HQ Crafting Help!

So basically I have leveled my crafters a bit through grinding and am now at the point where I want to do HQ Leve hand ins to get the best exp, however I am not sure on the rotation I should be using to do this when crafting, looking for some help with this. Levels as follows: ARM and BSM Level 40, ALC, LTW, CRP and WVR Level 35, CUL and GSM Level 15. I am looking to get ARM, BSM, ALC, LTW, CRP and WVR to 50, CUL and GSM another time, but as said above , I am not sure on the rotation I should be using to create HQ Items for the Hand in, any help would be brilliant, and thanks. Sorry I should also add I have been trying to look for information but any macros or advice I have found its over a year old, if anyone has a macro which would help me, would be great thanks.

You need to get CUL to 15 for Hasty Touch; the single most useful skill for HQ crafting. HT allows you to make more touches with the same CP because it costs 0 CP; you will use the CP on skills like Waste Not, Master's Mend, Manipulation, etc... to conserve durability while you advance quality.
At CUL 37 you get Steady Hand II which increases the reliability of all RNG skills by an additional 10% above the regular Steady Hand.

As for rotations, low level rotations usually go like this for 80 Dur. This rotation assumes somewhere around 200 CP, it has been a long time but I recall that being a reasonable number back then.
Inner Quiet
Steady Hand / II
Waste Not
Hasty Touch x4
Steady Hand / II
Hasty Touch
Hasty Touch
Steady Hand
Great Strides
Standard/Advanced Touch depending on CP.
Careful Synthesis x3 to finish the craft

Are you using the Ixali quests? Good source of extra crafting exp at your levels. If you can, try to push CRP to be your first level 50(or if not first, as soon as you can). The skill you get for that is super-useful in finishing HQ end products. It burns off your Inner Quiet stack for a quality increasing touch. The larger your stack the more it gives(it can also be enhanced with great strides and the like). The other "best" level 50 skills are from ALC, BSM, GSM, and WVR(in some order - this order happens to be alphabetical). And ill +1 everything Chamelion said as well. Steady Hand 2 is worth the effort, and that looks like a solid rotation. If you're a little short on CP(or any other stat) you can find a crafting food to use to help. Theres one at the saucer for like 17 gil that gives about an extra skills-worth of CP.

Hey Thanks for the advice above from both of you, I took the advice and used the rotation suggested, and it doesnt work, I have enough CP, well more in fact than the total needed for it, and I am lucky if I get half way up the bar for HQ, and also Careful Synthesis, just does the NQ Bar not HQ, looking for any further advice thanks.

Caimie Tsukino did a great guide and it would be helpful to you maybe. She no longer plays but she wrote very extensive guides on crafting in the game pre HW and some after but just for general knowledge it is great.
http://ffxivrealm.com/xz-articles/ff...ie-tsukino.39/

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Originally Posted by Xavios

Hey Thanks for the advice above from both of you, I took the advice and used the rotation suggested, and it doesnt work, I have enough CP, well more in fact than the total needed for it, and I am lucky if I get half way up the bar for HQ, and also Careful Synthesis, just does the NQ Bar not HQ, looking for any further advice thanks.

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How much more CP are we talking? Do you have enough to get in a repair action(masters mend/manip)? Are you using tricks of the trade for extra cp? Is using some HQ mats an option(all hq mats starts you with a half full bar afterall)? How is your crafting gear reletive to your level?

At some point when i was leveling crafting i read Caimie's guide that Panda linked to help me get my head around the things i didnt automatically understand, and it helped a lot. Worth a shot. Oh, and on the rotation that chameleon put together up top the careful synthesis wasnt supposed to change the HQ rating, it was just to finish craft.

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Originally Posted by Xavios

Hey Thanks for the advice above from both of you, I took the advice and used the rotation suggested, and it doesnt work, I have enough CP, well more in fact than the total needed for it, and I am lucky if I get half way up the bar for HQ, and also Careful Synthesis, just does the NQ Bar not HQ, looking for any further advice thanks.

