I had 6 successful sphere synths, the other 19 were break-fails. The same rate has applied to using Fetich gears, and Orcish Mail Scales in King Ranperre's Tomb. Please PLEASE raise rate of success on these? I think 20% success on making these is just WAY too low for needing to make nearly 50,000 +/- of these. That's farming nearly 350,000 items AND crystals each! That's nearly equivalent to making a Relic, Empyrean, Mythic, AND an Aeonic weapon, TWICE EACH!

Have you tried setting up your mog house with Moghancement:Desynthesis w/ overwhelming energy? Should bump you up over 50% success rate and/or lower your mat loss significantly.. I used it way back when and it always seemed to have a big impact.

[Dzspdref]

I had. Got that note from the de-synthing info online somewhere, think ffxiclopedia. I turned off my "Megamoglification: Woodworking", and I have overwhelming energy (lightning) right now, but still obtained the same rate of low/bad success. Is Fetich or any of them based on a specific crafting skill, or are they all meant to be the same across the board for all crafts, because I don't really see any specific recipe yet that would be for Woodworking more or less, while I can guess Fetich pieces and Orc scales might be for smith/gold, but not sure.

[Nyarlko]

I had. Got that note from the de-synthing info online somewhere, think ffxiclopedia. I turned off my "Megamoglification: Woodworking", and I have overwhelming energy (lightning) right now, but still obtained the same rate of low/bad success. Is Fetich or any of them based on a specific crafting skill, or are they all meant to be the same across the board for all crafts, because I don't really see any specific recipe yet that would be for Woodworking more or less, while I can guess Fetich pieces and Orc scales might be for smith/gold, but not sure.

From what I've heard, (I'm still on the prior stage, being lazy >.>) the desynths are doable by all crafts. Merely getting overwhelming lightning energy won't do anything btw, unless you have the appropriate moghancement as well. Under your "Current Effects" tab, what's your active one? If it's not "Desynthesis" then success rate won't change. If it's "Lightning", then that should only affect mat loss rate when breaking w/ lightning crystals IIRC.
Hint: You want "Moghancement: Desynthesis".

Energy level never was proven to affect anything other than gardening, but we always aimed for overwhelming just in case. Placebo effect is strong. lol

[Justuas]

Should note that given the huge time investment the only people making significant progress are the people having a small group of bots in a party where one is at the popular kill camps murdering everything and one is in a safe area crafting. Given that this is very much a if you aint first you're last situation the existence of these people or even just really hardcore no life gamers pretty much completely invalidates the purpose of anyone else making shields. Why spend enough time farming to make a shield when the HQ market is already saturated and you could've farmed over a billion gil in the same amount of time? Possible more since you have to compete against these people

True. This final stage just made the bots go wild.

[Dzspdref]

I did change it to "Mogenhancement: Desynthesis" with "Master! Your house is glowing (or whatever they say) with strong lightning energy!"
.
Also I farmed over 36 Fetich gear, and walked out with only 6 spirit spheres to show, all the others were failure breaks, and went through 5 stacks of lightning crystals, (some attempts were failures but no loss of Fetich item.)
.
I really hope SE makes this much less of a loss for farming, especially with only two places viable to crafters (solo crafters that is that are not dual boxing) to farm multiple items to synth into spheres efficiently. Dual boxing players can make party and let treasure pool fill up and lot out the items as they need, but solo'ers cannot and the rare or /ex items won't drop or are lost.

[Dzspdref]

Just had this thought: would have liked SE to "Server: signature#" on the shields, like Ebisu Rods iirc. <Asura: 0001> would be a nice piece of ego stroking and self sense of accomplishment :D

[Justuas]

Just had this thought: would have liked SE to "Server: signature#" on the shields, like Ebisu Rods iirc. <Asura: 0001> would be a nice piece of ego stroking and self sense of accomplishment :D

No thanks. Those who use bots to complete the escutcheons final stage don't deserve more ego or sense of accomplishment.

[Deede]

The dev-team should a way for us to know how much spirit has been accumulated, and/or how much is still needed for the bar to fill up. I mean some kind of indication would be helpful, such as a change in dialogue if they don't want to provide exact numbers.

[Stamos]

Any hope of removing the rare tag from the desynth items? Since there really is only one zone to farm these.

[Dzspdref]

Any hope of removing the rare tag from the desynth items? Since there really is only one zone to farm these.

Wouldn't count on it any time soon. This shield is supposedly to be "the ultimate" workmanship item for crafting, so spending the stupidly grandiose amounts of time making them makes them so much more annoying to make and "oh so much more rewarding" when completed. :(
I just wish they'd remove the ability to bazaar or AH the spirit spheres instead, then the gil-botters won't even bother wasting their (and our) time making them. At least that change is a lot easier to do on their end than removing the [rare] tag on the materials would be.

