its actualy not useless for HQing at all
you get more touchups if you do it succesfuly(blowing up an unstable is something that hurts regardless of what your doing)
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I love Hand of the Gods, but it's a capricious little beast. If I don't optimize my conditions then I often end up with half of my quality gone, too.
Since I hate to see that happen, here are some things I do to mitigate the chance:
I like to use HotG during the first half of the synth if it procs, since this is when my chance of success is highest and my risk is lowest.
If the element goes unstable, I just wait it out. This usually looks like
wait/wait/Greater Calling/wait/wait/Resolution/wait/wait
The aim here is for the element to stabilize so that there's no chance of it going chaotic.
Even if you decide to not wait out the instability, you should definitely end HotG, since it only raises your chance to make it go chaotic.
Why would you use a 1-1.5 million gil mat for a +3 crab bow attempt? Both the +3s I've made were with NQ and +1 oak bows. Problem with these things is people aren't willing to pay what they're worth, so you shouldn't throw +2 oak bows in there. When you start doing things like that you'd make more money by selling the mats to some lazy guy than you would trying to sell +3 crab bows.
Anyway you should never synth through an unstable element if you care about quality. I don't care if I have to pop all my available abilities to reset the waits I will keep waiting it out. My quality is more important than that.
I hope SE fixes that fact someday.
The fact that some can make a +3 out of all NQ mats on a piece that some other only +1 or NQ with all +2, +3 mats and perfect synths.
Makes no sense.
Oh you will never make a +3 crab bow from all NQ mats. +2 if you're lucky... My +3s have come from these:
Red coral +3
Crab shell +3
Oak bow +1
Iron spikes +1
Red coral +3
Crab shell +3
Oak bow NQ
Iron spikes +3
Higher quality mats always help since the higher the quality the higher the chance for a higher HQ. For the smallest chance of a +3 you only need about 170 or so quality however. Get that over 270 or so and your chances will increase again. Who knows how the formula works but it's clear higher quality = higher chance. It should never be as simple as instant +3 with +3 mats or you flood the market.
When I make oak bows I always sell the +2 and +3s, just not worth synthing them for what could be a worthless NQ or +1 crab bow.
Ya a friend made +3 Armored Caligae from all NQ mats and so did another friend with an Iron Celata +3..