4.05 crafting disappointment

You can edit your post to go past the 1k character limit. Also you mean Prudent Touch, not Precise Touch. :P

Also I don't get why people want starred crafts to be a "puzzle". Sure a puzzle may be fun to solve the first time, but what about the 2nd time? The 10th time? The 100th time? Do you really want to spend that much time and effort every single time you craft something from a master book?

SE has repeatedly said they wanted to make Materia easier to get in Stormblood. Sure Crafters currently do not have a reliable source of G6 outside of Mutamix's RNG but we can easily get all the other grades through Ixal or Red Scrips. Why is this an issue?

And one last thing; why can't SE add new powerful skills? Do you want us to use Hasty Touch forever?

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Originally Posted by magnanimousCynic

You can edit your post to go past the 1k character limit. Also you mean Prudent Touch, not Precise Touch. :P

Also I don't get why people want starred crafts to be a "puzzle". Sure a puzzle may be fun to solve the first time, but what about the 2nd time? The 10th time? The 100th time? Do you really want to spend that much time and effort every single time you craft something from a master book?

SE has repeatedly said they wanted to make Materia easier to get in Stormblood. Sure Crafters currently do not have a reliable source of G6 outside of Mutamix's RNG but we can easily get all the other grades through Ixal or Red Scrips. Why is this an issue?

And one last thing; why can't SE add new powerful skills? Do you want us to use Hasty Touch forever?

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I know you said reliable, but spiritbonding is REALLY a lot easier to do now this time. You don't have to waste on 1 star crafts. Get the ALC spiritbonding potion, Better crowned pie, NQ vendor gear with 2 materia melds instead of 1, and craft away on mats like Gazelle Leathers, Molybdenum Ingots, Persimmon Tannin, Twinthread/Twinsilk, Zelkova Lumber. You can get it done quickly. The lumber can be made to make HQ of the right side of gear to use one materia to spiritbond faster.

I've been getting 2-3 per time I spiritbond.

I haven't tried spiritbonding 4.0 crafter sets yet as I only have CRP+BSM at 70 and I want to get more crafters to 70 first.

Also doesn't only one spiritbonding boost work at a time? I thought I remember reading that on the FFXIV subreddit. If it's true then you only need either the Potion or Pie. I wouldn't know as the last time I truly did spiritbonding was for G1 Crafting materia in North Shroud before the Ixal gave them out like candy. And even earlier than that was buying the i45 Mor Dhona gear and spiritbonding that for the slim chance of G4 red materia at Urth's Fount! ;-;

That's the point - if you want to craft effectively as hell, you should be forced to play the puzzle, not just click 1 button. It's removing the point of even having this puzzle with so many skills in the first place. Like being a WHM and only having Cure as the only skill you need to use to win each encounter.

When I was leveling 1-50, I had constantly changing stats and craft requirements so every time the puzzle was slightly different and I would have to adjust accordingly every time to craft a good batch of it.

Come specializations and you have a whole different ballpark of gameplay where, depending on the RNG, you have to dynamically change how you will be solving the puzzle. Planning becomes in the moment. Last night I crafted 30 palladium ingots using only NQ onion soup for CP past the min req and always starting with Initial Preparations and the Whistle stacks. Were the puzzles fast? Hell no, I had to stop to think every 3-4 moves. Was it effective? I hit a constant 90%-95% from all NQ towards the end of it, once I got the hang of abusing all the spec skills. Was it fun? I hadn't had that much fun crafting in ages! Every puzzle is a little different due to more or less IP, good/exe procs early. It becomes much less reliable gameplay and 70-80% touches start to get used more often, but you always have reclaim so while a chance to fail appears, the average becomes much greater. Reaching that strong average and reclaiming the bad rng is how I think the puzzle should stand. It's a whole skillset to learn to abuse spec skills.

As it stands, you have 3 openers: MaMa, IP(if spec) and MM.

MM for quick crafting at much less reliability.
MaMa for very long crafting sessions with a lot of reliability. Whistles can be put in here too for added power. It's easy 100%
IP for specialist crafting with, imo, the most potential to push the HQ marker without spending 30 turns spamming FS.
Of the 3, IP is completely unmacroable and by far most enjoyable to use, but you need to play smart and you won't always get 100%. While MM, which should be the WORST opener, but FASTEST, is atm enough for 100%. That should not be the case. MM should only be effective to HQ that which you already outgear or to do NQ items only.