Atm on Asura, each sphere sells for:
15k-30k for NQ/T1 spheres,
50k-200k for T2 spheres, and
250k-500k for T3's.

Just stupidly overpriced for an item that costs 0 gil to make if you farm items and clusters. If everyone stopped buying them from gilbotters and AH, and farmed their own, then the price might even drop to a reasonable level.

[Nyarlko]

Wouldn't count on it any time soon. This shield is supposedly to be "the ultimate" workmanship item for crafting, so spending the stupidly grandiose amounts of time making them makes them so much more annoying to make and "oh so much more rewarding" when completed. :(
I just wish they'd remove the ability to bazaar or AH the spirit spheres instead, then the gil-botters won't even bother wasting their (and our) time making them. At least that change is a lot easier to do on their end than removing the [rare] tag on the materials would be.

Atm on Asura, each sphere sells for:
15k-30k for NQ/T1 spheres,
50k-200k for T2 spheres, and
250k-500k for T3's.

Just stupidly overpriced for an item that costs 0 gil to make if you farm items and clusters. If everyone stopped buying them from gilbotters and AH, and farmed their own, then the price might even drop to a reasonable level.

Neither removal of the Rare tag, nor adding an Exclusive tag (to prevent sale/trade) are going to happen, as both are against general policy and would be a PITA for the devs to implement. Your "costs 0 gil" argument never works, since you are spending time farming in that case, which has the opportunity cost of farming something else worth more gil. The "farmed their own" argument also doesn't work and is the main obstacle ATM due to lack of mobs which drop the items. :/ Also, keep in mind that completing an Escutcheon is quite literally the most expensive project in the game, you have to actually BE on the final stage in order to make spheres, and even legit/non-bots may want/need to recoup some of their costs.

The devs have recently said that they have decided to examine and adjust related mobs/items to make it easier to get all elements, which is great news. We should wait to freak out any further until after we have an idea about the details of what they plan to dol.

[Dzspdref]

The devs have recently said that they have decided to examine and adjust related mobs/items to make it easier to get all elements, which is great news. We should wait to freak out any further until after we have an idea about the details of what they plan to dol.

Ok, i shall contain my "freaking out-ness" until after they decide what to do lol. Gosh that made me laugh nicely, truthfully I needed that hahaha :D
(*** Takes out his intravenous caffeine supply...)

[Nyarlko]

Ok, i shall contain my "freaking out-ness" until after they decide what to do lol. Gosh that made me laugh nicely, truthfully I needed that hahaha :D
(*** Takes out his intravenous caffeine supply...)

NONONO DONT DO IT BRO! Too much blood in the caffeine-stream is dangerous!

[Stamos]

Few issues with the addition of cards:
They drop significantly less often compared to level 5~10 level mobs. Even on THF.
Break rate on desynth makes it horrible, and considering the drop rate the reason to do these is almost zero.

[Dzspdref]

Few issues with the addition of cards:
They drop significantly less often compared to level 5~10 level mobs. Even on THF.
Break rate on desynth makes it horrible, and considering the drop rate the reason to do these is almost zero.
.
As of right now, even with using Aldo and Nanaa trusts for their TH effects, plus myself on THF with capped TH and even seeing "Treasure Hunter effect reaches 11." (or 12 even), the drop rate on cards is terrible. Absolutely terrible. Killed 14 leeches, got one water card. This needs to be addressed. Killing 1400+ targets for MAYBE one stack of cards, which MIGHT net you 15~20 spheres, is just ludicrous.
.
So then I went and also tried farming Exoray Molds again. Drop rate on them is better (4~5 molds per 6 Exorays killed), but synth success rate has dropped dramatically down to under 15%, even with Orvail ring, Artificer's ring, and Kitron Macaron food effect. Usually used to get about ~8 spheres per stack of crystals (about 66% success rate).
. Now after "card addition" update, I am netting MAYBE 2~3 sphere per 24 attempts (2 stacks of crystals used at about ~15% success rate, over 4x worse).
.
So we either have an EXTREMELY lowered success rate on making spheres, or overly just as bad rate of card drops which ALSO have a very bad rate of success on making spheres. Can we please Please PLEASE get this looked at? Those of us non-botting legitimate legally playing people with only 2~3 hours of available time to play a day SOMETIMES, that are just gosh-damned tired of cheaters using 3rd party programs to do this 24hrs a day abusing this, why should we be penalized? Definitely feels like we have been punished brutally for having done nothing wrong.

