The Grand Crafting Adjustment Thread

[Economizer]

Long have we heard complaints from various crafters that their craft isn't as useful as it once was, or heard complaints about how gardening and HELM aren't nearly as useful as they could be, or that inventory is clogged once again!

Behold, for a single strand of fiber was woven into a grand tapestry of want, no longer will SE have to complain about the advice hunt! For this is the thread that will weave together our woes, and stitch our wounds closed!

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Having read page upon page of crafting hurt I'll start with a few bandages here:

Consumables can take a lot of effort to craft, what with large amounts of crafting, and having to bag or quiver large amounts of them. So for all (appropriate) crafts, I will propose a crafting KI that works like Trituration or Boltmaker, but instead of just lowering the need for a crystal, it will automatically bag the results so HQ can have more then a stack of 12 or 99 as the result.

This will be particularly important for Ninja Tools, although making Bolts, Bullets, and Arrows will also greatly benefit. Bolts and arrows could probably be from an adjusted or renamed "Boltmaker" while bagging toolbags and casing cards could be from a new "Bagging" or "Bundling" KI that all crafts can obtain.

Alchemy

The proposed Bagging KI would apply mostly to Jusatsu, Kodoku, Sairui-Ran, Tsurara tools, but would also be useful for Fire Cards, Earth Cards, Water Cards, Wind Cards, Ice Cards, Thunder Cards, Light Cards, Dark Cards, as well as Copper Bullets, Bronze Bullets, Bullets, Tin Bullets, Iron Bullets, Steel Bullets, Silver Bullets, Spartan Bullets, Paktong Bullets, Electrum Bullets, Gold Bullets, and Platinum Bullets, allowing the user to make vast quantities of each much more easily.

Unstackable medicines in general need to be evaluated, especially those that restore a flat value. Either the potency should be tied to the user's stats, or they should be made stackable. Medicated effect medicines need another look.

Trituration negates HQ results on Prism Powder and Rainbow Powder. This could be improved by having Trituration craft 1~3 Bags of Powder that function much like Toolbags do (and either having the bags be Exclusive tag, or allowing Prism/Rainbow Powder to be baggable), although since Trituration is already a useful KI for the other crafts it can produce, it could also be ignored.

Concoction is roughly useless since the medicines it makes give low effect and medicated effects. For a few examples, compare a stack of Ether Drops to an Ether Tank, a stack of Mulsum, or even a single Pro-Ether. Medicated effects should be removed from these medicines, and stack sizes should be reconsidered along with other non-stackable recipes. If the medicated effect must stay, they should be based on a percentage boost like Elixirs are.

Alchemic Ensorcellment generally doesn't make very useful things, much like the majority of enchanting KI.

Alchemic Purification is only used to make Hallowed Water which is very useful, but the KI could be expanded to make other recipes.

Bonecraft

Bonecrafters would benefit from certain bone materials possibly being made stackable.

Bone Ensorcellment generally doesn't make very useful things, much like the majority of enchanting KI.

Bone Purification is only effectively used to make Vivified Coral (Reraise Gorget/Hairpins) which is very useful, but otherwise doesn't make very useful things, much like the majority of enchanting KI.

Clothcraft

The proposed Bagging KI would apply mostly to Kaginawa, Sanjaku-Tenugui, Shinobi-Tabi for Clothcrafters.

Cloth Ensorcellment generally doesn't make very useful things, much like the majority of enchanting KI.

Cloth Purification is used to make the materials to make the Blink Band and much of the Spolia/Optima Set. It gives a decent model for how to make the enchanting KI more useful with the new Spolia/Optima gear, although the materials list could be expanded.

Cooking

Cooking is overall a pretty strong craft as is, even some of the lesser used KI are still pretty strong. That said, food in general is in need of some work, particularly for mages, and to a lesser extent pet jobs and evasion heavy jobs. While there is a strong thread about this already, it bears repeating. Food needs to be better balanced in roles other then just melee attack, ranged attack, and defense.

