4 Star Master Books - Completely frustrating and unfun.

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Originally Posted by RiceisNice

Though I do agree that the crafts should be seen til the very end for the off chance of getting an excellent (which has gotten me 100% with 7 stacks at the lowest, granted I might have gotten another excellent on a touch). Otherwise, I'd just reserve 55 cp to be able to reclaim (after using GS, inno and SH). In the scenario of having 7-8 stacks, reserving 55 CP won't even give you enough leeway to do more than a single basic touch, bumping your total stacks to 8-9 (which isn't enough, getting as high as 85% with a good condition).

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Maybe I'm missing something here, but I just did one at Good + 11 stacks + Great Strides and it put me at 58% (it HQ'd). I think 70% is the highest I've seen a Good condition give me. The BB gave me 3200 Quality. I didn't get any touches beyond that to give me 11 stacks.

I could see that number being doable if you are hitting 14 touches, but I've rarely had such luck.

Both of these rotations are assuming you have a Non-Melded Artisan Offhand (Lvl 70), Lvl 70 Artisan Main Hand / Supra and mostly melded gear. Artisan 4-star left side gear is not required. 405 Craft AT LEAST required to finish. You can attempt minimum control requirement but not particularly recommended, since your purpose is to HQ.

Rotations I've been using:

Mainly GSM but other classes can use, Rotation 1: http://link.ffxivcrafter.com/?id=cbc14

You need 2 tricks of the trade at the least to finish the craft by the time you get to the final Steady Hand II:

You should only take ToT after these skills:

CZ, IQ, 2x PbP , 3rd Hasty Touch, 2nd CZ, MM II, Manipulation, 3rd Steady Hand and the following Hasty Touches all fair game for a ToT. (11-12 ToT Chances, 2-3 90% skills, 13 80% skills)

Rule 1: If you haven't gotten a ToT by the time you hit Ingenuity II and Good lands after Ingenuity II is used, take it.

Rule 2: Steady Hand I/II is up for Byregots assuming you take no ToT, if you do take ToT however, you will have to either refresh Steady Hand II or you can test your luck with fishing for a Good/Excellent. Buff order should be Great Strides > Innovation > Steady Hand if fishing (imo)

Rule 3: If your Rapid Synthesis Fails, you can replace 1 of the Hasty Touches that follow with a second attempt at it. (ONLY Once)

Rule 4: Reclaim for SURE if you do not have 9 or higher stacks, not even worth attempting.
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Exception clause to this: If you fail about 2 HTs, consider taking every single good for ToT and aiming for MM II a second time. If you can't MM II a second time, reclaim or if your at >9 stacks and intend on going for it, try to fish for a good/excellent post Great Strides by first using Innovation then Steady Hand then maybe observe or some other skill to filler in.

Extra: If you get more then Two ToT by the time you actually need them, start swapping in a Basic Touch for each one.

I inserted Tricks of the trade to show you how many you need by this point in the craft.



Every other class other then GSM can use, Rotation 2:

http://link.ffxivcrafter.com/?id=cbc13

You need 3 tricks of the trade at the least to finish the craft by the time you get to the Master's Mend II:

You should only take ToT after these skills:

CZ, IQ, 2x PbP , 3rd Hasty Touch, 2nd CZ, MM II, The last Hasty Touch (8 ToT Chances, 3 90% Skills, 14 80% skills.)

Master Clause: Very strict rotation you MUST have 3 ToT by the time you get to the MM II. You can still potentially finish the craft with 2 ToT at this point but you will DEFINITELY need a 3rd ToT and there is only one more location, the Final Hasty Touch.

Rule 1: If you haven't gotten a ToT by the time you hit Ingenuity II and Good lands after Ingenuity II is used, take it.

Rule 2: If you have enough CP at the end, use Steady Hand before Great Strides to secure your Byregots, or you can test your luck with fishing for a Good/Excellent. Buff order should be Great Strides > Innovation > Steady Hand if fishing (imo)

Rule 3: If your Rapid Synthesis Fails, you can replace 1 of the Hasty Touches that follow with a second attempt at it. (ONLY Once)

Rule 4: Reclaim for SURE if you do not have 9 or higher stacks, not even worth attempting.

Extra: If you get more then Three ToT by the time you actually need them, start swapping in a Basic Touch for each one.

The benefit to this rotation is quite simply the extra Hasty Touch with more risk and mandatory requirements needed. I inserted Tricks of the trade to show you how many you need by this point in the craft.


Using these rotations, I have had a great amount of luck HQing these items, and none of these absolutely REQUIRE a second MM II.