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Without Steady Hand II, Hasty Touch is only going to have a 70% success rate, and every fail means a loss in durability and no increase in quality. If you are trying to HQ items your level or higher without HQ mats, you can't afford too many of those. The above rotation also does not take condition changes into account, but that's because doing so creates this rather large 'case scenario' chart. But anytime you get a 'poor/good/excellent' condition your faced with making a decision that may deviate from the current rotation.

It's also important to know how much durability you need to complete a synthesis, that way you can increase quality as much as possible until you get to this point. Keep in mind that abilities like Waste Not conserves durability, and abilities like Master's Mend/II restores durability. Be careful not to cut yourself short when using Waste Not.

I also recommend this rotation for 70 durability, with Master's Mend II (Lv25) and x4 careful synthesis to complete. It requires 272 - 292 CP, which should be obtainable with updated gear, food, and melds:

Inner Quiet (18cp)
Steady Hand/II (22/25cp)
Hasty Touch x5
Careful synthesis
Master's Mend II (160cp)
Steady Hand/II (22/25cp)
Hasty Touch x3
Great strides (32cp)
Basic/Standard Touch (18/32cp)
Careful Synthesis x3

Unless you have a bad streak of fails, which WILL happen, this should get you pretty close, if not all the way to 100%. HQ mats and Steady Hand II make this rotation overkill when it comes to clearing your crafting log, or leve/GC turn-ins during the leveling stages.

Without byregot, don't forget to use rumination at the end, after stacking up inner quiet, it will recover some CP (hopefully enough for another "touch" or buff)

Here's a formula I used early in my crafting career which served me quite well. It uses only level 15 cross-class skills. I could HQ pretty reliably using it!

1. “Inner Quiet”.
2. If “Good” condition, “Tricks of the Trade”, then “Steady Hand”. Otherwise, “Steady Hand”.
3. “Hasty Touch” until “Steady Hand” runs out, or Durability is at 20. Anytime a “Good” condition appears during this stage, “Tricks of the Trade” instead of “Hasty Touch”.
4. If “Good” condition, “Tricks of the Trade”, then “Manipulation”. Otherwise, “Manipulation”.
5. Repeat steps 2-4 until your store of CP is too low to do another “Manipulation” and still have enough CP leftover to do the following steps.
6. If “Good” condition, “Tricks of the Trade”, then “Great Strides”. Otherwise, “Great Strides”.
7. If “Steady Hand” isn’t up, use it, then “Advanced Touch”. Otherwise, “Advanced Touch”. Optionally, if CP allows, use “Observation” to try to hold out for a “Good” or “Excellent” condition before using “Advanced Touch”.
8. If “Good” condition, “Tricks of the Trade”, then “Rumination”. Otherwise, “Rumination”. This will give you plenty of CP to finish the synth.
9. If “Steady Hand” isn’t up, use it, then “Standard Synthesis” until the recipe is complete.

Basically, eat every Good you can to recover CP, and use that CP to fuel more Manipulations (durability restoration).

Some things to consider:
- If the recipe is above your current level, it will be MUCH harder to HQ. Stick to recipes of your level or less.
- Keep your gear current, and HQ if at all reasonable to do. If you're leveling every class, making your own gear is an option. Start with your tools (generally Blacksmith makes these), then make the rest.
- Sell everything you make that you're not turning in for leves or whatever. You can make quite a lot of money, even selling NQ gear, which you can then funnel back into your craft. Crafting materials (ingots, lumber, etc) sell particularly quickly and well.

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Originally Posted by Frizze

Is using some HQ mats an option

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This is my Pre-50 crafting policy. I can HQ 3 levels above my own level with all HQ gear and mats. The only cross class I 'need' is careful synth and that can be worked around with food. Once you hit 50 and demimateria and other absolute NQ mats are inserted it collapses so you are wise to find an RnG rotation you can make work because it becomes required after a point.

