Yes. Just like you can earn landmarks with IS currency :) You're complaining about having to pay for/make a skin for a landmark. Why aren't you complaining that you have to pay for/make a skin for your gear?
Printable View
Truly, this was the best case scenario for a new expert recipe, for all the reasons mentioned above. I've tried it a couple of times and it's brutal. I'll try some more and eventually leave it alone. In a year's time, the gear will improve and the recipe will be much easier. Of course, in a month's time, the price should be reasonable. ;)
Right there is where I'm confused. What does casual content that was meant to be separate from the regular grind have to do with crafters wanting more challenging content? The entire premise of the island is that your crafting levels aren't important there. Hell, they start off making you craft a NEW hatchet just to reinforce that your gathering/crafting jobs don't mean anything on the island...until they do.
I don't really have a horse in this race if I'm honest, I think the Island Sanctuary is disappointing, but I can see why people would be frustrated that the "end-game" of the Island Sanctuary is just more of the same.
Land marks do affect the groove bonus of your workshops. Though if the water odder otter fountain offered a higher groove bonus then say the light house, would it then be worthy to complain?(Not saying it does, Tomes are only affected by the amount of landmarks placed.) In some correlation regardless it does affect the tomes gathered from your workshop. In essences from an aesthetic stand point, if you don't like one of the land marks solely made through the island and left with a open land mark spot, one is left with less groove processing status for their workshop, than one with all four land mark spots filled. They should also make the parts available for green scripts as green scripts are completely useless, unless you like the X materia for crafting/gathering, but that is a way to gain gil, but at the same time its meant to drive down the X materia that gathering/crafting cost have. I wouldn't mind it being a crafted set, if it wasn't an expertise craft. Crafted Raid gear should honestly be the expertise crafts, it would give normal raids a more meaningful reason to do and find different forms of out putting the most damage in the shortest amount of time before getting max ilvl. It also makes crafters/gatherers more valuable. So what if the 1% of the hard core raiders rage at it.
Edit- Especially with savage being delayed 1 week, more so the reason to release current crafted gear as an expertise craft.
If you clear an ultimate, you get special adventurer plate items you can use -- backgrounds, borders, accents, etc. Adventurer plates do not require ultimates, but content you get from ultimates is relevant to adventurer plates.
If you complete an extreme trial, you can sometimes get a rare crafting material; this lets you craft a glowy weapon or a neat housing item. Housing is not, inherently, tied to extreme trials... but there are things you can get from extreme trials you can put in houses. Houses do not require these things, of course, but you can put them in there.
I view the fountain as being the same sort of thing. In fact, I would be shocked if they didn't have other island perks planned as unlocks from other content, not just crafting. Likely as landmarks or alternate appearances for things. Maybe eventually you can trade in two TEA totems for a chunk of Alexander you can drop on your island as a landmark! Who knows?
Is it unfortunate? Maybe; I'm of two minds on it. One half of me says "I see why folks who really like Island Sanctuary want 100% of everything possible on the island to be tied to the island and have nothing on the island even acknowledge the existence of other parts of the game at all". But the other half says "people don't have houses, but do want places to show off things -- whereas everyone does have an Island Sanctuary, if they want one, so there are worse places to put cosmetics not tied directly to Island Sanctuary than in Island Sanctuary."
But, again, none of this -- nothing I've said, nothing anyone else has said -- changes the fact that the devs never promised that Island Sanctuary might not be affected by other systems and parts of the game. They promised the inverse: that Island Sanctuary would not, itself, affect other parts and would thus never be required content. And that you could unlock your island and engage in all the core gameplay loop there without a DoL or DoH job.
Edit: Since I let myself get somewhat sidetracked there... I think where folks are butting heads/disagreeing is that some folks are viewing Island Sanctuary as wholly self-contained and feel that anything possible to put there forever and always should only be in the Sanctuary, whereas other folks -- myself included -- are looking at Island Sanctuary as maybe a basis where SQEX can let people put things you obtain elsewhere in the game going forward, since everyone has an Island Sanctuary. As opposed to making stuff you can earn to show off be just "Yet More Housing Items (BTW, Sorry You Don't Have a House)".
(Or, for that matter, having seasonal events give you housing items; wouldn't it be nicer if those seasonal events gave, for instance, Island Sanctuary landmarks, or alternate appearances for things? Yeah, it would mean engaging in content outside of Island Sanctuary, but I suspect a lot of people would find more use in, say, a lovely cherry tree with falling blossoms and a picnic laid out beneath it as an Island Sanctuary landmark unlock, as opposed to yet another outdoor housing decor item.)
Because I can earn equivalent gear by playing combat content? Did you just skip over the entirety of my post? You can earn Tome gear and Normal mode gear through battle content and not need to have a crafter leveled.
You can't buy the materials for the fountain no matter how many cowries you farm. The only way to get the fountain landmark is to spend millions of gil on the materials on the marketboard or have pentamelded level 90 crafters.
It wouldn't be a problem if they let you buy the materials for cowries earned on the island.
None of those activities involve crafting or gathering them. But if you need an example of something more difficult, materials that drop from extreme fights. All of which can be bought off other players so it's not like you absolutely need to do the content to get it. But they are examples of crafters relying on battlecraft (and Chad gatherers don't rely on anyone).
All that said, I would have preferred if they kept it as an island-earned thing, even if I've made lots of gil off selling the stuff. Or at least put the materials in the island itself. But what can I say. They're weird. At least it got me to go fishing.
I just finished to make the Water Otter Fountain permit and crafted them mats by myself and to be honest, doing Expert Craft to get Saint of the Firmament and Skybuilder relic tools really paid off. The method still same but with EW skills.
You guys should've tried it at least the trial synthesis to be honest, it's pretty fun :)
Why would you spend 6-10 mil gil to have a useless item sitting in an instanced area that perhapse a small number of aquaintances see maybe 1x??? Takes all kinds, housing is bad enough lol.
Some people just like to have nice things to look at, whether it's this fountain or some mogstation item.
You saying this already tells me you never ever did the full ARR relic chain because newsflash one of the steps actually requires you to craft and desynth items and it's the worst thing ever. So yeah they've done it before, learned their lesson and I'm pretty sure they'll never do something like this again
Now that's masochism.
That said, it's not actually required; the step in question (where you need an HQ furnace ring and HQ perfect firewood, I think it is?) will let you also just buy the material off the marketboard. But otherwise you need to craft it yourself, and to craft it, one of the components is an item that you only get by desynthing some stuff you buy from a specific merchant.
Ive completed the whole thing 3 times amongst my 3 characters. It was definitely such a time and gil sink since I had to rely on marketboard to pay such exuberant prices for those needed crafted items. It was hell but hey at least I got those nice ARR weapon glams for some of the jobs that I wanted. Good Luck doing it again!
I wouldn't have even called it "content locked behind expert recipes." Landmarks grant higher groove caps to your workshops. Which you can get without the fountain.
I see it like a mount from a savage raid. Would I like that serpent/firebird thing? Sure! However, the content isn't locked. I can still ride a mount (my free chocobo from level 15 or so). Or any other mount that I manage to get. But if I want that otter fountain, at least I have options to buy it or craft it. If I want that savage mount, I have to clear the savage raid. That's it.
I mean, I personally haven't gone after the fountain yet. I don't really need it. I just understand the mentality behind those that have an obsession with having all the new things first. Would be smarter to wait but can't blame em for dumping gil on things if they have it. Some are walking around the game with billions in retainers and don't see an issue with it/have nothing to spend it on otherwise.