Returning player kind of lost? I miss crafting!

Hello all, I am a returning player that is incredibly lost with all the changes to crafting abilities. This has probably been asked a ton but I couldn't find a direct answer so here is my situation. During Stormblood I put my nose to the grindstone and leveled all crafts and gathering up to 70, and unsubbed immediately after because it was such a drain plugging away day after day and when I made it to max level, when I could finally start making my fancy gear, I quit! :p It was too much and I burned out completely and left the game for over a year.

So I'm back :D I saw there's some very good changes to crafts but I'm also pretty lost for a rotation now. I had a very simple rotation that relied heavily on steady hand 2 and hasty touches, and now hasty touches are basically unusable now without the RNG protection it used to have. I have white 70 NQ vendor gear :p with very very low CP and craftsmanship and the gear that's the next step up on the board is astronomically priced and I am a very poor elezen so that's out of the question. I really love the crafting in this game more than any other mmo but I also don't want to keep wasting and wasting all my mats!

Every rotation I've found online requires several hundred more CP than I have at the moment, so I'm really at a loss what to do now. I've never used a macro (every one I've tried in the past failed for various reasons) In Stormblood had no problem completing custom deliveries as long as I HQ'ed the mats beforehand, but now that is very much not the case. The touches are sucking up so much CP I come nowhere close to finishing the craft. I cannot afford to buy crafting gear/materia and I keep getting removed from guilds for not logging in because I unsub now and then so I don't know any crafters to whip me up some shiny new gears.

I've been directed to teamcraft and I attempted to use the rotation solver, but it also comes no where near completion (granted they had a disclaimer so that's an expected result I guess?) plus it's adding abilities I don't even have at 70 so I'm not sure if this is the best plan. Every longform guide I've found are either made for people that are geared BIS and melded to the gills with mountains of CP or are 5 years out of date and mentioning removed skills. Can anyone direct me to a fresh 70 extremely basic rotation so I have something to build on/get used to the rhythm of crafting again? My craftsmanship is 1060, control 942, CP 394, also any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading.

By level 70, you should have access to several custom delivery NPC options, as well as generally turning in collectibles to Rowena for scrips. Said scrips can be used to purchase (what I assume) reasonably decent there that (I again assume) is likely better than simple NQ vendor gear. That should get you a good boost for starters; collectibles shouldn't be too terribly difficult to manage for what you need.

Can't say for sure, as I'm not really deep in the thick of it, but I'd expect guides are going to be hard to come by with the big changes of 5.1. For rotations, you'll probably find some, not sure how many work with your stats. But, now's as good a time as any to clear everything off your hotbars and read through your skills and set everything up again. We've basically all had to do that recently as we learn how all the changes fit together.

You could also level a bit with Ishgard/leves/custom
Deliveries/gc turn ins/crafting role quests/grinding/etc. and then craft your own lv71+ HQ leveling gear.

Regarding skills fortunately it is simple enough to figure out by reading the descriptions. Also the UI now tells you how much progress you will make.

Also basically all the jobs are the same now so you only need to set up one hotbar and copy it.

also: sh2 going away means more progress slots. Innovation is also now 4 slots. Delicate synth and prudent touch are great. Ingenuity/cs basically replaces rapid synth imho and name/brand basically replaces piece by piece. Numbered skills are coalesced into a single skill. Reflect replaces IQ when you get it. Comfort
Zone is gone but better gear and food and medicine makes up for it. Those are just off the top of my head based on my own experience so YMMV - you will probably come up with your own ideas which is what makes it fun.

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Originally Posted by dullneedles

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Try Zhloe's Custom Deliveries in Idyllshire and get the tools for each DoH using the yellow scrips you get from her. And then once you're done with her, go on over to Rhalgr's Reach and do the same for M'naago. Between the two of them you should get quite a few scrips, surely enough to buy one or two class's Lv70 tools (these are about as good if not slightly better than 71 HQ).

Once you've done that, you can turn in easy items requested by the Appraisers in each of the towns. (Gridania's is right next to the Marketplace, for example) for more scrips and XP.

Then go to the Crystarium if you have access to that, and do the Levequests there to get all of your DoH on 71, the first few are simple and you can just do NQs. Since you've been away for so long, you should have 100 Levequests pooled and ready. Once you get 71, this allows you to get a suit of Lv71 NQ clothes from the Crystarium as well as Lv71 jewelry which should give you a significant boost.

From there, trying to HQ your own clothes and jewelry shouldn't be too difficult. Or you could simply buy the HQs off the Market, they should have come down in price about now (it cost me about 1 million the day 5.1 launched, I bet it's cheaper now).

Or you could use Ishgard Restoration to get your DoH all on 71 and get some scrips in the process.

Once you're 71 with either Scrip or HQ Tools, HQ Clothes and HQ Jewelry, you should be able to HQ everything comparable to your level 100% of the time without needing HQ materials, just about with a few exceptions.