As it stands, having 3 openers, each with a distinct style of "fast, stable-but-long,unstable-but-most-potent" is amazing, yet there is no NEED to make a choice. I also don't like how MaMa combos with Whistles so well that it's in many cases superior to IP. I need to do more testing on that one to be sure, though. Need more hard math on IP's CP savings.

This isn't really different from your battle class leveling. You had to figure out your skills as you leveled. However, once you got to end game you pretty much figured out "best practices" at the end. Mag is right. There doesn't need to be a way to solve the puzzle once figured out. It would be like trying to figure out a raid every time (some may like more RNG in it, but that's another topic).

While people are complaining about the new skills, keep in mind not everyone is also set out to be an omni crafter or did not level other crafters to use all the skills in a lot of rotations/macros. So they may have a different challenge than an omni crafter. Remove those cross class skills and come up with rotations without Byregot's Blessing, and so forth.

So with that, I'm curious to see what end game rotations people have without those cross skills.

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Originally Posted by QT_Melon

While people are complaining about the new skills, keep in mind not everyone is also set out to be an omni crafter or did not level other crafters to use all the skills in a lot of rotations/macros. So they may have a different challenge than an omni crafter. Remove those cross class skills and come up with rotations without Byregot's Blessing, and so forth.

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Precisely this. From a design perspective, endgame crafting difficulty should be based on the skill sets available to those who only level a single DoH. It should be difficult but doable (though not with 100% reliability from all NQ materials) to anyone with only a single DoH class leveled. So long as cross-class skills exist, those with more crossclass skills available to them will have an easier time. That's a side effect of the system according to this design.

The fact is that the efficacy gap between having a single DoH leveled and all of them leveled with all crossclass capabilities is too wide to make endgame crafts difficult yet attainable for both ends of the spectrum.

That brings me to the Specialist system. While it would seem that the initial intention of the Specialist system was to decrease that gap, in implementation it failed miserably to do so. Even with the addition of powerful Specialist actions in Stormblood, the Specialist system still does not come close on its own to comparing to the power of a full set of crossclass skills. The gap between single-DoH specialists and full crossclass suite omnicrafters is still too wide for both ends of the spectrum to achieve difficult yet realistically possible crafts.

Personally, my only stance on this topic is that the hardest of crafts should be semi-reliably achievable with the most clever usage of skills available to any one specialist DoH (without crossclass skills). I otherwise make no assertions that the current balance is fine or not, or that they should change any particular thing in any particular way. This is just a short analysis of why the current system is the way it is from a design perspective. Glean from it what you will.

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Originally Posted by Vandril

Personally, my only stance on this topic is that the hardest of crafts should be semi-reliably achievable with the most clever usage of skills available to any one specialist DoH (without crossclass skills).

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I honestly want to see someone try to make the 2-star stuff with only the level 15 cross-class.

I'm glad they've made crafting accessible and all, but now it's just far too unbalanced IMO, especially with Manipulation II and Prudent Touch, I hope they do away with how this scales later in the expansion, now the market is currently just flooded with people that can, at best, press 2 buttons rather than needing to think of a rotation. I understand crafting is like a mathematical question, once you know the formula it's just plug it in, but it was the RNG in the first place that prevented this mess. I never see NQ end products on the market anymore, before this it was at least 2 NQ per item, Which as much as I hated it, I'd love it to return. Doing commission crafts right now is a pointless endeavour, you're at a significant loss for profits on many of the items you'd commission unless people provided the materials + tip, in which case they'd still be better off buying the end products anyway. Again, I'm hoping this mess doesn't scale well later in the expansion, or they just give up entirely with this cross class system, and give us all equal class skills from either a pool, or higher level abilities, similarly to what they done with Rapid Synth II and Hasty Touch II, but extend it to skills such as Piece by Piece and Ingenuity, though Ingenuity I'd much rather have tied to specialist system. At least then all crafters are on equal footing in terms of crafting. Contrary to my reply below, they've pretty much made omni, to an extent more mandatory than it's ever been. With low prices and all, sure, you can make all items in the game on the standard Lv.15 cross class, with some extent of RNG, you NQ that, I can comfortably say on the majority of servers that's a profit-loss, some servers have the new 2** items going for 200k at HQ, NQ that you may as well just discard it, nobody is going to buy that unless the cost of item < cost of grade VI materia. I'd much rather just halt that for the time being and get the mandatory cross-class, and make RNG irrelevant entirely. The only real, quick solution to this would be putting specialist recipes back, even then when you can HQ something with 0 RNG from all NQ on minimum melds + tea (Company control buff), just seems, in my eyes it's having abilities for the sake of, having abilities rather than having it somewhat as a puzzle which is what it was in ARR + HW.