The use of HQ materials is dependent upon what you are attempting to do.

If you are attempting to create something HQ for your USE, then using HQ materials is a no brainer.
If you are attempting to create something for EXP, then using no HQ materials is a no brainer.

The more Quality you start out with, the less you can add during the crafting. And it is the Quality added during the craft that counts for your bonus exp. With zero HQ mats, you can get 300% bonus exp from filling the Quality bar. If that bar starts out half full thanks to HQ materials, however, that 300% is reduced. I do not recall how much it is reduced however.

The bonus for "upping" the HQ is actually a bit insignificant once you get past a certain point (around 30-40%, iirc). The extra-exp you earn whether you're at 100% or 40% HQ is so small that it barely makes up for the use of HQ materials (which can be significantly more expensive)

That is, if I recall things correctly, it's been a long time since I last had to level up my classes, SE may have changed some things a bit (that I'm not aware of)

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Originally Posted by cgbspender

The bonus for "upping" the HQ is actually a bit insignificant once you get past a certain point (around 30-40%, iirc). The extra-exp you earn whether you're at 100% or 40% HQ is so small that it barely makes up for the use of HQ materials (which can be significantly more expensive)

That is, if I recall things correctly, it's been a long time since I last had to level up my classes, SE may have changed some things a bit (that I'm not aware of)

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As Roth pointed out it's 300% but getting an organic 1% to 100% for the full bonus usually requires you to be over level of the recipe to such a point you are getting much less, base. 300% added to 25% (because of over level penalty) gets you back where you started. The Mats comparison is true though. Getting NQ mats 10 levels below you is easier than getting HQ mats 2 levels above you. Unless you leveled your own gathering classes well in advance of your crafting it's not practical.

I hope this helps guys:

http://i.imgur.com/6A8fB1a.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/L9UVYmW.jpg

I don't know how much quality has to increase to get the 300% bonus (I always thought you just have to HQ the item), but I do know the recipe needs to be the same level or above, and is still possible using HQ mats.

Umm .. No.

Rested is a flat 50% assuming you have enough - and in your pic, you most certainly do have enough. The 300% is WITHOUT Rested exp - if you have Rested, the total increases (to 350%) and, of course, food (3%) and any other under-level-X gear (if you are under that level X) may also apply.

You only got 276% bonus from taking that recipe to 100% HQ. The other 50% was Rested. Using those 3 HQ materials COST you experience.

Based on my calculator, 14980 * (450/426) = 15823.94 exp - or over 800 exp lost for using those HQ mats.

As far as getting an organic 100% - that does not require being higher enough over the recipe's level that you are losing exp doing it. What it DOES require is up-to-date gear (HQ, no melds), the level 15 cross class skills, and little bit of luck (getting those Hasty Touches to land successfully). Of course, if you have a 50 Carpenter, simply using that cross class skill appropriately will be enough to 100% almost anything under 50. It is not required though. I was doing exactly that 3 years ago when leveling my crafting classes the hard way (all to 15, all to 20, all to 30, all to 40, all to 50).

EDIT - just thought I should explain that math a little bit. Bonus exp is in addition to the 100% normal, base exp you get. This should be very obvious if the only bonus you get is Rested, or food, and the cited percentage is under 100%. So, that rested + bonus + base is 50% + 300% + 100%, or 450%. Or, for the exp actually earned in that screenshot, rested + bonus + base would be 50% + 276% + 100%, or 426%.

