We need a mercy rule.

Today i made Boltmaster's slacks. I don't have a lot of money so I gathered everything myself. I'm paranoid so everything for the final craft was HQ except the aethersand and demimateria. Red scrips included, I'd estimate that one crafting attempt represented a week and a half worth of playtime for me.

RNG was not kind. Many HT failed. I got NQ from 89% HQ chance.

I can't face doing this over again for every single piece, for every single class. The risk is just too high on the final craft.

They had a kind of mercy rule for Lucis tokens where you didn't lose the most valuable components off a NQ result, and the risk was much lower per craft. Why not include a mercy rule for the 2 star gear to let you turn in a NQ (aka useless) item and get your Astral Silk or whatever back?

Don't worry, it will be vastly outdated a patch or two from now. They will likely add a mercy rule in when the 3.x series gets closer to the end to keep the top on the top til 4.0

Gotta love pure vertical progression

I am terribly sorry to hear that. :(

Yes, the time we put into this is just too much. I think they really need some kind of mercy rule to exchange the NQ back for the 2 star mats. It's ok to let the 1 star mats go, but at least give us back the Astral Silk / Astral Lumber, which represents our weekly Red Scrips (Crafter & Gatherer's scrips) and Favor gathering time.

Ouch, my condolences. This isn't a bad idea considering the steep limitations on acquiring these mats in the first place. I, however, feel that would just be a two-bit compromise and the real crux is the steep gating (thereby inflating) of these mats in the first place. Without a viable way to make gil in the two star world, this only becomes more painful. Not that it helps this particular situation but if you plan to continue gearing your DoH classes I would recommend you focus on HQing tools and stack those HQ mats up for your initial blacksmithing synths. The tools (particularly OHs) give you the best stat gains and as you continue to gear yourself, you'll be able to take more of a beating in the bad luck department and still come out with an HQ. Also make sure to slot reclaim although at 89% I would have just gone for it as well. I recall tossing out a pretty long stream of obscenities at 1AM when I NQed the LTW chest. The risk makes it a thrill but the lack of a return just makes this kind of thing a tragedy instead of an "Oh damn, well back to the drawing board" moment. Not fun.

I am so fearful of situations like this that I don't do high level crafting with rare mats - pathetic but true! I definitely think there should be a possibility to return to your guildmaster & say "I screwed up, can you desynth this into the rare mats?". After all, they're supposedly the best in the land so why can't they unpick a leather waistcoat to retrieve the correctly cut pieces & the thread that sewed it together?

then people would just abuse it (starting the synth with NQ mats only and craft them like 10 times until they get 1 HQ version), its fine as it is

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Originally Posted by Ohiuu

Not that it helps this particular situation but if you plan to continue gearing your DoH classes I would recommend you focus on HQing tools and stack those HQ mats up for your initial blacksmithing synths. The tools (particularly OHs) give you the best stat gains and as you continue to gear yourself, you'll be able to take more of a beating in the bad luck department and still come out with an HQ.

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Thanks for the advice. I actually bought the red scrip MH tool for weaver as my first red scrip purchase. My reasoning was that it would allow me ease into 2* without needing a super melded IL 150 set, combined with the fact that the crafted main hands are next to impossible to get up to the stats of the purchased ones. I'll definitely work on the OH items next, though.

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Originally Posted by ServerCollaps

than people would just abuse it (starting the synth with NQ mats only and craft them like 10 times until they get 1 HQ version), its fine as it is

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Given that the other materials for these synths are not cheap, and given that even NQ ingredients require you to spend some red scrips getting them, I wouldn't call doing the craft 10 times for 1 item abusive.

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Originally Posted by ServerCollaps

than people would just abuse it (starting the synth with NQ mats only and craft them like 10 times until they get 1 HQ version), its fine as it is

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Unless it's a one off - which it could easily be made to be. I don't see it causing "server collapse" (see what I did there? ;) if it's a one off per craft. Obviously it would only be on certain top tier crafts & the guildmaster would give you a dressing down for messing up such an important craft & offer a one off desynth. You could then never go back for a second desynth of the same item.

It basically serves as a second chance and if you mess up again, tough. It would allow for those 'brain farts' when you click the wrong button but certainly couldn't be used as a 'do over until I get HQ'.

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Originally Posted by RellSarkas

Given that the other materials for these synths are not cheap, and given that even NQ ingredients require you to spend some red scrips getting them, I wouldn't call doing the craft 10 times for 1 item abusive.

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they are cheap, aether sand in NQ is worthless, folklore items in NQ are worthless, demimateria are worthless, everything is worthless except the red scrip items, which cost probably 2m all together. Given the fact that you get them back for every NQ try makes it incredible cheap to HQ everything without expenses

Personally, I enjoy the risk, it keeps the crafting interesting. With hours of work on the line, it all comes down to a single "pitch-and-toss." As the poet wrote:

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Originally Posted by 'If' by Rudyard Kipling

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
...
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it.