Again, I like they've made crafting accessible, but making it too accessible, in the end only ends up cutting the 'little guy' out.

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Originally Posted by magnanimousCynic

I honestly want to see someone try to make the 2-star stuff with only the level 15 cross-class.

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If this includes the abilities native to the respective class you have at 70 then it wouldn't be as difficult as you'd think (E.g. Can use Muscle Memory, Manip II as a CUL, or Ingenuity II as a BSM). CUL is rather easy to have a rotation that works, similarly, with most crafts, albeit a little more challenging than CUL. Currently, just some favourable RNG.

Only HQ Fennel was used:
https://image.ibb.co/cYBJ9k/Level_15.jpg

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Originally Posted by magnanimousCynic

I honestly want to see someone try to make the 2-star stuff with only the level 15 cross-class.

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Here you go. I took on this challenge of "Not using any level 50 cross class skills". It was actually fun.
http://i.imgur.com/pxoedfy.jpg
Ok, I did cheat a little bit. I equipped "Reclaim" which is a level 50 skill, and I reclaimed twice.
At first, I tried to use Initial Preparation + Reflect together with the Whistle system. That didn't work.
Then I tried using Initial Prep + Refurbish with Whistle. That didn't work well either.
At the end, I used Maker's Mark + Flawless Syn together with Whistle. That worked out. I used 3x Patient Touch to quickly increase IQ, and then used a lot of Innovative Touch. When I was sitting at IQ11 with Innovative Touch active, each Hasty Touch added a crap load of quality. For progress, at first I used SH II + Ingen1 + Rapid Syn II x 3. Then I used Trained Hand, and finished up with 2x CS III.
This was my stats... I was using HQ tempura.
http://i.imgur.com/Ed60JDJ.jpg

How about one with NONE of the cross skills, like someone just leveled up one crafter to 70. What rotations would each class have?

This is getting creepy.

Anyways, I sat down for a bit and worked on a 40 durability rotation using no cross class skills and no specialist actions for zelkova lumber. (I haven't finished getting my books so I couldn't do anything 2 star)

It's quick and dirty and pretty RNG, but it works, I guess? It was more an experiment to see how simple I could get with things. I was using an HQ Seafood Stew, so my stats were 1104 Craftsmanship, 1096 Control, and 515 CP.

Inner Quiet - Steady Hand - Rapid Synthesis 2 - Careful Synthesis 3 - Patient Touch - Master's Mend - Patient Touch - Steady Hand - Hasty Touch 2 - Hasty Touch 2 - Master's Mend - Hasty Touch 2 - Hasty Touch 2 - Steady Hand - Hasty Touch 2 - Master's Mend - Hasty Touch 2 - Prudent Touch - Prudent Touch - Steady Hand - Prudent Touch - Prudent Touch - Basic Synthesis

http://i.imgur.com/uUt2bpd.png

I'm trying to finish getting my books today, so I'll work on a 2 star rotation later, hopefully.

(I think the screenshot is from the rotation where I got a lot of good procs...oh well)

I don't get it. I just thought it would be fun for those that wanted to solve a puzzle mentioned a few posts ago and just suggested to try it without any cross skills if they wanted a challenge for fun.

Why did you come in and make personal attacks?

Don't know why he bothered with the attacks, but what was the puzzle again? Make something hard with no CC skills? Its doable now with all the skills learned in the 50's and 60's, especially with well melded i290 gear. Its not a challenge, not like the Lucis hand ins were back in late 2.x. Its just simultaneously less efficient and a demonstration that finally, a monocrafter class can actually compete with an omnicrafter.