[Nyarlko]

.
As of right now, even with using Aldo and Nanaa trusts for their TH effects, plus myself on THF with capped TH and even seeing "Treasure Hunter effect reaches 11." (or 12 even), the drop rate on cards is terrible. Absolutely terrible. Killed 14 leeches, got one water card. This needs to be addressed. Killing 1400+ targets for MAYBE one stack of cards, which MIGHT net you 15~20 spheres, is just ludicrous.
.
So then I went and also tried farming Exoray Molds again. Drop rate on them is better (4~5 molds per 6 Exorays killed), but synth success rate has dropped dramatically down to under 15%, even with Orvail ring, Artificer's ring, and Kitron Macaron food effect. Usually used to get about ~8 spheres per stack of crystals (about 66% success rate).
. Now after "card addition" update, I am netting MAYBE 2~3 sphere per 24 attempts (2 stacks of crystals used at about ~15% success rate, over 4x worse).
.
So we either have an EXTREMELY lowered success rate on making spheres, or overly just as bad rate of card drops which ALSO have a very bad rate of success on making spheres. Can we please Please PLEASE get this looked at? Those of us non-botting legitimate legally playing people with only 2~3 hours of available time to play a day SOMETIMES, that are just gosh-damned tired of cheaters using 3rd party programs to do this 24hrs a day abusing this, why should we be penalized? Definitely feels like we have been punished brutally for having done nothing wrong.

Actually sounds like a bug that needs to be reported. >_<;; (Remember to use the template! Include any/all data that you can to support the claim and make it easier to reproduce for bug verification.) From what was in the update notes and FP, it sounded more like spheres were intended to be made easier to acquire, not harder.

[Stamos]

Cards need a significant boost in drop rate for them to be even viable. Been recapping merits, tagging everything with at least TH4. Averaging four cards per 75 merits. On top of their high break rate, it really needs a change if you want people to make these Shields legit.

[Halley]

Cards need a significant boost in drop rate for them to be even viable. Been recapping merits, tagging everything with at least TH4. Averaging four cards per 75 merits. On top of their high break rate, it really needs a change if you want people to make these Shields legit.

The drop rate is bad, but it's not that bad. You are likely failing to properly apply TH.

[Stamos]

The drop rate is bad, but it's not that bad. You are likely failing to properly apply TH.

lol

Just no.

[Halley]

You're suggesting it has a literal 5% drop rate, with TH4, they do not.

Water cards, specifically, do seem to be extraordinarily rare though.

Light lightning Ice Dark all dropped at about 20% rate. Only went once and got about 300 cards in 8 hours (with breaks) that's about a card a minute.

[Dzspdref]

Went farming yesterday on the 4th for something to do while waiting for family to all get together.
Spent 5+ hours farming in Sih Gates II with bats and diremites, killing about 1 target every 90 seconds +/- repop timings.
So about 50~60 targets an hour.
I have TH9 proc's and had gotten up to TH11 & TH12 notifications.
After about 280+ kills, I net out with total 18 cards.
Those 18 cards netted me 6 spheres.
This definitely needs to be addressed: either MAJORLY raise the drop rate of cards AND the success rate of desynthing them to over 30% success, even with Moghancement: Desynthesis in effect.
I am STILL in bafflement of how people have completed these shields, even multiple shields, as "legally per game rules" as they said they have in the time that they did, even before cards.
And SE wonders why people are pissed off at their lack of helping genuine players enjoy the game over cheaters using automated bots and 3rd party programs to cheat, even with reporting them over & over to STF with no results to show, since those players are all still on the game botting and farming.
... And adding an [ex] to the spheres is NOT a difficult thing to do in the computer programming side (I asked some frinds that do computer programming of this type); just takes time that SE doesn't want to spend on it to help legal players and turn off cheaters and farmers.

[Halley]

Spheres should've been Ex, 100% agree.

Too bad that ship sailed. Pick better targets. bats/spiders/krakens were the worst for sure.

Killed all the kraken mobs in w/e gates 3 times and only got 1 water card. (like 10 mobs, 3 times), but the other mobs were "generous"

[Dzspdref]

I tried to farm leeches and efts in Moh Gates II, but those are always overcamped by people in groups farming them.
Sadly, the most cards targets drop, the more overcamped they are. It's why i went to bats and diremites.
I even did the umbrils and dullahan for a while one day upon entering, but they were no better for drop rate, but were slower to kill soloing.
And if the respawn rate for the diremites in Adeewa Subt (sp?) was only 5 minutes instead of the 12~15 they are now, I'd be farming those instead too.

[Halley]

You're pretty much SOL on asura broseph. There are going to be people at every worthwhile camp. And even some at not worthwhile camps.