Stewpot Mastery could use more varied and more exciting recipes, and probably a PR agent.

Patissier could use stronger recipes, although this has more to do with food sucking for mages more then anything else.

Fishing

Fishing really needs to be possible in Windurstian Mog Houses.

Goldsmithing

Seeing certain ores, particularly the low level Copper Ore, be made stackable would be a great boon for Goldsmiths everywhere.

The proposed Bagging KI would apply mostly to Hiraishin for Goldsmiths.

Gold Ensorcellment generally doesn't make very useful things, much like the majority of enchanting KI.

Gold Purification is used in making the materials for the popular Reraise Earring and the less popular Poisona Ring and Stoneskin Torque, although it could be used in making more recipes in the future.

Leathercraft

Leathercraft would benefit pretty well from some or all hides become stackable, particularly Sheepskin and Karakul Skin.

Leather Ensorcellment is used in making the materials for Powder Boots, which have recently become popular, however it could be used in more recipes.

Leather Purification is used in making Vivio Sheep Leather, which is used in the Ugol/Mavros Set for Goldsmithers. It gives a decent model for how to make the enchanting KI more useful with the new Ugol/Mavros gear, although the materials list could be expanded.

Smithing

The proposed Bagging KI would apply mostly to Makibishi for Smiths.

Metal Ensorcellment generally doesn't make very useful things, much like the majority of enchanting KI.

Metal Purification is used in making Lightweight Steel Sheets for the Numus Set with Synergy, although this isn't very useful, much like the majority of enchanting KI.

Woodworking

The proposed Bagging KI would apply mostly to Kawahori-Ogi, Mizu-Deppo, Uchitake, and Shehei for Woodworkers, but could possibly be extended to fill the niche of the proposed Boltmaker change that is listed next.

Boltmaker needs to be adjusted so that when making Bolts, HQ are rewarded. This can be done by having it make Quivers instead of straight bolts. It can also be renamed and be made to work with Arrows as well.

Wood Ensorcellment is used in making the materials for Warp Cudgels, although the recipe list could be extended to be more useful.

Wood Purification generally doesn't make very useful things, much like the majority of enchanting KI.

Since mages have crappy food, and could be chewing on wood for better stat boosts then what foods give them, and Woodworkers have a glut of NQ Elemental Staves and NQ Wands they're NPCing, Woodworkers should be able to make "Wand/Staff Toothpicks" that are consumable items that generate a food effect that is actually worth using. Cooks aren't generally getting profits off of mages at this point anyways, so making recipes where Woodworkers turn stat wands and NQ elemental staves into magic toothpicks is the natural progression. Additionally, woodworkers could also be involved in crafting the sticks for stat boosting lollipops as well, and magic charcoal for cooking ingredients as well.

Synergy

Universal tools aren't craftable. There should be a Synergy recipe that takes the six respective Ninja toolbags that are replaced by a Shika/Cho/Ino Toolbag and spits out 6 or more toolbags (on HQ it could spit out 6/12/18/24). Crafters would benefit (although prices on tools might rise for /NIN users unless SE does everyone a solid favor and makes the universal tools subjob usable if this does occur).

Trump Card Case aren't craftable. There should be a Synergy recipe that takes the eight elemental card cases and spits out 8 or more Trump Card Cases (on HQ it could spit out 8/16/24/32). Crafters would benefit (although prices on cards might rise for /COR users unless SE does everyone a solid favor and makes the universal cards subjob usable if this does occur).