Yeah this is optional some people thought the idea was fun, no one is forced to participate. XD

It just spawned from the discussion that the skills were likely powered the way they are for a person with a single crafter leveled and using scrip gear or a few lightly melded pieces. So that that person doesn't feel like they need to level every crafter.

No, it just helps tremendously to have all the crafting classes leveled up to get to the point where you don't need cross class abilities anymore ... I'm not really sure how much that's an improvement, but I suppose that people could take the slow and lazy route of ixali and moogles to 50 and 60 respectively, using bought leve hand ins as dictated by impatience.

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Originally Posted by magnanimousCynic

Also I don't get why people want starred crafts to be a "puzzle". Sure a puzzle may be fun to solve the first time, but what about the 2nd time? The 10th time? The 100th time? Do you really want to spend that much time and effort every single time you craft something from a master book?

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We are going to have to spend time and effort crafting whether we do it manually or click macros. I'd much rather spend 20 minutes manually crafting to make 10 mil rather than an hour clicking and watching macros to make the same amount because prices have dropped so low. Unless you are rolling with a 84 step flawless synth rotation it takes less than 60 seconds to manually craft something, a macro will just make it take longer and be less efficient.

This topic is hilarious, people complain about "is too easy" but then complain in another topic that x thing is too hard or annoying. It's always the same.

Anyway, SE should granted your wish and enforce some nasty RNG for top tier crafting, they can copy past how moonstones worked in Aion: every time an advanced melding fails you lost all materia in that piece of gear. Pair that with stats that can only be met with a full melded set and boom! everyone crying for their mama. ^^ (don't you worry, this never going to happen).

Also, they should invalidate the macro system for DoH skill since complains about "macro this or macro that" is so common in this topic. (again, never going to happen don't you worry).

HARDCORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111111111111111

In a more serious note, SE really needs to rethink the NQ/HQ system, it's not normal that you can HQ an item using just NQ materials. For example, if you don't use any HQ materials the max amount of HQ should be 0%, not to increase crafting difficulty per se but to increase gathering HQ materials value. But, if they something like that they should change other things like the number of materials required to be more manageable.

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Originally Posted by Driavna

In a more serious note, SE really needs to rethink the NQ/HQ system, it's not normal that you can HQ an item using just NQ materials. For example, if you don't use any HQ materials the max amount of HQ should be 0%, not to increase crafting difficulty per se but to increase gathering HQ materials value. But, if they something like that they should change other things like the number of materials required to be more manageable.

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I'm wondering if they did it due to the complaints on inventory space. This way people can reduce the stack amounts in their inventory. They wanted to expand the space, and gave users X amount of slots, but in recent interviews they're having problems apparently increasing that amount even more.

I think they just tuned crafting to be easier. There was not inventory concerns etc.

There are people out there who need HQ mats to HQ.

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Originally Posted by Cleanse

I think they just tuned crafting to be easier. There was not inventory concerns etc.

There are people out there who need HQ mats to HQ.

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Ehhh....

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post4303576

It may be a bit of both, but to give you an idea how the current inventory works, is that this is apparently inherited from legacy code. The inventory system still uses design from FFXI (2002) since the game was originally trying to repeat the success of that title. The inventory system has created quite a bit of technical debt. What the game does in order to prevent as little loss of your items as possible (as well as cheat prevention) is that creates a capture point/transfer of all your inventory every 15 seconds.

It does this for example, every time you zone or queue into duty.

Now that we keep accruing materials for crafting, what is one thing that happens often? We have multiple stacks, HQ and NQ needed for crafting. If they are having issues with giving us more inventory, what is one way to alleviate the situation?

Reduce the need for HQ, therefore allowing players to consolidate stacks of items into 1. Now you won't need HQ mats to make HQ items. You won't have to have 2 separate slots of the same item. Lower quality, and resort, less taxing space on the player and retainers they own.

Side effects: "dumbs down crafting" less need for HQ at this time. It may come later if they can come up with a solution for inventory, or if they get enough feedback that players will "no longer craft" because it's too easy.

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Originally Posted by Caimie_Tsukino

4.05 crafting disappointment

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It's not just a disappointment, it's a disaster.

Two new ridiculously overpowered skills that render most other skills useless, remove any variety or decision making in rotations or how much to spend on melding.

By extension they also destroy the gathering game by making hq items worthless.