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That said, when I eventually do lose the gamble and get an NQ final craft (as opposed to an NQ 2-star mat, which I have had plenty of) I'll just meld it, equip it, and start working towards 100% spiritbond, so I can convert it (hopefully) to valuable Grade 5 Demimateria when they turn that option on. So it is not a complete loss.

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Originally Posted by ServerCollaps

they are cheap, aether sand in NQ is worthless, folklore items in NQ are worthless, demimateria are worthless, everything is worthless except the red scrip items, which cost probably 2m all together. Given the fact that you get them back for every NQ try makes it incredible cheap to HQ everything without expenses

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NQ Aethersands and Folklore items being worthless is a design flaw. Makes me wonder what they devs were smoking when they chose to have the materials used for only these items. Only folklore mats that are useful NQ are the ones used for food and Astral Oil and only because it's not much of a loss if you NQ those recipes as a result.

Honestly, I wouldn't say it's fine as is. 4* crafting was a far better design. 2* crafting is total shit no matter what angle you look at it from.

We don't need a mercy rule we need our normal goods to not cost 10 million in materials AND we need NQ and HQ to matter less. As I mentioned in another post. The only difference in NQ and HQ should be the amount of material required to MAX the stats. Both should be maxable. HQ goods should be trival to max with materia, while NQ goods should be relatively costly to max (but possible). And by costing I mean in the realm of 0.5-2 million in melds... not some insane fictional number.

This is basically the reason why I turned to gathering in 3.x even if I was an omnicrafter in 2.x. Crafting now requires insane investment (either time if you gather the stuff yourself or gil if you just buy the mats), reward is too little too late when compared to the risk of losing everything because no "good" procs/failed HT/failed reclaim, especially since you can just take your time and gear up using ilvl180 equipment...not to mention that you should spend millions in tier V materia melding to actually have a better version of ilvl180 gear.
ilvl170 crafting gear is simply the new frontier of glamours (ppl craft those because they are dyeable).
I agree, we should have a mercy rule, but I'm not expecting much from SE at this point.

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Originally Posted by Lastelli

ilvl170 crafting gear is simply the new frontier of glamours (ppl craft those because they are dyeable).

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Hardly. At least some people craft them because you can get them 6 to 8 times as quickly as the red scrip i180 gear.
And also because there are no red scrip offhands, and the upgrade to the i170 offhand is very significant.

This is pretty basic knowledge regarding i170/i180 gear, so I am surprised you seem to be unaware of it.

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Originally Posted by Silverbane

And, as I mentioned in my post, there are no scrip OH, and the crafted OHs produce the same increase in stats as the red scrip MH, only requires 3 RCT and 3RGT (or less, IME) worth of mats, and can be made at the rate of 3 a week: infinitely faster than you can get OH with scrip alone, because you cannot. But more importantly, in the time it takes you to get one red scrip MH for one crafter (3 weeks), I can craft NINE offhands that produce the same stat gain, and upgrade 9 classes instead of just one. That's what I call gearing up nine times as quickly.

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If we're getting technical with numbers, that should be 4.5, because you could have bought the token mainhand for one gatherer and one crafter, so two items versus nine.

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Originally Posted by Silverbane

snip

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It's pretty common sense shit that the off hands are the single best upgrade you can do on your crafter, and to correct you the off hands are actually a slightly better upgrade in stats than either version of the main hand without going into overmeld territory. Considering the NQ version is also and upgrade from the i140, I'd say its safe to say there is no reason not to make these first and at no point was I arguing otherwise. In fact, I explicitly said this in my post.

However, unless you are assuming the off hands (and other green items) will be enough of an upgrade to hit the next tier of (likely disappointing) recipes in 3.1 you will still have to purchase or craft the blue pieces to upgrade the rest of your stats, which only the chest and main hand are really obtained faster and at a large hit to stats unless you pentameld them.

While I agree the MH and OH give a ton of stats for DoL that doesn't mean the next tier doesn't require any of the other blue pieces to hit the requirements.

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Originally Posted by TechnoTechie

If we're getting technical with numbers, that should be 4.5, because you could have bought the token mainhand for one gatherer and one crafter, so two items versus nine.

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But that's not "gearing up" if you already have a gathering scrip mainhands for each L60 gatherering class you have. Which my wife and I already do, and which many other people probably already do as well. So practically, that's not relevant.

And I'm talking about gearing up me. Sure, I could upgrade my retainers from mere adamantite mainhands, but that would be silly. They'll take my hand-me-downs and that gatherer blue scrip gear and like it, or they can look elsewhere for employment!