Chatoyant gear recipes, for a universal piece of gear in the vein of the Chatoyant Staff, to save inventory space:

• Elemental Obi should be craftable into a Chatoyant Obi.
  Level 71, DEF:7 Gain full benefit of day/weather bonuses
• Elemental Gorgets should be craftable into a Chatoyant Gorget.
  Level 72, Increases weapon skill accuracy and damage
• Elemental Belts should be craftable into a Chatoyant Belt.
  Level 87, DEF:7 "Conserve TP"+7 Increases weapon skill accuracy and damage
• Elemental Satchets should be craftable into a Chatoyant Satchet.
  Level 90, All Stats +2, MP+20, All Elemental Resistances +10, Occasionally Absorbs Elemental Damage
• The fourteen different skill boosting Hachimaki should be craftable (via two intermediate recipes) into a Chatoyant Hachimaki.
  Level 78, All Elemental Resistances +10, All Offensive Skills +5, Accuracy +12 Ranged Accuracy +12, Conserve TP +5

I'm sure there are more suggestions then this, but I think this will cover a large amount of the problems people have with crafting currently.

[Randnum]

I will throw my weight behind you!

In addition to the above, we have a single issue to contemplate when it comes to crafting. It looks like multiple issues but it is just the same one multiple times. In order to make crafting useful, we need it to become a step in player advancement again, and not everyone may want that.

Cursed Gear is made while Abjurations are earned, we still see this a bit, but not much.
Food is complex and wears off when you die (which is a lot) making the rarest and the best food inefficient.
Crafting pop items like the Hakutaku Eye cluster is not really seen anymore.
Crafting items used for weakening bosses is not relevant except if the item is 'strong' enough to be highly required for the fight.
Items intended to be Rare/EX can't be crafted except through synergy, which many players apparently do not like?
Augments are completely disconnected from regular crafting in almost every way.

The issue, basically, is that for crafting to be relevant, crafters must be needed or give a meaningful advantage in more parts of the game, but this then means that an inability to find crafters to do the things that give this advantage would become a time sink and possibly annoy players.

Would it help crafting if the game's best gear for a Beastmaster required a Khimaira Jacket, Black Beetle Blood, some random lower level items, and finish it off by adding two Rare/EX items dropped from the bosses through a single Synergy? Yes. Would it also annoy players that would prefer for the awesome new jacket to simply drop from the boss? Also yes.

My actual suggestions for this are simple though.

1. Make more bosses with powerful Aura effects (hopefully will see this in Adoulin) and lots of varied items players can use to nullify these Auras.
2. Make it so that food doesn't wear off when you die. We know it's possible, Medicated doesn't wear off (also make Antacid more available)
3. Make food better to help cooks, and make more synths of all kinds that don't require subcrafts but instead require ingredients made by other crafts (we can see how well this works out for lower level players in the case of things like Copper Ingots).
4. Consider having more boss pop items craftable or work like this:
Regular enemy drops Tavnazian Ram Meat, which has 1 in 5 chance of popping boss when traded to ???.
Crafter could make Tavnazian Ram Steak, which has 100% chance of popping boss when traded to ???.

Choice then becomes a matter of which is more convenient to you, farming for a while, or knowing a crafter (or yourself) to speed up the process.
5. Minor, but for Alchemy, notably, upgrade the effects of Stat potions (e.g. Intelligence Potion) to some percentage increase, even if it's percentage of base or doesn't work in Abyssea, so they are somewhat relevant.


We as players could come up with any number of things, but what will always hold crafting back is the fact that every suggestion must be one that non-crafters see as a help, or a convenience, instead of getting in their way...

[Siviard]

I would love to see more options made available for crafters of all trades to reach 110.

As it stands now, we have to rely on rare drops from Voidwatch, Legion, Abyssea, VWNMs, and Meebles in order to have a chance to raise our skills.

On one of my other characters, I have 105 Leathercraft and I am pretty much STUCK. I am having to constantly camp the Auction House for items needed to craft Hexed Boots (107 cap). The problem now is that those materials have become so overly expensive (to the point RMT have taken notice) that I, personally, cannot afford it.

What I would love to see: More options to raise crafts up to 110 and beyond (in the future). In terms of Leathercraft, I would love to see a new armor set based on Griffon Leather. Currently, Griffon Leather is only used as a skill up item, an item for a Gobbiebag Quest, and an item for a couple of relic weapon upgrades. It is not used in any synthesis recepies to make armor.