The crafting dev team is better than this, it's almost like a producer walked in screaming "make it easier" and they just chopped CP costs.

Crafting is permanently broken until they increase the CP costs on Prudent and Manipulation II.

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Originally Posted by QT_Melon

Ehhh....

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post4303576

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This is all conspiratorial, and shows no proof of them making crafting easier for bag space reasons.

People are still having random HQ ingredients pop into their bags as they gather for themselves, some people feel safer with a certain % to start a craft off with, etc. Aside from those that have the gear and know-how to use full NQ mats... which is probably a small number, SE's net gain on server resources is minimal.

If they wanted to ease their servers and allot for more bag space by eliminating the need for HQ materials, they would have scrapped the ability to gather HQ items from new nodes at the start of the xpack. This is either intended to get more people crafting or was an 'oversight' when trying to add cool new abilities.

You realize "reducing" is not synonymous with "eliminate"

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Originally Posted by QT_Melon

You realize "reducing" is not synonymous with "eliminate"

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Yes, as he said...

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Originally Posted by Cleanse

People are still having random HQ ingredients pop into their bags as they gather for themselves, some people feel safer with a certain % to start a craft off with, etc. Aside from those that have the gear and know-how to use full NQ mats... which is probably a small number, SE's net gain on server resources is minimal.

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There's tons of simpler, more realistic reasons that SE would have made crafting easier. Your explanation honestly sounds like less a reason and more a very tiny side effect. This would have an extremely minimal effect on server stress even on a large scale. So minimal, in fact, that I doubt it's even by a measurable extent.

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Originally Posted by Lulza

Two new ridiculously overpowered skills that render most other skills useless, remove any variety or decision making in rotations or how much to spend on melding.

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What do Prudent Touch and Manipulation II have anything to do with melding? Feels like you're just throwing that out there.

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Originally Posted by Lulza

By extension they also destroy the gathering game by making hq items worthless.

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Haven't we consistently had rotations throughout the patches that required minimal or no HQ mats for 100%? HQ materials will always be valuable to those who don't have the best gear, don't use the best rotations, or are using the minimal melds required.

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Originally Posted by Lulza

The crafting dev team is better than this, it's almost like a producer walked in screaming "make it easier" and they just chopped CP costs.

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Have you ever considered that they do want crafting to be easier so more people do it? The 61-70 skills are a good indicator that they want inexperienced crafters to have an easier time to craft items. Is there a problem with that?

Besides, our rotations will naturally become better over time. Since we keep getting more and more CP while rotations stay at somewhat the same duration, we will naturally make better rotations with higher HQ% chance.

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Originally Posted by Lulza

Crafting is permanently broken until they increase the CP costs on Prudent and Manipulation II.

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Do people not want new and better skills? Unless you want SE to make skills that are worse than what we had or skills that are too niche for general use (3.0 Specialist), then we will eventually get skills that are better than our old ones.

Seriously. It seems like some crafters here developed Stockholm Syndrome with their relationship to Hasty Touch.

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Originally Posted by Vandril

There's tons of simpler, more realistic reasons that SE would have made crafting easier. Your explanation honestly sounds like less a reason and more a very tiny side effect. This would have an extremely minimal effect on server stress even on a large scale. So minimal, in fact, that I doubt it's even by a measurable extent.

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And he also said right after

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If they wanted to ease their servers and allot for more bag space by eliminating the need for HQ materials, they would have scrapped the ability to gather HQ items from new nodes at the start of the xpack. This is either intended to get more people crafting or was an 'oversight' when trying to add cool new abilities.

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So again, reduction is not equivalent to eliminate. When you multiply the factor of how many items can be consolidated that "tiny amount" adds up for a player having to juggle mats. Don't confuse "less stress" on the servers, as a way to not have to include more inventory slots for the players. They're making it easier for player to decide if they need both stacks of materials in their inventory instead of adding more slots.

Think of it as SE giving us a shoe tree and shelves to figure out how to organize things instead of worrying about where they need to knock down a wall and make a bigger closet.

Like I said, and you bolded, if it was an intentional way to ease bag space / server stress they would have stopped making HQ materials be a thing, but they didn't.

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Originally Posted by QT_Melon

They're making it easier for player to decide if they need both stacks of materials in their inventory instead of adding more slots.

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Unintentionally.