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Originally Posted by Silverbane

But that's not "gearing up" if you already have a gathering scrip mainhands for each L60 gatherering class you have. Which my wife and I already do, and which many other people probably already do as well. So practically, that's not relevant.

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Okay, so if you already got your gathering main hands then you had to delay getting your off hands by 3 weeks per DoL that you got a main hand for. So practically it is relevant.

This thread has gone off-topic. It's really no skin off my nose if other people actually believe all the "crafting i170 gear is a waste of time and resources" rhetoric or give a damn about nit-pickers who post to prove how smart they are. Y'all feel free to gear up your DoH and DoL using just red token gear, we'll see who is in better shape when patch 3.1 is released in November.

Really, I should just stick to paying attention to people who post actual useful information, like on rotations, drop/proc statistics, attribute effects, gathering techniques and the like. I'll strive to do that better in the future. What do I care whether people believe all the nonsense people post? It's the Internet, there's really no holding back that tide, is there?

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Originally Posted by Silverbane

But that's not "gearing up" if you already have a gathering scrip mainhands for each L60 gatherering class you have. Which my wife and I already do, and which many other people probably already do as well. So practically, that's not relevant.

And I'm talking about gearing up me. Sure, I could upgrade my retainers from mere adamantite mainhands, but that would be silly. They'll take my hand-me-downs and that gatherer blue scrip gear and like it, or they can look elsewhere for employment!

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in my case it's not, as I forwent the main hands to craft off-hands for them instead. I still have to get my miner's and botanist's main hands from scrips, so it's relevant to me. Meanwhile my CRP/BSM/LTW/CUL all have MH + OH, so I'm stuck buying favor mats for at least 6 weeks to catch up on my DoL, if I want to continue getting DoH tools.


It's also not so much off-topic as we're still discussing the cost/obtainment of materials for the crafted 2-star items, this just happens to be more about the opportunity cost, which is still a relevant cost.

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Originally Posted by Silverbane

Hardly...

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Belt, accessories and off-hand are useful as you don't have a ilvl180 equivalent, I agree. Actually the belt is not so useful after all, I just decided to meld the dragonskin one, but accessories are very important for high level crafting. All the rest no way. Which is also unfair because this gives carpenters, blacksmiths and goldsmiths 95% of the cake and almost nothing is left for the other crafters, as the sales history of the market board on my server is suggesting. I also want to buy gear for my 3 DoL with red tokens, at least the 3 primary tools and chest pieces, so that reasoning doesn't apply to me or those who want to be both "master" gatherers and crafters. I'll have to save red scrips for at least another month or so. Ofc when I said that ilvl170 is the new frontier of glamours I was talking about the left side (blue gear), those are the only one you can dye after all.

Curious, you said you're paranoid but didn't get HQ aether sand which would have salvaged that synth. On my first few 2star I was bloody paranoid and wouldn't touch a 2star without HQ sand, the way I saw it, with 10 mil on the line an extra 1 or 2 mil was a small price to pay. I'm a bit more greedy now that I have 50+ 2star synths. Yeah I know this doesn't help to hear now, I feel awful for ya, that NQ must have been devestating.

As for people in this thread saying 170 is a waste/is glamour/will be replaced by new artisan gear I say that your claims are groundless. We have no idea what's SE's plan this expansion, it's entirely possible given the heavy grind and difficulty of these crafts that they will last until 4.0, then again maybe they wont. Point is nobody knows, so discouraging people from gearing up to justify you not doing it is rather silly.

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Originally Posted by Pentt

As for people in this thread saying 170 is a waste/is glamour/will be replaced by new artisan gear I say that your claims are groundless. We have no idea what's SE's plan this expansion, it's entirely possible given the heavy grind and difficulty of these crafts that they will last until 4.0

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i170 should provide entry to three star crafting. A good question though would be how much HQ i170 gear does one need to reach the new three star crafting stats? I suspect due to the availability of slightly lower stat i180 gear (in comparison to melds) that a full HQ i170 set won't be required to enter three start crafting.

Likewise this suggests some of the lower stat gain two star items such as belt, gloves, boots, hat and pants may not all be needed and you could just use near max meld i150 gear. But with this noted, do we really expect all class replacements in patch 3.1 for any of these? I personally do not... but I also see they screwed things up so badly in the red scrip patch, that I am finding it difficult to predict what they will do and if SE will make things better or worse. My confidence in them choosing a correct direction isn't super high... which means my predictions of what they'll do aren't super high.

I think its a wash to come to any conclusion of what to expect from 3.1 crafting yet.

Lucis tool wasn't tradeable. This stuff is.

If they were untradeable, then sure, make it like lucis tools where you could turn in the NQ and get back the "rare mats."