The Ishgard Restoration crafting categories could be more newbie friendly

As somebody whose spent a lot of time on Ishgardian Restoration and have been doing it since phase 1, I've gotten a lot of questions on it from people trying it out for the first time to level DoH/DoL classes.

There's one point of confusion I've had to clear up many times, both for FC members and for poor folk hopelessly lost in the Diadem.

When somebody looks at Ishgardian crafting recipes they will see these categories:

Restoration (1)
Restoration (2)
Restoration (3)
Restoration (4)
Skysteel
Other

If you've taken part in multiple phases or looked through old patch notes you'll know that 1-3 are retired recipes and that most of the materials are no longer obtainable and that these recipes are still there mainly for people to able use old materials they still have (Or in the case of phase 2 or 3 expert recipes l, for achievements). The intention is for players to jump straight to Grade 4 recipes and materials in category 4. (bolded for any newer folks reading this).

Unfortunately, since nothing in game explains this, newcomers to the Firmament tend to assume (logically but incorrectly) that they should start with the "Restoration (1)" category, and having been told Skybuilders materials are gathered in Diadem, end up hopelessly searching for things that aren't there (Or anywhere except possibly market board). In most cases, their attempt to Google it hasn't helped as they get a bunch of old articles providing conflicting info as their from different phases of construction.

Since this is such a common point of confusion among newer players and Yoshi-P has stated in Live Letters and Q&As that he wants this content remain in place as levelling content, could the categories be reorganised to something more intuitive. For example:

Restoration
Skysteel
Retired Recipes (1)
Retired Recipes (2)
Retired Recipes (3)
Other.

In this case Restoration (4) just becomes Restoration while 1-3 are moved to the corresponding Retired Recipes section. This puts the recipes newcomers need to focus on right at the top, while making older grades easy enough to find for achievement hunters or returnees looking to use old mats. Completionists who weren't around for construction may still run into issue but such players are not only rarer but more likely to ask question sooner than people casually trying the recommended levelling option for their crafters.

Thank you for posting this!!!

I've been looking forward to being working on the Restoration project and noticed that various "Restoration" levels you mentioned, and sure enough based on what limited info is available online it really did seem like they all needed to be progressed through. You just saved a lot of folks from a lot of confusion!

I also really like your idea, changing the names of the "retired" recipes would help tremendously in making it clearer to new players what the actual reality is.

I came to the forums trying to find information about this! I unlocked the Firmament and became instantly confused. But luckily a Fete was in progress so I jumped in with the 100 people carrying giant Moogles around, then left with still no idea what else I was supposed to do there.

I was planning to go back and would've just thought that I was still too low level to do the level 1 recipes lol

Came into this thread expecting something about crafting difficulty, got pleasantly surprised by instead it being about good UI design practices.

I wholeheartedly approve of this idea. Its a good example of reducing complexity without reducing challenge or depth. Things don't have to be easy, but you shouldn't fight the UI to figure stuff out.

I kind of expect the first three tiers to be simply removed in Endwalker, since they no longer serve a purpose. And the Grade 1-3 materials would become just vendor trash. I understand that they were left for a while in case anyone had any leftovers to turn in, but we're past that point now.

My friend had the exact same problem with the Restoration, he didn't know what to craft nor what materials to gather FOR said craft because the materials no longer exist and he was looking in the wrong section because how was he (a newbie) supposed to know tiers 1-3 are useless?

It throws you for a loop when you're playing on content. I can't imagine a newbie will get to Firm and know what they're supposed to be doing.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TheMightyMollusk

I kind of expect the first three tiers to be simply removed in Endwalker, since they no longer serve a purpose. And the Grade 1-3 materials would become just vendor trash. I understand that they were left for a while in case anyone had any leftovers to turn in, but we're past that point now.

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I think they were left there mostly so people aren't permanently locked out of getting the achievements associated with doing turn-ins for those items, as there's a distinct title for each combination of DoL/H job and restoration phase.

Excellent suggestion

Quote:

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

I think they were left there mostly so people aren't permanently locked out of getting the achievements associated with doing turn-ins for those items, as there's a distinct title for each combination of DoL/H job and restoration phase.

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That only applies to the Expert recipes though. There are no achievements for the other recipes and their materials have been removed from nodes.

It's hard to say what supplies of the old non-Expert materials still exist out there but I doubt it's much at this point. There's little point to using them just for XP when you can get scrip and XP from the Phase 4 recipes.

SE could consolidate the recipes down to Restoration and Expert Restoration for Endwalker. Remove the non-Expert Phase 1, 2 and 3 recipes altogether since those materials can no longer be gathered. The Expert recipe names already include a Grade number - change "Grade" to "Phase" to make the correlation to the phase achievement clearer.

I fell victim to this recently, wasted a fair amount of my time making outdated items! Hopefully this gets noticed and possibly addressed.