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Originally Posted by magnanimousCynic

What do Prudent Touch and Manipulation II have anything to do with melding? Feels like you're just throwing that out there.

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They're so strong that you don't need to meld much, not to the level you needed to before.

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Have you ever considered that they do want crafting to be easier so more people do it? The 61-70 skills are a good indicator that they want inexperienced crafters to have an easier time to craft items. Is there a problem with that?

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It's obvious they wanted crafting to be easier, but for those of us who have been dedicated crafters for a while, we just want something that makes our work feel worthwhile.

Nobody is saying they don't want new skills. Nobody is saying they don't want other people to be able to craft. It would just be nice if there was a set of crafts for those who want to have a bit of a challenge, instead of just hitting a button and AFKing.

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Originally Posted by QT_Melon

Don't confuse "less stress" on the servers, as a way to not have to include more inventory slots for the players.

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Originally Posted by QT_Melon

It may be a bit of both, but to give you an idea how the current inventory works, is that this is apparently inherited from legacy code. The inventory system still uses design from FFXI (2002) since the game was originally trying to repeat the success of that title. The inventory system has created quite a bit of technical debt. What the game does in order to prevent as little loss of your items as possible (as well as cheat prevention) is that creates a capture point/transfer of all your inventory every 15 seconds.

It does this for example, every time you zone or queue into duty.

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What you're describing in your earlier quote is how the inventory system the game uses causes server stress. You insinuate that the reason they're having trouble giving us more inventory space is the server stress it causes. If your argument that they made HQ materials almost unnecessary to reduce the need for increased inventory space is to be taken at face value, then you're saying that they made this change because the other solution (actually increasing inventory size) would increase server stress. Perhaps it would have been more eloquent for me to have said "to avoid increasing server stress", but the basis of my point doesn't change either way.

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Originally Posted by QT_Melon

When you multiply the factor of how many items can be consolidated that "tiny amount" adds up for a player having to juggle mats.

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No. No it doesn't add up to a significant amount at all. That's exactly what I was saying. Even on the large scale, the difference is so minimal that it may as well be a margin error. You don't make design decisions based on effects equivalent to margin errors. It's much more reasonable to assume that the effect this has on player inventory is a coincidental side effect of the change rather than even a small part of the reason behind it.

Never underestimate how something "small" stacks up when you have a playerbase this large. If the Devs don't want to add on due to stress, they're going to find ways to alleviate the need for more inventory slots, even more so since there are more patch cycles ahead meaning more items to accrue.

I would like to see some Bind on Pickup 2*+ Glamour added (not marked as DoH only)...aka exclusive glamour for crafters. Ranked PvP / Savage raiders get exclusive stuff so why not crafters?

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Originally Posted by QT_Melon

Never underestimate how something "small" stacks up when you have a playerbase this large. If the Devs don't want to add on due to stress, they're going to find ways to alleviate the need for more inventory slots, even more so since there are more patch cycles ahead meaning more items to accrue.

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Never overestimate it, either. Don't just assume that because the playerbase is large that a tiny effect will grow exponentially on the whole, giving it tangible worth.

I'm a program designer and developer by trade. I'm intimately familiar with data sizes, bandwidth, and processing stresses. Part of my trade is considering the effect of data transfer and manipulation when taking into account gigantic user bases. Using this experience, I can tell you beyond the shadow of a doubt that the change in difficulty of crafts causing the decreased necessity of HQ items will have caused an entirely insignificant change to the overall stress of the system caused by inventory management. The amount of data transfered will have decreased almost not at all, well within the margin of error, and so the difference would be almost unmeasurable.

Ultimately, you could be right in that they made the change specificially or in part for this reason, but given the plethora of other, more realistic and effective reasons out there, not the mention the more effective changes they could have made for your reasoning, it's incredibly unlikely.

Don't get me wrong, though. I love that you put so much thought into this. The effect of lowering server stress/reducing need for increased inventory isn't a connection most people would find obvious. It's just important that we don't see an effect of a decision and assume that's the reason for that decision, spreading it around sounding like it's fact when we honestly don't know why it was done.

We know the pattern of crafting in FF14. We have watched it 2 expansions in a row.

We get level cap, then we get 1 star through 4 star.

