Craftsmanship, Magic Craftsmanship, and Control - We need a solid definition of each!

Ok, I've Googled many different websites and forums and looked through tons of different speculative theories on the differences between these stats and how they work, but I have yet to find a solid, definitive answer. Can someone on the Dev Team PLEASE tell me (and everyone else) the differences between Craftsmanship, Magic Craftsmanship, and Control, and what aspects of an item synthesis they affect!? I don't want to waste all my Company Seals and Gil on random items that may or may not be helping my Disciples of the Hand, as well as clog up my limited inventory space.

Recipes either use Craftsmanship or Magic Craftsmanship, it depends on the recipe. It determines how difficult the synth is for you, so say a recipe requires 80 craftsmanship, if you have 60 it will be really tough, but if you have 90 it will be easy. You'll succeed more and your actions will have more "potency". No recipes use both, so if you have the space and money to get gear to focus on one stat or the other, you can test out both sets.

Control makes it less likely for your elements to go unstable and makes it take longer before you start seeing sparks, which causes your success rate to drop and makes touch ups take more durability.

It was from this old ask the devs post.

Well, that's another thing - it's not clear which recipes use which stat, or how much of each stat they require to make effectively. I've heard all sorts of theories like:

- It depends on what element of crystals are used for the recipe
- If the item is magical in nature (for example, making a wand would use Magic Craftsmanship)
- Certain Disciples of the Hand use one stat over the other
- Craftsmanship affects Progress while Magic Craftsmanship affects Quality

And then I hear other things about how the weather, date, and moon phases also affect crafting, so I just really don't know what to believe. I just want some solid clarification.

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I just really don't know what to believe. I just want some solid clarification.

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I know that feeling ;_; bumping thread for justice.

Oh yeah - there's also the issue of how much the training books, facility buffs, and sub-crafts affect synths as well. There's just a lot of things about it that I don't understand, like why I only get a normal quality set of Brass Nuggets when I use HQ materials and get the Quality up to 400 or higher, but then another batch using normal quality materials I only get 200 Quality, but end up getting a +1 or +2 batch. I know there was a table posted about how certain stats affect the rate of HQ (like VIT and STR for Armorer), and that they were going to change it to where, in 1.19, you'd need HQ materials to make a HQ synth, but yeah... lots of things I just don't really understand how much of an impact they make. Should I be wearing a Lominsan Doublet Vest for my Armorer for the +20 Craftsmanship, or something else with Magic Craftsmanship instead? How much Quality do I need to build up, as well as how much of other stats, do I need to be guaranteed a HQ+3 synth? How much are those Mustard Eggs and Pineapple Juices really helping me? These are the kinds of questions I don't see anyone providing solid, unbiased answers to yet.

I too would like some solid information on crafting. I've seen sites that have certain things like cloth robes and glasses listed as magical craftsmanship being the preferred type, and then iron barbuts and solerrets being craftsmanship, though nothing gives an idea of a set value like what Estellios said up above (as in, barbut requires 85 craftsmanship, etc). I can wrap my head around that, but I don't know which is which because it's not actually listed anywhere "official", it's always from some 3rd party website that has a "general idea" about what they're talking about or going on a single person's parsed results from far too little testing. I remember some "general ideas" from FFXI taking the direction you were facing into account depending on what element the synthesis was, and I never saw anything to back any of that up. Hell when I broke down and tried it I remember having worse results. I dunno, I might not have looked hard enough or tested enough, but unsubstantial theories were never enough to win me over.

For which recipes use Craftsmanship or Magic Craftsmanship it's easy... just use one set like 2-3 times with a synth and switch sets and try it again. One set will be obviously easier and its success actions will more often reach the maximum potency. It looks like items within the same "family" use the same stat so for example, if you find out what stat a Bronze Pelta uses then all Peltas use that stat.

HQ Rates are notoriously extremely random which is why you get random +1s without trying and no HQs at all when you are.

Books and sub crafts are going to lose their necessity in crafting but currently if you don't have the book or proper subcraft, you will lose durability on every action no matter what, like around 8-10 per action even if you succeed. These requirements are going away this next patch, though, so these affects won't be around much longer.