EDIT: Your rotation at 70 once you get the aforementioned gear will look something like this (it isn't perfect but it works for me!):

40 Durability (for Processed Materials)
Reflect
Waste Not 2
Basic Touch (use Precise Touch if Good or Excellent. If Excellent, use Careful Synth during the Poor condition, or Observe if you know you have the CP and can afford it).
Basic Touch
Basic Touch
Basic Touch
Basic Touch
Master's Mend
Great Strides
Byregot's Blessing
Waste Not

From here, you can either use Careful Synthesis, or Observe -> Focused Synthesis. With Lv71 gear, you should have 3 Careful Synths left before you run out of CP after you do the 2nd Waste Not, and if you're trying to do Lv72 stuff like Ingots, you will likely need 1 Basic Synthesis after because you might fall just short on completing the item. Also, after Byregot's, you might end up at 94% then all you need is 1 more Basic Touch that you could weave in there somewhere, just don't let Waste Not wear off, you'll get the hang of it.

With 80 Durability Finished Products, you basically do the same, except if you made your own processed materials using the rotation above and got all HQs, you'll have 50-75% HQ to begin with, and 80 Durability. I recommend starting off with Muscle Memory instead of Reflect in that case, and following it up with either Careful Synthesis or Observe->Focused Synthesis (be careful you don't accidentally finish the synth). Then once the Muscle Memory buff wears off, use Inner Quiet and then do something similar to the above, it won't take long at all to max out HQ, and then if you've plenty of Durability, Careful Synth your way to 100. If you're low on Durability, you could instead use Observe->Focused Synth.

Now, I know there are other skills like Manipulation, Innovation, etc but I've never found a need to use them, though if you try Lv70 Ishgardian Collectables... you might end up needing a better rotation. But using the above and sticking to things my level, or 1 level higher with the gear I mentioned above, I've not failed to HQ yet.

While typing this I realized a couple pieces of jewelry I bought might have had a CP materia or two; if you're falling short on CP, buy some cheap CP food to make up for the difference until you can get some cheap materia to meld in your gear or something.

So if better crafting gear is too expensive, my advice would be to make it yourself. Making a HQ version of the set you likely have on now would get you about a 10% boost to your stats, but moving up to the level 71 set is another 10-20% on top of that(and unlike the star-recipe sets at level 70, it uses only common materials that would come cheap off the MB if you cant gather them yourself). At level 70 you should have all but the last 5 crafting skills. Look over your actions and commands window to make sure everything is slotted for you. Muscle Memory is my preferred start if im unsure about a recipe. Combine that with Name/Brand, or Observe/Focused(toggle on Final Appraisal if youre going to go over and finish the craft - its a new skill that will leave you 1 progress short), then IQ and work on a stack for byregot(waste not/basic, manip/prudent). Great strides isnt as powerful as it used to be, but its still a good boost for byregot(with potentially ingen and innovation). If youre short on CP, make sure to use food/tea for your important combines. Tempura(kugane) or Blood Bouillabaisse(crystarium) both add a lot of CP, even in the vendor approved NQ versions. Really though, playing around with it a little should help. And the advice to do some custom deliveries was solid gold. Materials for those are dirt cheap, and failing just means you buy them again for a couple hundred gil. Good luck!

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

By level 70, you should have access to several custom delivery NPC options, as well as generally turning in collectibles to Rowena for scrips. Said scrips can be used to purchase (what I assume) reasonably decent there that (I again assume) is likely better than simple NQ vendor gear. That should get you a good boost for starters; collectibles shouldn't be too terribly difficult to manage for what you need.

Can't say for sure, as I'm not really deep in the thick of it, but I'd expect guides are going to be hard to come by with the big changes of 5.1. For rotations, you'll probably find some, not sure how many work with your stats. But, now's as good a time as any to clear everything off your hotbars and read through your skills and set everything up again. We've basically all had to do that recently as we learn how all the changes fit together.

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The level 70 yellow scrip gear including accessories and all tools can be obtained for the yellow scrips obtained from (one weekly allowance) a dozen custom deliveries. It will suffice to 80 with Ishgard turn ins and 70-74 leve repeats.


A conservative rotation:


Muscle Memory,
Inner Quiet,
Manipulation,
Prudent touch x 10
Great Strides, Ingenuity, Innovation, Byregot's Blessing
End with Observe, Focused Synthesis repeated until complete.
If you don't have Manipulation it's because you didn't do class quests and that should be goal one.

Look me up on Sargatanas. I have an FC that would welcome you. I could also make you gear.

As to CPs, Blood Bouillabaisse gives +26% cap 66 HQ, 53 NQ.

I'm not OP, obviously, but wanted to say thanks to all who replied here. Very helpful, much more so than YouTube currently which is where I normally go

Here's a google doc that helped me a LOT with Firmament crafting. Click link. It has handy macros and says what food to use with each.

Also check out this page for more 5.1 rotations.

Thanks for all the advice, got the crafting rolling again! Much appreciated guys!
:D:D:D