Help with Quest "Standing at the Helm"

Hello,

I reached 720/720 with Ixal tribe and now have to finish this quest (craft 4 HQ helm components). As you can see, right now I'm at 25 NQ/0 HQ (plus a few failed synthesis) and would really appreciate any help.

The quest is tagged for level 15 DoH. My only crafter is Alchemist level 49. I go Inner Quiet -> Great Strides -> {Steady Hand} (tried both with and without) -> Advanced Touch, then Standard Touches/Tricks of the Trade until I run out of CP, and Synthesis. The HQ chance when I finish the chain is between 15-26%.

Any recommendations please?

Few ideas here:

I'm not sure if this applies, but I remember that I had trouble with some ixal crafts because I still had debuffs on they give you that werent required for the craft - so make sure you got rid of all unwanted, unneeded debuffs!

But now for some real ideas:

1) Dont use Great Strides right away - build up a few IQ-stacks before you buff one of your Advanced Touches
2) ALWAYS use Steady Hand
3) Get your culinarion up to 15 for Hasty Touch - that one doesnt use any CP, but has a lower success rate. Always use it with Steady Hand - involves luck, ofc.
4) Get your LTW up to 15 (you can use old ixal dailies or some easy low level crafts) to get that skill - you want to use that ltw-skill (I forgot the name... embarassing...) and then Steady Hand, followed by whatever Touch you can use best

@Vidu: IF you're going to use Hasty Touch, you need Steady Hands 2. Even with SH2 you will get these times where you just fail 4 out of 5 times on SH2. SH1 is just... not going to cut it whatsoever.

Also, the OP should do Weaver long enough to get Careful Synthesis. Nothing sucks worse than getting that 10% fail rate on Basic Synth.

Basically, your routine should look like this:

Inner Quiet -> Careful Synthesis until 1 away from finishing the recipe -> Master's Mend II when needed (or if the CP penalty is too high, Master's Mend I). Use Tricks of the Trade (another must-have) anytime you get a "Good" or "Excellent" during this phase.

Once that is done, pop Steady Hands 2 and then use Hasty Touches for the duration of SH2 (and/or Mending when necessary). If you have 50GP and you're getting close, you can Great Strides+Basic Touch for a "big finish".

Once you're out of CP, finish off with 1 last Careful Synth and pray for HQ.

OR, optionally, get your crafters to 50, start moogles, and then come back to this quest once you get some of the Heavensward Abilities such as Careful Synth II or Byregot's Blessing/Brow. Great Strides + Byregot's Brow (50CP for both) is basically guaranteed HQ on anything in Vanilla and IIRC you get that at 52 (IIRC?) on all classes if you got at least 3-4 stacks of Inner Quiet.

Everything else to 15. Really.

Its so easy.

To get any craft to 15 just do every recipe once. The guild shop sells everything you need, except the cooking guild doesn't stock fish, you buy fish at the hyaline just off the aftcastle. The guild quests provide more than enough shards. Check with the local levemete before you dispose of the stuff you crafted, some of it will be levequest fodder.

Thanks all for tips, I'll try to put them into practice.

So the main lesson I got from this is the "DoH level 15 recommended" should actually read as "One DoH level 15 bare minimum (where you just keep rolling RNG over and again) - several/all DoH level 15 and/or DoH level 50+ recommended for actually reasonable chance to finish".

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Joryan

The quest is tagged for level 15 DoH. My only crafter is Alchemist level 49. I go Inner Quiet -> Great Strides -> {Steady Hand} (tried both with and without) -> Advanced Touch, then Standard Touches/Tricks of the Trade until I run out of CP, and Synthesis. The HQ chance when I finish the chain is between 15-26%.

Any recommendations please?

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Ouch, sorry about your rough luck. With 25 tries completed you should have just gotten a lucky 15% to go hq by now. So yeah, level other things and it could be easier. Fine. Everyone else is right. But theres one other thing you can try. I think youre doing your order backwards. Count(or math) how many times you can standard touch after you do your IQ/GS/AdvT opener before you run out of CP or durability. Then go IQ, SH, StndTch/ToT etc, leaving just enough points for use great strides then advanced touch as a finisher. The extra inner quiet stacks you got from doing the standard touches first will mean your advanced will hit harder and push you closer to HQ. Another thing to consider, using a quality increasing skill when your material condition is Good or Excellent results in a crit(1.5 times for good, 4 times for excellent). So sometimes it makes more sense if you're "close" to take the crit instead of the points.