[Mayonoshiro]

Cooking 101+ needs ridiculous amounts of HELM, which is only slightly better than the randomness of vw drops lol

[Limecat]

Cooking 101+ needs ridiculous amounts of HELM, which is only slightly better than the randomness of vw drops lol

I ran around Fort Alphabet for a while trying to get dragon fruit until I started feeling part of my soul wither away and die.

[Economizer]

HELM is actually another topic I'd like to address. It has a bunch of problems that pop up, although it can still be decent from time to time.

HELM areas tend to be lots of running interrupted by lots of messages about Sickles, Hatchets, but most of all Pickaxes breaking. The best areas for HELM tend to be areas that don't have a wide spread, and especially areas where the items are stackable. The worst areas make you run a convoluted maze between opposite sides of the zone, hoping to not get a "Your Hatchet breaks." message before being forced to run all the way back.

Then you have your non-stackables, such as logs and ores, and having to decide between dumping a Chestnut Log or Copper Ore because you didn't have enough skill to craft it (let alone HQ it) or didn't have the right amount of ore.

I ran around Fort Alphabet for a while trying to get dragon fruit until I started feeling part of my soul wither away and die.

This is another issue I'm suspecting, but I don't really have any solid proof on, and I think part of it is on the demand end.

Harvesting, especially when it comes to ingredients, tends to be sporadically bought on the AH on many servers. The ingredients might be worth 300k a stack (and this isn't just because they're rarely sold, but because the opportunity cost of gathering the ingredients, even if it is a more casual method, still is often vastly outpaced by even the most casual farming), but you can list them on the AH and never see them sell.

I don't know if this is from stingy crafters who don't understand that HELM can take effort too, feeling stiffed because some listings from two to five years ago are a tenth or so of the actual worth, or a more likely seeming scenario of people just expecting the ingredients to not be listed on the AH ever and skipping it. But the end result is someone does HELM once in a blue moon then gets stuck with clogged AH slots (or inventory if they use Bazaar) that never sell anything and just NPCing the ingredients in frustration.

Making the ingredients gardenable seems like a decent solution, but ultimately it could just drive the price down on the last profitable HELM drops, or lower the potential haul for an area, much like Voidwatch did to many logs (which in turn hurt cooks who also get ingredients from Logging).

And as a personal bit to add to your Cooking leveling woes, I've noticed that Karakul Leather tends to sell in singles, but rarely in stacks... perhaps Cooks can skill up from 105~109 using just a stack worth of singles making Dragon Tanks, but I find this hard to believe. Listing Karakul Leather in stacks on my server is an exercise in throwing away money most of the time... I'm guessing many cooks must farm the Karakul themselves to "save" money by spending their time.

[Randnum]

While I certainly hate to play 'Devil's Advocate' for any improvements anyone wants, the problem with HELM is definitely mostly the distance between points. Harvesting Grauberg, for example, is only slightly annoying to me. People HELM to get things they need, the solution might actually be to make points more abundant/differently spaced and nothing more. The issue of the value of HELM results or the overlap with other places that drop a few of the items is harder to fix and less of an issue. We HELM because we need something and tend to get something else.

Other people don't HELM because it's frustrating because the points are too far apart and they don't profit.

The result is that when you have something rare you need from HELM, something that is probably only rare because the design is one where SOMEONE should be out there doing the gathering almost 100% of the time, we can't get it, because no one is doing HELM so the 'random' lucky hits from them aren't showing up on AH, so we have to go ourselves, but it's too rare for an hour of HELM by one person to matter.

If HELM were overall less annoying, more people would do it, more people would hit the lucky rare items more often and sell them, and everything would overall 'work', but then 'RMT could do it'. I don't think that's an argument though because RMT can do anything. There's nothing simplistic that you can make 'annoying to RMT' that won't end up annoying legit players who want to relax and do it. HELM is simplistic.

