Crafting Materia Melds

My words may not change a thing but here's hoping...

I've slowly slowly very slowly... been trying to meld my crafting classes to max melds and I must say the amount of materia to attain is quite excessive after all the failed melding attempts.
I know I'm not the first to gripe about this and I wont be the last I'm sure, but I really think that failing a meld should be taken out of the game entirely. Even without failed meld attempts Materia will still sell well on the MB since its used in so many classes/crafts.
That being said, it is a huge deterrent to levelling up crafting classes in particular. Max melds are a necessity to be able to successfully synthesize 1,2 and 3 star items, let alone have the potential to HQ them. As recipe levels require higher and higher stats to synthesize, the more frustrating levelling up and melding crafting classes becomes. I'm muddling through right now, but Im considering giving up entirely since the amount of gil I generate using my crafting class is far less than what I'll ever have spent trying to meld it up. I'm starting to feel like I'd have more money in the long run, just not bothering and buying things from other players. Which is a real shame because I'd rather make my own stuff. At the rate I'm able to attain and meld materia's it will be several months if not years before I get my crafts melded enough to do 3-star melds. By then, there will be new gear to meld and even higher level recipes thus repeating the cycle probably...

SE seems to be aware of this. In the last patches, they gave us items that need no melds at all to be superior to any max melded item you had before so I hope they follow this direction. And I can feel your pain. 2 weeks ago, I finally inserted the last Materia in the last offhand slot I had open. It took me almost an entire Year to get there because I refused to buy more than a few Materias from the Market board.

I agree, if you want to achieve everything on your own without investing Gazillions of GIL, this is a very long process. I also agree that it should be changed. I understand SE's need to install time and GIL sinks. But I would prefer if there would be a more "clever" RNG. There must be a fail probability but it should be lowered with every unsuccessfull meld to ease the pain for the unlucky players.

Right now, if you are unlucky, you can fail a hundred times with a 20% insertion chance. Again, again and again. This is what I really hate about it. I ask for the RNG God of Mercy lol. I went through all of it.7 % insertion probability and working on 1st attempt. 45% chance but you need 20 Materias to succeed. YUCK!

Just too much RNG involved and everything out of your Control. You have no control what kind of Materia you will get. OK, for DOH it is rather easy because only three different types can be produced. But especially the Control Materia seems to have a lower chance than the other two ones. So you bind and bind without knowing when the ones drop you look for. And then comes the Insertion RNG hell. Combine these two RNG elements and it is clear why it takes so long.

If you are diligent about spirit binding and converting your gear when leveling and when manufacturing things for profit, you can easily provide yourself with the vast majority of materia you need.

Yeah he you only have to meld materia once for the acceasories, just once, and they work for everyjob. Outside of that most gear only takes 3-4 materia, so 2 overmelds, to cap it out(ignoring the unneeded +1 craftsmanship).Only the accesories really cost gil. Make sure your melding in the right order, the most expensive first, also make sure your looking at prices. Lvl 3 materia on my server goes for 8k, while lvl 2 goes for 25k. Lvl 2 gives 9%-10% success rate, lvl 3 gives 8%. Cost wise there is zero reason for anyone on Cactuar to buy the grade 2, yet for some reason they do. 90% of the time I send my gathering retainers (one bot, one min) on a lvl 45 18hr exploration they bring me back a grade 3 field or hand materia

I think it's fine as it is/was, it should be a grind to be able to craft the highest tier items, else everyone could make them easily and the supply would be far higher than the demand, making things worse for dedicated crafters.

I feel like you've all missed the point here. Its just as TomTom1968 explained. Sure you can spend hours spiritbonding and getting materia's (most of them not the materia you're after), but if it takes you anywhere from 10-40+ breaks to meld one slot and the success chance lowers everytime... it becomes extremely frustrating. New players are overwhelmed by the process and players who have this all done easily craft and/or flood the markets with items, making it hard to regenerate gil which in turn makes crafting seem even more frustrating to new players since they spend too much for such little return.
I actually have a spreadsheet page printed off right now so I can keep track of my melds per craft (and yes, I am doing the materia's in order of costliness). As of this morning I managed to nearly max materia my LTH and WVR classes. They are just missing craft + 1 on legs and feet each now. It took me 2-3 months to do this already. Having started with the accessories first back in the day. (Which I might add, two or three of my accessories now have dodore replacements so I'll have to go back and do those AGAIN at some point too now). So at this pace, getting them all materia'd will take a year, if not more. Whether I buy or spiritbond for materia's will be irrelevant to the time it will take, since I have done both as it is. I unfortunately, don't have large amounts of time to waste spiritbonding on a day to day process due to "real-life" obligations. All Im asking is that SE ease the materia-ing process some. Or just take away the success percentage chance entirely since it's really not necessary. In fact, people might buy and meld more materia's to various gear (thus generating more sales on the MB) if they didn't have to be in constant fear it will most likely fail and they just wasted precious time and/or money.

It's either that or SE should start giving crafters some gear options for every slot that dont require materia's. They started with Artisan's spectacles, but they should really continue this trend, but also give players who want BiS options to have slightly more superior melded versions or something. I say this because if its going to take the average person an entire year or more to get to where current crafters are now, they'll just not bother since they'll always forever be behind and struggling to catch up.

Update: Crafting is just the worst... I finally got to the point where I can craft Hard Hippogriff Leather for my Master recipes... Found out I need 45x philo items to make the 5HQ 2 star leathers (provided I HQ). Each Animal Fat is 2,500 GC seals or pure luck drops in dungeons. To get Artisan spectacles/new tool, I need to get the master recipe(s)... Well add another 4 months of time to that year. since that's how long it will probably take me to get all the master recipes if I do it myself and not buy the HQ leathers, silks and stuff on the AH. All that so I can just START to get my specs/upgraded tool.