Either way best of luck!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Frizze

Then go IQ, SH, StndTch/ToT etc, leaving just enough points for use great strides then advanced touch as a finisher. The extra inner quiet stacks you got from doing the standard touches first will mean your advanced will hit harder and push you closer to HQ.

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A version I've had some success with does have an early GS (despite the lack of IQ stacks at that point) in order to bait for a Good/Excellent crit on it. It begins with:

Inner Quiet
Great Strides
(1)
Waste Not
(2)
Steady Hand II
(3)
touch
touch
touch
...

with an Advanced Touch (or Standard Touch if below level 43) in one of the three positions marked with numbers above. It provides three chances at getting a Good/Excellent crit on that GS enhanced Advanced Touch. If you haven't gotten a Good/Excellent yet by the time you get to the (3) you need to use your best touch regardless of whether it will crit or not, because GS would time out otherwise, and it's possible for it to fail if you do it earlier, before the SH2, but multiple chances at a crit on it can be worth that risk.

After that, the remainder of the touches should generally prioritize putting your strongest ones towards the end when you have more IQ stacks, though you can do one earlier if you get a Good/Excellent. And there's a big increase in your chances once you have enough CP to add a second Great Strides/Advanced Touch or a Great Strides/Brygot's Blessing at the end when you have plenty of IQ stacked.

(Just be sure you're not doing the GS or a ToT while Waste Not is still up. WN only has one extra turn where you can use a non-durability skill and still get its full effect, and this rotation already uses that for SH2. Whenever GS or WN is up, use good conditions for touch crits. When neither is, you can use good conditions for Tricks of the Trade.)

Unless you have the CP to spare for multiple Great Strides, you ALWAYS want it on the BEST Touch you can make. This means the last one, the one with the highest IQ stack - Byregot's if at all possible.

If, for a given recipe and stats, you get 100, 110, 121, 131, 142 for the first 5 Touches, why would you want to GS the 100 (bringing it to 200) when you could GS the fifth (bringing it to 284)?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Roth_Trailfinder

If, for a given recipe and stats, you get 100, 110, 121, 131, 142 for the first 5 Touches, why would you want to GS the 100 (bringing it to 200) when you could GS the fifth (bringing it to 284)?

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Because it can usually get you a condition based crit on it (not guaranteed, but it triples your chances), bringing the 100 to a 300 or sometimes 800.

If you have enough extra CP to add in a couple Observe steps as well, then you can get the same crit chances at the end when you a better IQ stack. (But by the time you have that, it's almost enough for a second Great Strides anyway.) When I first worked this out, I didn't have the enough CP for the extra Observe steps yet, but the Waste Not and Steady Hand that I wanted in play anyway could serve as Observes at the same time without spending any extra CP.

If you want to factor in Observe, or any other fishing attempt, you are still better off using GS on the later Touch than the earlier Touch. 100/300/800 vs 142/430/1116.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Roth_Trailfinder

If you want to factor in Observe, or any other fishing attempt, you are still better off using GS on the later Touch than the earlier Touch. 100/300/800 vs 142/430/1116.

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Yeah, but that's once you have enough CP to make those Observes possible, like I said. The point of the early pattern is that it gives you the triple chance at crit for free, which is useful when you can't afford Observe steps.

I suspect that if you have enough CP for even just one extra Observe step, getting two chances at a late GS->touch would be likely to beat getting three chances at an early GS->touch, but before that, when it's three chances at the beginning versus just a single chance at the end, I'm going with the three times as likely crit.

Then with a little more CP (when you can afford either a second GS, or a couple Observes, but not both), it becomes a choice between getting two Great Strides, one at the beginning with a triple chance at crit plus a second one at the end with a single chance at crit, versus just using one Great Strides but having it at the end with a triple chance at crit.

And then the calculations would change again once you get Byregot's Blessing and it becomes GS+AT early or GS+BB late, giving yet another reason to favor the late GS pattern. When you can afford it, GS->SH->Ob->BB is a powerful closing.

I'm now reaching the point where I can get both, doing an early GS for the free triple crit chance, and then closing with GS->SH->Ob->BB for a high IQ stack triple crit chance.

And I haven't even gotten to the level 51 - 70 skills yet. Those and the better gear available at those levels will undoubtedly change the patterns around again multiple times.


Anyway, the point is that there is no one single pattern that works best throughout, because as you level and gear up, so your CP and skill availability changes, the patterns available to you keep changing, and their likely results do as well. There are multiple points along the way where knowing how to get a free triple chance at critted GS can be useful even though there are other times when it's not going to be the best choice.