Patch 3.1: Crafting Reborn (?)

It may be reborn in 3.1 but it really comes down to how they will handle the new mats in 3.2, the potential new scrips and such with new favors and rare mats to obtain. As long as they don't backpedal in 3.2 and have said items only available through the new scrips it will be fine, but if they don't then we'll be back at square one.

Thinking of the long haul, I think it would be wise if Legendary nodes took a step back in 3.2, or more like those nodes could get a new scrip that turns them into 12hr nodes instead of 24hr nodes.

Though quite honestly if the whole node mentality continues in the same process as 2.0, there is gonna be a huge amount of unspoiled node bloat which honestly doesn't make it as fun, maybe we'll get lucky and they will adopt to using favors more instead of time based unspoiled nodes.

I'd much rather farm favors and be able to use 5 favors to farm adamantite ore for 25 mins then have to wait every half hour for the node to spawn.

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Originally Posted by Phireblast

Alright so, as someone who doesn't craft, how easy will it be to get into crafting now provided that I have a 150 set that someone gave me?

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You have some work to do, but in taking a quick peek at your DoH/L levels, you're better prepared than most.

The greatest cost of entry for you will be melds, which can be very expensive, especially on smaller servers where fewer people are converting them. I spent about 5 million on mine, and they're not even optimal, just enough to push me over the threshold with Baked Onion Soup. However, unlike many people who are considering breaking into crafting, you have all of your DoHs to 50, which is a big boon. You're pretty much set for all of the 2* rotations once you get GSM to 54 and pick up Maker's Mark (although it's less useful if you're planning on speccing BSM.)

You may also want to consider getting your DoLs to 60 depending on how you feel about buying raw materials off the MB. Fortunately, this is pretty easy to do if you have leves stockpiled, and if you pushed hard, you could probably have both BTN and MIN to 60 in a week or two.

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Originally Posted by Lobotomite

The greatest cost of entry for you will be melds, which can be very expensive, especially on smaller servers where fewer people are converting them. I spent about 5 million on mine, and they're not even optimal, just enough to push me over the threshold with Baked Onion Soup.

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Yep, at the moment, grade 3 materia should be far more affordable than before due to the crafting scene being mostly dead (at least on my server). I used about 12 million worth of materia on my i150 build and that was with pretty much grade 3 overmelds only. Prices have now fallen by up to 75%, so there's no better time to get into 2* crafting.

Grade IV melds, on the other hand, are insane. To compare, I used 6 million worth of materia to meld three of my i170 accessories. Only 2 of the grade iv overmelds attempts actually succeeded (25 attempts at 29% before the first succeeded), so they're still virtually all grade 3 overmelds.

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Originally Posted by MN_14

Yep, at the moment, grade 3 materia should be far more affordable than before due to the crafting scene being mostly dead (at least on my server). I used about 12 million worth of materia on my i150 build and that was with pretty much grade 3 overmelds only. Prices have now fallen by up to 75%, so there's no better time to get into 2* crafting.

Grade IV melds, on the other hand, are insane. To compare, I used 6 million worth of materia to meld three of my i170 accessories. Only 2 of the grade iv overmelds attempts actually succeeded (25 attempts at 29% before the first succeeded), so they're still virtually all grade 3 overmelds.

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Yeah, right now I'm just using quad/pentamelded i150 right side and have my i170 stuff hammered out and sitting in my Armoury Chest unmelded until the Tier V materia become sane to acquire. I would rather have to take a single mandatory Tricks in a 2* craft than pop several more million on Tier IV overmelds, especially now that a failed Reclaim on a 2* won't be quite as infuriating as it was in 3.05. Even the robber baron hardcore crafters with >100 mil in my FC are iffy about overmelding it right now.

I was disappointed when we didn't get Specialist recipes to begin with, so I'm glad we're getting them, though I can understand why the really dedicated omnicrafters are disappointed. I can't say I'm surprised, though. They've been trying to discourage omnicrafting, the necessity of it, and the effect it has on the economy, for a long time, but up until now they've generally focused on making the grinds prohibitive to do so, which hasn't really worked. This is a natural extension of their attempts to weaken it.

How far they go with the recipes remains to be seen, though. If I had to wager a guess, we're mostly going to see cosmetic recipes as specialist recipes. I'd be really surprised if things like gearsets, potions, and food end up being on the specialist side of things, though we probably won't know much in that regard until 3.2, when we get a new crafting tier.

The rest of the changes look incredible and resemble thereabouts what it should have looked like at 3.0's launch, in my mind.

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Originally Posted by Alahra

I was disappointed when we didn't get Specialist recipes to begin with, so I'm glad we're getting them, though I can understand why the really dedicated omnicrafters are disappointed.
How far they go with the recipes remains to be seen, though. If I had to wager a guess, we're mostly going to see cosmetic recipes as specialist recipes. I'd be really surprised if things like gearsets, potions, and food end up being on the specialist side of things, though we probably won't know much in that regard until 3.2, when we get a new crafting tier.

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I don't really mind specialist recipes if they're limited to cosmetic recipes and other items that don't affect my ability to craft gear sets. However, I'm not convinced that this is going to please single class crafters/specialists in the long run.

It seems to me that it boils down to single class crafters wanting to have an advantage over a dedicated crafter, while putting in only a fraction of the effort. There are complaints over things as simple as acquiring the 3rd master recipe book or capping red scrips each week. The thing is, crafting isn't cheap for any player, so aside from working on your crafting classes, you have to raise the funds to finance progression. That's the second half of the crafting scene that's ignored by many crafters, who only seem interested in selling big ticket items.