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Originally Posted by Vespar

Update: Crafting is just the worst... I finally got to the point where I can craft Hard Hippogriff Leather for my Master recipes... Found out I need 45x philo items to make the 5HQ 2 star leathers (provided I HQ). Each Animal Fat is 2,500 GC seals or pure luck drops in dungeons.

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Ixali Beast Tribe quests are about to become your best friend, you can earn up to 10 pieces of animal fat per day from them once you hit rank 5 and once you hit rank 7 you can buy myth mats and their crafting gloves, which are almost as good as fully-melded crafter gloves and will work with all crafts.

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Originally Posted by Vespar

I feel like you've all missed the point here. Its just as TomTom1968 explained. Sure you can spend hours spiritbonding and getting materia's (most of them not the materia you're after), but if it takes you anywhere from 10-40+ breaks to meld one slot and the success chance lowers everytime... it becomes extremely frustrating.

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Actually I think your missing the point, the rest of us have already done this to gear for master crafting.

Why should they suddently remove most of the effort needed and make *everyone* instantly a "Master Crafter"?

There are loads and loads of ways for you to make gil to buy materia, on my server materia prices are far lower now than when I melded my sets, mats/demi's needed for the Master Recipe books a also a *lot* cheaper now.

Top tier crafting. I have mainly crafted since patch 2.1 with just a little time to do relic to novus. From at 2.2 when they added the i70 head and tool, that was a very good way to get into 3 star crafting. Getting into 3 star was expensive and anyone new to the game willl have a rough time getting to 3 star let alone what the stats could look like for patch 2.4, i110 4 star crafted gear if they hold to the prior cycles. Plot 1,2 and 3 star req on a chart and note that 3 star was a major jump along with rotation change and risk. I made close to 200 Million gil from patch 2.2 to today, 6 months time. The loss side is that I have not run the EX primals like the rest of my FC and barely touched t6 for a very short time without a clear. If you plan on being a true master crafter in this game you can forget about other content if you don't have the right LS or know the right players that are willing to take their time to teach you. I have placed close to a 50 million gil bet on how crafting goes in patch 2.4 and upgrades. If I am wrong, I have decided to stop crafting and move out into more of the end game content. Some may think 200 million gil is cool, but a pile of gil and no EX primals or coil over 6 months, I don't feel the trade off was worth it.

^^ I see it the same way. I have all DOH at a 3 star level but have no chance to upgrade them all with their Level 75 tool. My only chance to do it would be to stop with Coil and stick to crafting only.

Craft to make money, use the money to buy mats you can't produce on your own (GC currency, Myth or Ixali craft items for 1 and 2 star recepies), then craft the items only to destroy them.

But I do not want to do this so I am still trying to get my 1st Level 75 tool at all. RNG in melds and Desynthesis take care that you need lots of time at your disposal if you want state-of-the-art crafters. It is no longer something for inbetween and I do not really like the way they upgraded them in 2.3 introducing Desynthesis and Level 75 tools. I am one of the few crafters who doesn't do it for the money. I just want to be able to craft any vanity or housing item that's available for myself and FC and their members. So I am not willing to invest gazillions of GIL into it, especially when the crafts make little to no sense in Endgame besides Culinarian for Buffood and Alchemist for potions.

Well, melds are very expensive, but you don't need all the melds for all the classes at once.

You can make money crafting items that don't need melded gear and do the melds as you get the gil. Having just one class at a nice level alows you to start making money. Accesories and belt are useful for all classes, these ones go first. Forbidden melds are more risky, thoes go the last.

You might need to fully meld or nearly one class to get the artisan's spectacles, but you don't need to meld (you can even save the buy) for the other classes head gear. The Ixali gloves ilvl 70 are not the best in slot but are quite good and serve for all classes too. You might save a lot in hand gear and melding until you need top gear for that class.

Crafting takes a lot of time and getting the best available gear needs a super long grind. To make some money you don't need that, but people who like to have the best gear and be able to craft the best items, do the long grinds for that and spend a lot of money. The question is enjoying while you play.

Probably it's not the cheapest way (taxes etc,) but I usually don't save the materia I get, I sell it, free inventory space, and when I need it, maybe weeks later, I buy the one I need. Exception: the very expensive materia I wil eventually need. The cheap one can be sold unless you'll need it soon.

Each one has his system he likes best. Some gather if possible all the mats, craft if possible everything they need, spiritbond and convert to materia as much as possible, etc. I sometimes am more concerned about time. It may be cheaper to gather or craft but sometimes it's quicker and you have less inventory problems if you buy (except if it's very expensive.) It might be you quickly craft some item that once sold gives you enough money to buy what you need in less time than taking all the time to craft or gather yourself. But gathering and crafting yourself everything may give some added satisfaction.

I think you all would've hated Forbidden Materia Melds in 1.0:

* The Base Equipment *and* all the Materia you melded previously BLEW UP if you failed, and you lost it all! :( LOL

I'd say the blowing up of the individual Materia is OK, but only if Yoshi P and the team improve Tier IV Materia generation (the meaningful ones feel too rare still).

^^ ouch that's gambling against the Devil. I really like the Japanese way of challenging players with hard to achieve goals in opposite to Western Games shoving everything into player's a**** straight away with no efforts. But sometimes it seems that the Japanese players are more willing to suffer than I am lol. But I bet, I would have done it also in 1.0 if I would have played it haha. Sometimes I am a masochist too. ;)

Glad it was changed but I still like to complain about it because it is still a (too) long term goal or very cost expensive if you want to speed it up. I needed almost a Year for my melds and that's just a really long time, especially considering that with each update, there is a chance of rendering everything you did obsolete by introducing new items.