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Originally Posted by Sibyll

Maybe I'm missing something here, but I just did one at Good + 11 stacks + Great Strides and it put me at 58% (it HQ'd). I think 70% is the highest I've seen a Good condition give me. The BB gave me 3200 Quality. I didn't get any touches beyond that to give me 11 stacks.

I could see that number being doable if you are hitting 14 touches, but I've rarely had such luck.

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Not sure where I got 85% from, I meant around 65%, 50~% if its not lined up with innovation as well. Also worth to note that I did have two excellents or so with that craft prior to the BB finisher. I always try to line up an innovation with a good (unless like your scenario, I had about 14+ successful touches), otherwise the HQ rate wouldn't be high enough that I'd weigh it against a reclaim.

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Originally Posted by RiceisNice

Not sure where I got 85% from, I meant around 65%, 50~% if its not lined up with innovation as well. Also worth to note that I did have two excellents or so with that craft prior to the BB finisher. I always try to line up an innovation with a good (unless like your scenario, I had about 14+ successful touches), otherwise the HQ rate wouldn't be high enough that I'd weigh it against a reclaim.

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Ok I just wanted to make sure I wasn't horribly missing something.

I've only got 6 out of 8 books at this point. I'm sure many would disagree, but I'd almost say I lean more toward the idea of aiming to get 8-9 stacks of IQ and saving CP to rotate skills for an Excellent proc on Great Strides (which is 100% HQ) over the general approach of 11 stacks and a Good proc (60-70%).

I'd say it's at least arguable whether getting 11+ Touches requires more favorable RNG than getting 8-9 and fishing for an Excellent. Maybe I just get really garbage luck on my touches.

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Originally Posted by xPeAcEx

If you're fishing at 8 stacks you're already doing something wrong.

At best, you should be fishing for a good and not relying on an excellent, 11 stacks is easy to get and if you can't then you're doing something really wrong. Meaning you shouldn't need rumination at all.

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Some of the things you say are inconsistent. In a previous post you say this:

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Originally Posted by xPeAcEx

Edit: To be more precise.

A rotation with a MMII + MMI requires a single ToT proc to complete and allows for a MAX of 11 HT.
A rotation with a MMII + WNII requires a single ToT proc to complete and allows for a MAX of 12 HT.
A rotation with 2x MMII requires a minimum of 5 ToT proc to complete, 4 if you run BB at 90% and allows for a MAX of 14 HT.

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If you go off of the 80% for HT+SH2 you'd need 13 Hasty Touches (you start with 1 IQ so you'd need 10 touches). Only the 3rd rotation would result in this, which would require 5 TotT procs (4 if you take a 90% on BB) in addition to the 1 Good proc that'd want to fish on your BB at the end. Goes with the other two rotations would require better luck on your HTs, or would require more TotT procs than you list and subbing in some Basic Touches for HTs to make up for RNG.

This is all assuming you actually get the 80% HT attempts, which isn't always the case. I haven't even factored in the Rapid Synth attempts which could have bad RNG.

My point is that it is a bit dubious to say getting that you are doing something wrong if you don't get 11 stacks easily when RNG is involved. I've succeeded 5 out of 14 HT + SHII before and I'd assume others have as well. Aside from using Basic Touches in place of some of the HTs when you get a lot of TotT procs I don't see how you could improve that.

Saying that 11 stacks is easy to get is kind of like saying rolling yahtzee is easy to get, you just keep doing it until you do it.

just here to say my luck with reclaim is far from 90% but on the other hand im trying to unlock my first supra and II book (gsm) at the same time and i am at 3 nq / 1 hq (around 404/380ish for stats)

Since all the rotations and means to get a good craft have been beaten to death ill just stay this. Start by crafting something else, or even start from the base mats (gold ore with gsm) and try and synth all the way to the top, any crafter worth their weight will tell you that there are good days and there are bad days, and those bad days are very obvious from the start, regardless of how difficult the craft is. So before you even get to the 4 star you will see this bad day coming... so be smart and put the tool down for a better day!

i just started building up the mats for the 4 star carpenter book and it is horrifying to think I could lose millions on nothing (FC3s) because of bad RNG. And yes, the RNG has been pretty crap lately. I lost stupid amounts of gil just yesterday with an imaginary "14%" on a pentameld. I went over to a dice tumbler just to see if I was hallucinating. Nope. 40 attempts at 14% should actually produce several hits, not zero, even if you swap the desired result from 1-14 to 85-100, in both cases the samples produced more than 4 hits. In no case did they produce ZERO, which is what FF14's RNG did for me.

The main point of all this is that most of us don't want to feel like we're playing poker with a marked deck. Over-reliance on RNG to maintain the appearance of exclusivity is no good for any game.