Armorsmithing is useless. Coke is WAY too expensive / Needed WAY too much @ lvl 50

Got lvl 50 recipes open while back and I am honestly shocked how useless it is.

To craft lvl 50 green gear, Darksteel that has item level 70 you need to make Darksteel ingots. Well that is not bad at all but those ingots happen to need 9x regeant called "Coke" that costs 125 each.

So you can buy item level 70 Darklight gloves with 475(?) tomestones, but if you want to craft Darksteel gloves that require 2 ingots you will need 2250 tomestones.

Every other Darksteel piece requires 1 ingot, so those cost "only" 1125 marks. That is more expensive than any item level 70 piece.

Only exception is if you get heavy armor for tanking, that is actually cheaper as those head+body combos cost something like 1400+, IF I remember it correctly. Didn't bother to check as I am so disappointed because I wasted time on leveling Mining to 50 and Armorsmiting to 45 and now I have no need for it.

I am under assumption that those ingots required 2x Coke in 1.0. So why is it so expensive now?

In my opinion, crafting items should always be cheaper than buying them when you bother to level the gathering skills too. But in this case it is not so, but Armorers actually get punished for selecting that craft. Also there is no materia slots in other lvl 50 gear than Darksteel (or I just haven't seen it yet if there is) so nobody will need materia melding either, because there is no armor available that would have those materia slots.

SE, please make the hours wasted in Armorsmithing and Mining useful.

that's disappointing to hear... guess I should quit AS now before I invest to much time in it.

But can you HQ the piece you can craft versus the vendor bought? And does it have materia slots because its crafted?

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Originally Posted by Leonas

But can you HQ the piece you can craft versus the vendor bought? And does it have materia slots because its crafted?

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Yes, the top-tier crafted items can be HQ'd, which puts them at among the strongest items available in the game when melded, from what I hear.

Yes you can HQ it, and has materia.

However, there is a large failure rate obtaining HQ on 50 gear. I've walked around speaking to several high-end PLD's and Warriors asking them about the 11 materia slots and the HQ failure rate. Not a SINGLE one was willing to grind the tokens required for the coke, with a chance of HQ failure, for 11 materia slots for the armor alone and the HQ itself if all were successful.

Also, getting the Materia you want for the piece you want just isn't worth it either. It's so hard, grindy, and random to work getting your set completely materia'd the way you want. Not to mention the minor bonuses you seem to achieve.

No one wants to work on darksteel if darklight is just so much easier to get.

Oh, might i also mention that no one wants HQ armor pre-50? I've got 9 sets all varrying throughout the levels of HQ armor that hasn't sold in 3 days.

WHY DID I WASTE SO MUCH TIME AND EFFORT ON ARMORSMITHING IF IT IS WORTHLESS?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!

Its not worthless, its just overpriced. The only 2 items that are worth the coke amount are heavy darksteel armor and flanchards. The gauntlets and everything isn't worth the time it takes to farm mats.

Yeah, I believe one thing people tend to do is put an emphasis on completing a full set. Then comparing a full set to another full set. A full set as of now doesn't really give a set bonus outside of GC gear. I'm sure as the game progresses and people start mixing and matching gear to push their stats as far as they can, we will see that certain pieces of darksteel that will definitely be worth getting and melding, while others maybe not so much. I do agree they should knock down the coke price though, especially since it seems that you need to HQ and meld to make it comparable or better than darklight.

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Originally Posted by ThatSneakyRussian

Oh, might i also mention that no one wants HQ armor pre-50? I've got 9 sets all varrying throughout the levels of HQ armor that hasn't sold in 3 days.

WHY DID I WASTE SO MUCH TIME AND EFFORT ON ARMORSMITHING IF IT IS WORTHLESS?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!

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except they do, because hq gear will last 10 levels compared to five, I sell my hq gear before i sell my nq..I also update prices so I have the best one, but I still price hqs about 3k more than the nq's (45 arm, 44 gsm, 38 alc, 42 wvr)

I'm thinking the idea is the crafted gear lets you turn tomestones into something sellable for gil

but the weapons are completely pointless and considering the armor costs such a huge amount and it's not even the top end gear unless they put in something that just spews out tomestones like a pinata there will never be a good reason to make the crafted stuff over getting darklight

I also have lv 50 LTW and i sow the same problem.All my "best" gear that i can craft require this insane amount of items bought with Allagan Tomestone 125 each and i need 9 Animal Fat to make Hard Hippogryph Leather.But some crafts need 2 Hard Hippogryph Leather so will need 18 Animal Fat...That is just sick considering that anyone ca get an entire set with the Allagan Tomestone need to craft an item that is not even close that overpower to worth the farm.