Stat changes with food aren't shown at all, not just for crafting. I think they are making buffs be shown on your status screen this patch so that might fix it.

And I wouldn't worry about any moon phase/weather/date since 99% of it is baseless superstition.

I have posted this elsewhere, but I think each recipe should spell out exactly what level it is, whether its a regular or magical synth, and if chances of success are higher with main or off-hand. If not in the recipe pane, there should be some in game source to find out this information.

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Originally Posted by zerrith

I have posted this elsewhere, but I think each recipe should spell out exactly what level it is, whether its a regular or magical synth, and if chances of success are higher with main or off-hand. If not in the recipe pane, there should be some in game source to find out this information.

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Yellow Gremlin seems to be the most accurate website I've found concerning some of this information, although I have yet to find anything that determines whether a recipe uses Craftsmanship or Magic Craftsmanship. I formerly used Eorzeapedia, but a lot of their information seems to be incorrect or missing nowadays...

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Originally Posted by Estellios

And I wouldn't worry about any moon phase/weather/date since 99% of it is baseless superstition.

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I'm a very skeptical person, but I was a hardcore crafter in XI, and moon phase and elemental day most definitely affected crafting. There were many of us who tested this with thousand upon thousands of synths. It was very obvious. This is the main basis for believing they also affect crafting in XIV.

As far as FFXIV, I'm not really sure if these actually do affect anything or not, because I haven't really paid much attention to it, but I wouldn't dismiss the concept out of hand just because you think it's baseless superstition.

Yeah, I heard somewhere that a Full Moon in FF14 made it easier in general to craft, but harder to HQ items, while a New Moon did the opposite. Of course, I have no idea if any of that is true...

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Originally Posted by Estellios

For which recipes use Craftsmanship or Magic Craftsmanship it's easy... just use one set like 2-3 times with a synth and switch sets and try it again. One set will be obviously easier and its success actions will more often reach the maximum potency. It looks like items within the same "family" use the same stat so for example, if you find out what stat a Bronze Pelta uses then all Peltas use that stat.

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That would be nowhere near large enough a sample size. From one synth to the next, with absolutely nothing else (other than in-game time) changing, I've gone from failing at 20% progress to succeeding at 75 durability left. The RNG in this game is so absurdly dominating as to make testing nigh-useless for some things. At the very least, you'd need a significantly higher sample size to throw off the random factor.

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Originally Posted by Viridiana

That would be nowhere near large enough a sample size. From one synth to the next, with absolutely nothing else (other than in-game time) changing, I've gone from failing at 20% progress to succeeding at 75 durability left. The RNG in this game is so absurdly dominating as to make testing nigh-useless for some things. At the very least, you'd need a significantly higher sample size to throw off the random factor.

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I'm just going off of personal experience, but swapping sets makes immediate noticeable differences and after grinding on the same crafting leves for a while you definitely do see trends. I'm not going out of my way to make an excel spreadsheet for a game though.

@ Invalice: Elemental day stuff was pretty obvious and made actual sense, but as far as I know there's nothing of the sort in 14. The moon phase I'd understand too but since for the most part crafting is so random at the moment it's tough to justify worrying about it too much.

Theres a lot of speculation but I have done 1000's of controlled test synths and I can say (to my own satisfaction) that direction, weather, time of day, element, moon polarity, none of it has any difference, when you break your synths down in a controlled test and do a shit load of them then calculate the averages the difference is like 1%, I have notebooks full of data.

As far as craft- m craft- control
I am an alchemist above all else (so most of my controlled synths were done using alchemy recipes)

based on that i found out this (to my own satisfaction)
craftmanship is good for advancement
m craftmanship is good for HQ
control is good to keep element stabalized

i also found (again to my own satisfaction)
keeping these three numbers as equal as possible gives the best results

I also found out that not all "ask the devs" info is still correct (some was never correct for that matter) it has come to my attention that the "ask the devs" info in english is different from what it says in jap.

edit: also forgot to talk about main hand/off hand, that has a huge difference, each synth will either have main or offhand tool affinity, I determine this by thinking about which tool would more likely be used to make that item in real life, this works for me like 90% of the time.