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Originally Posted by Roth_Trailfinder

As far as getting an organic 100% - that does not require being higher enough over the recipe's level that you are losing exp doing it. What it DOES require is up-to-date gear (HQ, no melds), the level 15 cross class skills, and little bit of luck

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Even full HQ gear won't get you from quality 1 to 100 with NQ mats. It requires up to date, full HQ gear, HQ mats for me to get certain HQ at level. I can assure HQ at level 18, not before. The level 18 touch skill is 80% success base. The first one you get is 70% and in my experience it succeeds 30% on average. CS, SH, Waste Not, standard touch x 4, CS with all HQ gets 100% if at level. If the recipe is even one level above it will complete at 92% quality.

I've leveled 5 characters, 8 crafts and the only way I have found to beat RnG in this game is to remove it. It will always bite you in the ass and the fail gets worse the closer you get to leveling.

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Originally Posted by Ksenia

I can assure HQ at level 18, not before.

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My own experience was that starting from the lower mid 20's you can get 100% HQ - barring bad RNG. You just do not have the Craft nor the Control in your teens and pre-teens, no matter what you do.

With that in mind though, from that low-mid 20's mark on, you can get 100% with entirely NQ materials if your gear is up-to-date and HQ, you have the level 15 cross class moves, and you're talking a 70 or 80 durability recipe. 40 durability recipes are a lot harder as you have to spend more CP restoring durability at less convenient times.

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Originally Posted by Roth_Trailfinder

Umm .. No.

Rested is a flat 50% assuming you have enough - and in your pic, you most certainly do have enough. The 300% is WITHOUT Rested exp - if you have Rested, the total increases (to 350%) and, of course, food (3%) and any other under-level-X gear (if you are under that level X) may also apply.

You only got 276% bonus from taking that recipe to 100% HQ. The other 50% was Rested. Using those 3 HQ materials COST you experience.

Based on my calculator, 14980 * (450/426) = 15823.94 exp - or over 800 exp lost for using those HQ mats.

As far as getting an organic 100% - that does not require being higher enough over the recipe's level that you are losing exp doing it. What it DOES require is up-to-date gear (HQ, no melds), the level 15 cross class skills, and little bit of luck (getting those Hasty Touches to land successfully). Of course, if you have a 50 Carpenter, simply using that cross class skill appropriately will be enough to 100% almost anything under 50. It is not required though. I was doing exactly that 3 years ago when leveling my crafting classes the hard way (all to 15, all to 20, all to 30, all to 40, all to 50).

EDIT - just thought I should explain that math a little bit. Bonus exp is in addition to the 100% normal, base exp you get. This should be very obvious if the only bonus you get is Rested, or food, and the cited percentage is under 100%. So, that rested + bonus + base is 50% + 300% + 100%, or 450%. Or, for the exp actually earned in that screenshot, rested + bonus + base would be 50% + 276% + 100%, or 426%.

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Forgive me, I was thinking that you were saying that the 300% bonus was not possible if you use HQ mats. I understand now, or at least I think, that you are talking about overall exp gained, in which case the HQ mats does reduce the amount I gain from a successful HQ since I only needed to increase the quality bar by 92% opposed to 99%. The bonus is still there, but applied to a lesser amount of exp.

I am very heavy in the leveling stages for my DoH right now. Most of my gear is HQ and melded, but there is still room for improvement. I also feel like I have a fair amount of skill with crafting, but there is room for improvement here also. With that said, getting an organic 100% with same level recipe or a little higher is certainly possible, and I have done it on multiple occasions, but it is VERY difficult. Top notch gear and food are a MUST. The level 15 cross skills go a long way in helping. Add Byregot's Blessing, Steady Hand II, and Comfort Zone and you just might overkill some recipes.

We do have to remember though that it isn't until the 40's that you finally have enough slots to add enough skills to blow your crafts away, and depending on your prioritization of cross skills and discipline, BB may not be crossed until around level 25. It's much more useful once you have Great Strides @21 in any case, but then you need sufficient CP to use them in junction.

Anywho, thanks for the explanation. I hope I got it now :)

Actually, that Quality-based portion of the bonus exp *IS* only able to hit 300% if you use zero HQ materials. That was indeed what I was saying.