[Economizer]

Cursed Gear is made while Abjurations are earned, we still see this a bit, but not much.

Abjuration gear tends to highly favor getting the HQ gear the first time, since you don't know when you'll see the abjuration again if it is truly rare.

If crafters want the NQ of these to sell, such as the products they get when leveling, they'll beg SE to allow an NQ piece of uncursed armor be allowed to be upgraded via a Synergy recipe and the HQ variant of cursed armor, which would allow players to buy the NQ now and upgrade to the HQ later when they have the funds, or in many players cases, lie to ourselves that we'll someday be able to afford the HQ while not feeling bad about wasting the abjuration on a crappy version of what we really want.

Crafting pop items like the Hakutaku Eye cluster is not really seen anymore.

These only really worked when it was gear many people wanted. Hakutaku Eye was popular for players because the Optical Hat was sought after, whereas Shrimp Lanterns catered to a very small and elite group of players, which in turn made the market roughly non-existent (it didn't help that it took three very high level crafts).

These days you have a few options to bring something like this back. One thing you could have is of course, new pop items and mobs.

Another you could have the old pop items augment older gear via Synergy. An augmentable Optical Hat that takes a Hakutaku Eye Cluster to augment it (or some tatter inspired Synergy split of one) would boost the price very easily.

Yet another could be a high-quality version of the drop that has a chance of dropping (the only clue I have on where Sublime Breastplate drops currently is a rumor that Shen can drop it for example), or will be guaranteed to drop when the old drop and the pop item are traded together. So for example, if you trade you Optical Hat and a Hakutaku Eye Cluster, you can fight Hakutaku again for a new super version.

Crafting items used for weakening bosses is not relevant except if the item is 'strong' enough to be highly required for the fight.

This is also a contradicting market too. If the fight doesn't require the item but is helped by it, the toughest groups will skip it to save money, and the weaker groups will be too poor to buy the item at any amount that would provide enough gil to pad out the crafter's pride.

Basically, groups that can afford such an item don't need it.

We as players could come up with any number of things, but what will always hold crafting back is the fact that every suggestion must be one that non-crafters see as a help, or a convenience, instead of getting in their way...

Speaking of which, I'd like to see an equipment piece that boosts the kill credit players get on Magian Trials by like one per kill, that could be crafted. It wouldn't be anywhere near necessarily, but it would be a nice little item to have.

[Toadie-Odie]

Stewpot Mastery could use more varied and more exciting recipes, and probably a PR agent.

I don't know about a PR agent, but I REALLY like the idea of food that effects the entire party. If SE could give us even so much as one well-rounded dish, I would be very happy along with the rest of Team Toad.

Since everyone in Team Toad are tarus I would like to see an item that gave the party regen, refresh, defense+, HP+ and maybe Store TP or Subtle Blow.

I know it's not "epic food" but when you have a tight knit group like mine (all family in RL) we just want to have fun and food items like these could make our playtime a little easier. Epic food (like red curry and hydra kofte) should be reserved for epic battles.

Party foods should be simple to make - like a pot luck dinner is in real life: everyone brings something to the table to enjoy.

I'm the cook for my team. I make all the food, pet food, and pet jugs we use. It would make me so happy to see more versatile party effect foods in the game. It would save us space, time, and gil.

[Economizer]

Since everyone in Team Toad are tarus I would like to see an item that gave the party regen, refresh, defense+, HP+ and maybe Store TP or Subtle Blow.

Crab Stewpot (HP +10% (Cap: 50@500 Base HP), MP +10, Defense +20% (Cap: 50@250 Base Defense)).

Beef Stewpot (HP +10% (Cap: 50@500 Base HP), MP +10, Attack +18% (Cap: 40@222 Base Attack)).

Something with Store TP like a Pasta Stewpot would probably be likely, but Regen/Refresh type foods would be more towards drinks (consumable kegs come to mine as an option to make this happen, such as a Kitron Juice Keg, or a Dragonfruit Au Lait Keg).