This obviously isn't true of all crafters, but I've noticed that many do not run their own regular business to fund their crafting. When HW was first released, intermediate products were prohibitively expensive for new crafters so the argument was valid, but this has now been completely solved through map drops. Yet, these complaints still exist to this day.

Back in ARR, as a single class crafter initially, I bought all of my intermediate products and raw materials in order to craft and put items up to raise gil. If I didn't have enough startup gil, I could farm shards for a bit and sell those first. I then simply calculated the cost of the items and marked them up accordingly. In HW, the margins on final products have typically been much better than the items that I dealt with in 2.3, so raising the required gil for materials/intermediate products shouldn't be a problem.

I guess the bottom line is that I really don't understand the argument of how a single class crafter cannot effectively complete with an omni-crafter. Sure, their profits might be smaller, but margins are now larger than before. If I could still succeed in the market with a single class back when margins were smaller, there really shouldn't be a major problem now.

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Originally Posted by Phireblast

Alright so, as someone who doesn't craft, how easy will it be to get into crafting now provided that I have a 150 set that someone gave me?

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Upon hearing the extremely vexing news of specialist-specific recipes actually being implemented despite being the worst idea ever in the history of the universe (BOO SE, BOOOOO), I went and melded my alts to be 2-star capable. It was actually amazingly simple, safe, and cheap if you *only* care about hitting the stat requirements and don't care about CP. It can be done with ZERO overmelds, ZERO grade IV materia, and relatively cheap and easy to make food.

My alts, in the full HQ i150 set with i150 mainhand and offhand with zero melds, have 641 Craftsmanship and 608 Control. By using exactly 9 Craftsmanship III materia and 7 Control III materia in the 16 100% materia slots on my universal gear that brings me up to 686 Craftsmanship and 619 Control. Using HQ Beet Soup (level 54 recipe, 2 Loaghtan Chump, 2 Pearl Sprout, 2 Magma Beet, 2 Sprigs of Mist Dill, 1 Sour cream, 1 Abalathian Rock Salt), that brings me up to 715 Craftsmanship and 697 Control. One Craftsmanship I materia will do the job and bring the total to 718 Craftsmanship, wherever you decide to put it. Overmelding it onto an accessory at 45% chance is a relatively simple affair, but you can put it on your mainhand or offhand's 100% slot if you really want to avoid even the slightest overmelding.

This of course leaves you with only 345 CP, which is a big problem if you want to craft HQ gear, but not a problem at all for glamours or housing items (which I assume is all specialization recipes will be for now).

Yeah I'm being super "light" on all my non-shared melds while stupid aggressive on the shared ones. I hate to think how much I've suck into them so far. I pretty much did IV all the way down to forth slot and a single III in the last.

I'm glad they made the changes they did. I said in my "I want to craft" post long ago that the material vs gathering effort was off by at least a factor of three. So I'm not surprised at the change. I'm surprised how long it took them to deliver the change and it ticks me off. But I've probably only technically made half my set so I won't argue.

If you have a good set of airships and a good FC, you guys should have a solid amount of Tier IV materia. I regularly grab the people with the highest number of L60 DoH/DoL jobs in my FC and set about max-melding their gear.

And if all else fails, just SB i46 stuff. It's so crazy fast to do and you get loads of IIIs you can sell off if you don't need them, and the number of IVs you get in a few days of SBing should be enough to see you get your i150 gear max-melded. I know it's possible as it took me less than a week and I was gathering mats to craft my own HQ i46 DoH / DoL gear and got both sets completed in decent time. One week to SB enough stuff to max-meld your i150 gear isn't long at all, really, for the benefits you get out of it.

Specialist stuff is annoying. I'm hoping that there won't be too many or any that are too important... I like being self-sufficient but will make do with sharing the load with some other omnicrafters in the FC.

Really excited regardless, looks like DoH will actually have some use outside of catering to their own progression this patch. :)

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Originally Posted by MN_14

It seems to me that it boils down to single class crafters wanting to have an advantage over a dedicated crafter, while putting in only a fraction of the effort.

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More than that, it boils down to the fact that SE hasn't really liked omnicrafting for awhile, from what I gather. They've never been good at designing recipe balance to combat it , and they took a number of steps throughout ARR to try to curb its influence (through the addition of more and more grind), but they weren't really successful because the level 50 skills were simply too good and too essential. It's likely that they never really intended for omnicrafting to be essential as it was in 2.0, but they didn't want to rock the boat outside of an expansion.

They tried again with 3.0 to discourage omnicrafting with the lockouts on scrips, but they floundered on recipe balance again (and failed to make Specialization strong enough in and of itself), so it has enormous benefits. It's worth noting that Specialization was originally going to have unique recipes from the start (judging by pre-release info, anyway), but for whatever reason they backed away from it, perhaps thinking the lockouts and general crafting structure would make specializing in a few crafts the more common path. Since that didn't work, they may be putting the recipes back in as another way to tackle what they see as a problem (and for what it's worth, I agree with them, but I don't begrudge any longterm omnicrafters for being upset about this).

It's difficult to guess at their intent just yet, since we don't know the nature and variety of the specialization recipes, though. We'll have to wait and see.

I highly doubt it's going to be the end of the world, though.