Having 'over powered' skills at white and 1 star doesn't tell me they made it easy. It tells me 4 star are going to be batshit crazy hard and we need a high foundation to even consider them. I think what we are seeing is an attempt to scale for run away stat inflation as we level in to the future 80+ range.

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Originally Posted by Ksenia

We know the pattern of crafting in FF14. We have watched it 2 expansions in a row.

We get level cap, then we get 1 star through 4 star.

Having 'over powered' skills at white and 1 star doesn't tell me they made it easy. It tells me 4 star are going to be batshit crazy hard and we need a high foundation to even consider them. I think what we are seeing is an attempt to scale for run away stat inflation as we level in to the future 80+ range.

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Well since you can see the future- can I get lotto numbers?

If HW crafting was any indication, than the only "difficulty" SB will have is through our gear+melds. Rath's rotation was usable for all starred 80 durability Crafts, with 1-star being an issue if you had too much Craftsmanship. There was also 1-star 40 Durability crafts but they were not many of those.

But since Maker's Mark is dead for anyone who likes to finish a craft somewhat fast who knows if we'll see another catch-all rotation like Rath's was.

Well I can't say much about 4.0 crafting since I haven't really done it yet. But, I was kind of inspired by your crafting guide back in the 2.0 days. Kind of encouraged me to make all of that twinthread. :)

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Originally Posted by Ksenia

It tells me 4 star are going to be batshit crazy hard and we need a high foundation to even consider them. I think what we are seeing is an attempt to scale for run away stat inflation as we level in to the future 80+ range.

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I'm kinda thinking the same, and the meld caps on the 70 crafting gear are ridiculously high. There is still hope for a decent crafter update.

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Originally Posted by Avenger

Well I can't say much about 4.0 crafting since I haven't really done it yet. But, I was kind of inspired by your crafting guide back in the 2.0 days. Kind of encouraged me to make all of that twinthread. :)

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Thanks! That was the time when I refused to put in a single rotation in a crafting guide. To me, crafting has always been a puzzle-solving game (ok, it's a game of math too, so let's call it a mathematical puzzle-solving game), so I thought giving "hints" was better than actual "answers". Because once the answers are out, then a big chunk of fun would be gone. However, at the end, I remember the guide was being described as "the near-perfect guide except there was no rotations"... Obviously, a large group of people who were looking for rotations didn't find what they were looking for. In Heavensward, I gave up to the majority of people, and put in a gazillion rotations in "spoilers".

We are here now in Storm Blood, and I was preparing to write up a guide... only to find that there is not very much to write up about. Leveling was pretty much the same. At lower levels, grind your 40 durab items... Particularly at level 60, grind level 58/59 40 durab items until lvl 61. Do turn-in's for your GC every day... never miss one. BUY some of the items from MB if they're cheap. Use "Ctrl U" on keyboard to check them easily while standing at the marketboard. Then take on crafting log / massively HQ a ton of 40 durab items. To do this, make sure you come up with the very best macro that fits your own stats (which is reasonably fun in designing these macros). When level 65, take on class quests, and make sure you learn Manipulation II. Manip II + Prudent Touch = OP, and now you wanna re-vamp your rotations, and incorporate these skills in there. Then BAM, you can easily take on the rest of the levels... at lvl 66 to 69, time to push leves, and BAM, easily lvl 70. Leveling up gathering and battle retainers is pretty much a MUST unless you're a millionaire. Then easily grab those new master books, and have some fun with 1 star and 2 star items... How? Macro them with ease! The "answers" are all on this forum... In fact, there're multiple answers that all work fine. But as you can see, that's pretty much it with Storm Blood crafting for now. There's really not much to write up a guide about at the moment.

Anyway, the old "Twinthread" from ARR has been renamed as "Silk Thread" now in Storm Blood.
A new "Twinthread" is now made from "Twincoons"... both are SB items.
The old "Crawler Cocoon" that was used to make the "old Twinthread" in ARR was renamed as "Silkworm Cocoon" in Heavensward (which is now used for making "Silk Thread").
And the new "Crawler Cocoon" introduced in Heavensward is now used for making "Crawler Silk"... both HW items.
So now all the names of the cocoons match nicely with the thread names.

I wanted to get into crafting this expac but I still can't understand any of it.

@ChameleonMS:

I'll start a new thread... so I'd ask you to please take a look.