What I think you were getting confused by was the inclusion of rested, food, and any other bonus exp into that singular message given when you are awarded exp. If you have 50% rested, and when you 100% something to only get 320% bonus, the HQ materials you used *reduced* the 300% you could have gotten to 270%, which gets added to the 50% rested, for the displayed 320%.

That base 300%, separated out from any other bonus exp, can only be obtained with zero HQ materials. Use of HQ materials adds Quality before your synth - which reduces that overall bonus attainable.

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Originally Posted by Ksenia

The first one you get is 70% and in my experience it succeeds 30% on average.

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Please don't confuse/scare newer crafters with this perception bias garbage. In this game, 70% = 70%, no more, no less. If it SEEMS like less, that's just your own frustration upon running into the perfectly normal streaks of failures that crop up from time to time.

Statistically speaking, there may well be some players who land on the far edges of the bell curve (more successes or failures than average), but that's just how probability works - and unless you've been taking meticulous notes on your success and failure rates to prove it (which, roughly speaking, 0% of complainers do), you are probably not one of them, even if you could swear that it happens to you all the time. People dwell on their failures far more than their successes.

The truth: Finish a synth at 80%? It will most likely still HQ. Don't have enough CP to Steady Hand that last Synthesis step? You'll probably succeed anyway. Hasty Touch only 80%, even with Steady Hand II? It is still a reliable and VALUABLE crafting tool, even at low levels. While you should strive for 100% quality whenever possible, understand that a successful crafter will see a broader picture, and factor in the inevitable failures. 20% of your Hasties are going to fail, right? So make sure that you leave enough room in your synth to account for those failures, along with some wiggle room, just to be on the safe side.

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Originally Posted by LineageRazor

Please don't confuse/scare newer crafters with this perception bias garbage.

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And lets stop pretending RnG is anything but a throttle mechanic. I level through crafting, using NQ mats getting quality as high as I can. I have experience with the 'RnG' in this game over thousands of crafts. I watch it trend according to my experience bar over and over. I watch it adjust based on my rotation.

Nothing I offered is intended to intimidate new players. With the proper gear and rotations you can avoid RnG completely. I've also used hasty spam, rotations and even using NQ mats with a 14% completion I get 10 out of 99 HQ. Some prefer to spam, some prefer precision. The precision option is there, it just means a different process.

Well on rng.. I recieved a nq item at 100% hq one time. I can only assume it was because of rounding that my actual hq% was like 99.9% and the game rounded to 100% on the screen

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Originally Posted by Bdyer

Well on rng.. I recieved a nq item at 100% hq one time. I can only assume it was because of rounding that my actual hq% was like 99.9% and the game rounded to 100% on the screen

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I've never had that happen. There are numerous items that simply don't HQ. Furniture and so on for example. Getting them to 100% quality simply gets you the best exper possible from the craft.They never HQ.

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Originally Posted by Bdyer

Well on rng.. I recieved a nq item at 100% hq one time. I can only assume it was because of rounding that my actual hq% was like 99.9% and the game rounded to 100% on the screen

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Ive never seen or heard of that on any item that has a high quality version. Ive had a 99% chance fail(ive also had a few 1% chances end up HQ, so RNG giveth and RNG taketh away), but never a 100%.

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Originally Posted by Roth_Trailfinder

Actually, that Quality-based portion of the bonus exp *IS* only able to hit 300% if you use zero HQ materials. That was indeed what I was saying.

What I think you were getting confused by was the inclusion of rested, food, and any other bonus exp into that singular message given when you are awarded exp. If you have 50% rested, and when you 100% something to only get 320% bonus, the HQ materials you used *reduced* the 300% you could have gotten to 270%, which gets added to the 50% rested, for the displayed 320%.

That base 300%, separated out from any other bonus exp, can only be obtained with zero HQ materials. Use of HQ materials adds Quality before your synth - which reduces that overall bonus attainable.

