Has crafting been fixed? (Back from a break)

So despite what the title says, I MAY be back from an 8 month break depending on where crafting is now.

8 months ago, crafting was locked behind an unending amount of caps, such as scrip limits and absurdly rare materials that costed several hundred thousand gil.

You could never truly enjoy crafting difficult recipes as the only challenge was 2 stars of which you were limited to a few crafts a week.

So, my questions:

1. Can I enjoy difficult crafts more frequently now, being able to craft many a day?

2. How useful is crafting right now? Is the iLevel gap still huge?

3. Is there more reliance on specializations?

4. Will it take me several years to gear up as before?

5. What do we have in store for 3.3? Anything to look forward to?Guesses?

The highest level recipes are locked behind Specializations and some rather high stat minimums (850 craft, 820 control). However, you can craft i220 combat gear, which is the same ilevel as Alexander: Midas gear, and some use it as a catch up until they are able to get the i230 Lore gear.

Crafting (and Gathering) gear is still at the i170 crafted, i180 bought level. If you are not geared up in that stuff now (which it sounds like you were not when you went on break) it will still take you weeks of gathering to craft your i170 gear, or months of gathering and crafting to get the i180 gear. The only change here is that instead of getting 5 refinement materials per Favor hand in you get 15 - enough for three refined materials (get 15 Purified Coke, instead of 5, for example).

3.3, expect 850/820, and probably locked behind Specializations, generic crafting/gathering gear. That is, it is not supposed to be class-specific, any class can wear it. Also expect the current 3 star recipes to be removed from behind the Specialists Only Wall.

Patch 3.3 will add the all-classes DOH gear, significantly reducing the grind, as well as a new additional method of obtaining crafters' materia.

Crafted item level 220 battle gear that was added in patch 3.2 is very quick and easy to make, with no lockouts and generously priced materials to buy with tomestones, including HQ.

Specialist locked recipes only remain restricted until the very next major patch after they were introduced. So all the IL 220 gear will require no specialisation soon, but new specialist recipes will be introduced.

Crafting was never that bad to begin with. At the time when it took really long to get the best gear, that was before 3-star recipes were introduced so there was no actual need to have the gear sets completed really fast. And the materials locked behind caps at least made you some good money due to rarity. They added alternative uncapped ways to get those same mats back in patch 3.1. More recently they added them to dungeon loot.

I do almost expect higher stat requirement like a 4star craft for all DoH/DoL stuff
Achizvable with an mid high level pièce (just like the old ilevel70 glass/tools)
And/or à 3star craft requiring comp from the new trib

So expect new farm
And new rotation research

1. Can I enjoy difficult crafts more frequently now, being able to craft many a day?
Yes they fixed the ingredient numbers for red scripts. They are STILL a huge amount of work and investment. And there will be more script updates in 3.3 (but we're not sure what exactly)

2. How useful is crafting right now? Is the iLevel gap still huge?
The iLevel gap is no longer huge, crafed gear matches the best non lore/savage drops. Hense crafted armor/accessories are very useful at gearing up to start savage Midas raiding content. This meant during the initial patch drop the armor/accessories were in EXTREMELY high demand. SE appears to want to stay with this model where the optimal savage gearing preparation process includes a mix of crafted gear and and weekly token gear.

3. Is there more reliance on specializations?
Specializations now lock the current relevant crafting content. Then each patch SE will take all of those recipes and unlock them for everyone, but in return lock all the new recipies to specializations. This makes specializations critical to current crafting work and a must have.

4. Will it take me several years to gear up as before?
Because the material gains from the red script system were increased by a factor of three the time has changed from several months to several weeks. With this said there are some gearing "hacks" using weird materia melds, high Crafting/control food, etc to reach the three star requirements without having all perfect shiny blue BIS crafting gear.

5. What do we have in store for 3.3? Anything to look forward to?Guesses?
3.3 will be bringing new crafting and gathering armor which is shared. We don't know if accessories are coming or not. The new crafting/gathering armor is probably oriented toward being "catchup" to try and even the playing field, so I'm not anticipating the stats to be much better (if at all) than the current blue BIS crafting gear. We do know some kind of good is going to require the script system again, but I'm not sure what. We'll also get some new glamours

You missed the peak sadly, crafting was absolutely amazing when this current patch hit. If you had the class-specific gear you easily made millions selling the new 220 stuff.

It's still good now, but prices have dropped dramatically.

Also, several years? o.O I geared up all three of my specializations in a couple weeks during 3.1. Even switched alchemist to armorer at one point and geared armorer up in less than a day. I think you're exaggerating. Do gathering favors and craft the gear yourself, it's not THAT bad.

Of course they did make it so favors give more materials now, so you'd be able to do it even faster than I did.

Thanks for all the replies. It seems that a good amount of the issues have been fixed or improved on so I'll likely be returning. I don't mind missing out on the initial boom at the start of 3.2, I can just recoup that with 3.3.

I do wish that the scrip system would be entirely removed, however.

We don't know what, but they have also said that the Scrip system is being changed in some way in 3.3. (Sorry if someone already mentioned this, I just woke up and coffee hasn't kicked in yet).

LOL Fixed! I mean adapt or die is the way it is with all the crafting in this game. I am always pumped to see what the heck Yoshi thinks up next to mess with us. I have been crafting for 2+ years and many have been in it much longer and then I still see people like Kat and Jade and Roth who suprise the hell outta me on these forums. No way around it though, look forward to some serious grinding b/c scripting alone will in no way get you prepared to craft in 3.3 because you have a lot of lost time unless you have a good amount of gil stashed to just go all out right now. Good Luck!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Katlyna

The new crafting/gathering armor is probably oriented toward being "catchup" to try and even the playing field, so I'm not anticipating the stats to be much better (if at all) than the current blue BIS crafting gear.

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We know that they will be the final DOH/DOL sets for Lv60 characters, and there's still one more tier of battle gear to come later in patch 3.4 where the crafted sets will likely be Item Level 250 and difficulty 4-stars. So I would expect the new DOH gear to be a little bit improved in order to handle the final tier of Lv60 master recipes that are added later. I'm fine if they aren't better, because I already completed all 11 sets of the IL 170/180 DOH/L gear and it would be nice to not make those obsolete, but I think we will need some kind of stat boost from somewhere for 4-star crafting, if not from gear then there'd need to be huge stat meals to consume and wider availability of grade V crafters' materia.