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I am definitely confused. I have no idea how these modifiers work. I think what is throwing me off is the 'rested' exp. What is this? In your initial response to me, you said rested is a flat 50% assuming you have enough. Enough of what?

So as I understand it now, in the pic the quality bar was increased from 8% to 100%, this resulted in a 276% bonus to exp. No food or other exp bonus items were active, so with the 50% rested it comes to 326%. If I did not use any HQ mats and still got quality to 100%, it would have netted a total bonus of 350%; I'm assuming the initial bonus is capped at 300%. Ugh, I was never very good at math.

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Originally Posted by Ksenia

And lets stop pretending RnG is anything but a throttle mechanic. I level through crafting, using NQ mats getting quality as high as I can. I have experience with the 'RnG' in this game over thousands of crafts. I watch it trend according to my experience bar over and over. I watch it adjust based on my rotation.

Nothing I offered is intended to intimidate new players. With the proper gear and rotations you can avoid RnG completely. I've also used hasty spam, rotations and even using NQ mats with a 14% completion I get 10 out of 99 HQ. Some prefer to spam, some prefer precision. The precision option is there, it just means a different process.

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You can never avoid RNG if a success rate is anything lower than 100%. If you're using CP touches instead of Hasty Touch, I understand what you are saying, but when it comes to recipes around your level it is very difficult to get quality to 100% using only CP touches.

A misconception I have realized while roaming about is what it means when you see something has a certain success rate. What needs to be understood is this rate is an individual case. It's the reason why if you buy a lotto ticket with 1/10 odds, buying 10 tickets doesn't guarantee you will win. You don't increase your odds to 100% by buying 10 tickets. Each individual ticket has a 10% chance of being a winner. RNG works very much the same way because well, it is the same thing.

When you see '80%' success rate, it doesn't mean 80% of your overall attempts are going to be successful. It means that this particular attempt has a 80% chance that it will succeed, and if it doesn't, your attempt landed in the 20% field and failed. This can happen EVERY attempt, and if you get an unlucky streak, it is just that: An unlucky streak.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

I am definitely confused. I have no idea how these modifiers work. I think what is throwing me off is the 'rested' exp. What is this? In your initial response to me, you said rested is a flat 50% assuming you have enough. Enough of what?

So as I understand it now, in the pic the quality bar was increased from 8% to 100%, this resulted in a 276% bonus to exp. No food or other exp bonus items were active, so with the 50% rested it comes to 326%. If I did not use any HQ mats and still got quality to 100%, it would have netted a total bonus of 350%; I'm assuming the initial bonus is capped at 300%. Ugh, I was never very good at math.

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Exp modifiers in this game work by being added together, then applied to the base exp.

So, yes, you understand that correctly. The game only displays the total exp earned, and the amount of bonus. In that pic, you got 326% bonus, of which 50 points was Rested and the other 276 was from the Quality you added.

For what it's worth, we know that you had "enough" Rested because your bar was still full of it. So you clearly got the full 50% from of it.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

You can never avoid RNG if a success rate is anything lower than 100%. If you're using CP touches instead of Hasty Touch, I understand what you are saying, but when it comes to recipes around your level it is very difficult to get quality to 100% using only CP touches.

snip

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This is why I craft exclusively in HQ parts. You can CP craft and get 100% at level, even 2 levels above level with all HQ. It falls on it face with forced NQ from desynth and exclusive, vendor mats but to the core of my comments on this thread, you can craft HQ and void RnG. Mostly it's going to take far more prep work and you won't really save time but if RnG spam grinds your gears like it does mine, it's an option. It's also why everything post ARR is so unappealing to me. You are forced to RnG spam. You can't get HQ unless you eat and breathe FF14 for weeks on end. Even then, stuff like Demi III's simply can't be obtained HQ.

Another reason to HQ everything. HQs give your FC Company Credits.