I am disapointed also about how usles all crafts are.So we can meld materia but no gear to meld?As the above craft level gear have no meld slots?:(...Such a waste of a nice features in this game witch is crafting.

I also have Armor Smith 41 but i will not waste money and time to make it 50...not worth it.

Really really desapointed.

I think if they would slightly lower the cost of coke and balance the materia caps. I can understand not wanting people slotting 5 vitality materia on every piece it would be nice if I could put at least one Str or Vit on a single damned piece of armor.

Materia and crafting was perfect in 1,xx as it was both something you got to mix with GC gear in order to be able to beat the content required for darklight/relic items. HQ triple melded gear was still highly competitive if not in selected slots the best piece of gear in the game.

Meaning: Crafted and materia melded gear in 1,xx was both a mid-tier thing that got you going in the world of endgame as well as an end all be all thing that you worked hard for to attain. Now in ARR crafted gear and materia is utterly worthless in comparison and there is no reason to sink any time into it as AF will be enough to clear the rest of the content required to cap out on equip.

This definitely needs a huge overhaul asap.

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Originally Posted by Nalien

Materia and crafting was perfect in 1,xx as it was both something you got to mix with GC gear in order to be able to beat the content required for darklight/relic items. HQ triple melded gear was still highly competitive if not in selected slots the best piece of gear in the game.

Meaning: Crafted and materia melded gear in 1,xx was both a mid-tier thing that got you going in the world of endgame as well as an end all be all thing that you worked hard for to attain. Now in ARR crafted gear and materia is utterly worthless in comparison and there is no reason to sink any time into it as AF will be enough to clear the rest of the content required to cap out on equip.

This definitely needs a huge overhaul asap.

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So they fixed the general game but screwed crafting and the economy? Awesome.

Well i made my first Darksteel armor last night, and yes the amount of coke you need is insane "giggle love saying that item name :D".
But in all fairness, if you manage to HQ this item, you will be rewardet so badly it's insane, sadly i have not seen any Behemoth coil gear, so i cannot compare to it.
I think what SE did this time, was try make endgame crafting gear, the same dif LV. as in FFXI, for you who played it, most of the NQ crafts where wourthless even they costet a fortune, but if you manage to make it HQ, well GG then, cause then u would have enough money to feed your children for the next 3 centuries.

But i will be honest, makeing these Armors HQ, is just as hard as FFXI, my attempt yesteday, was with 4 HQ materiels out of 5 items, i couldent HQ the Rivert Armor Plate? i think it was callt, simple cause i was to afraid to give it another go, since it have ingot in it's reciepe, so if it would fail i would have to farm 9 new coke's.

But i must say even the NQ version seems wourth it atm, i been able to socket 5 materias into it, only thing i dont like about the materia system is items have stat caps, wich takes the fun a bit away, cause in theory you could meld 5x VIT +8 Materias into it, makeing it way overpowered :D.

But it's what it's, look at it this way, makeing the NQ version wich you might as well do, unless you're an big gambler and wanna try hard, on HQing all the pre-mats i still belive a fair price would be 500k for the NQ version, and that should def. be awarding if you go buy all the materiels.

HQ version should be between 5-9 times the price of the NQ, if people question it, tell them to go check up on the odds anyone else is gonna make it, cause i can gurantee there wont float much more then a few of that HQ version around anytime soon, so hard they are to make cause i was experinceing even star 1 pre mats tend not to HQ proc, even beeing at 80%+.

And dont be afraid you wont be able to sell these armors at that price, there are always gold buyers, or people who are very good at earning gil in games, and i can almost promise you that 80% will choose to pay that price to get geared asap, then useing 50+ hours in dungeons to farm that gear.

So spirit up :) Armorer is wourth it all the way.

saw some top tailor robes in the weekend on the market, one normal craft and one HQ, for 6-7x the price of the normal. It was available for 2-3 hours tops...
I was sorry I did not have 20x the money I had, but meh, maybe next time...

HQ darksteel armor is equivalent to Darklight armor in def/mdef and pretty equivalent in stats, but has the advantage that it can have stats added with melds.

The current issue is that the crafting mats and the vendor armor are bought with the same currency, and some of the pieces are actually cheaper to buy from the vendor than to just attempt an HQ with crafting mats. So if you're trying to gear yourself up especially on your first character. What I predict is in a few months when people have geared themselves up for a class or two from darklight you'll see more people converting tomes into crafting mats and putting them on the MB to raise cash for other things.

But yeah, the fact that darklight = darksteel HQ and that they both use the same currency kills most of the market for the top tier armor, and the fact that only crafted armor can be melded kills the market for top tier melding/materia, so it looks like the best uses for crafting classes is to supply other crafting classes, make twink gear, and farm crafting leves for cash. This might be different if you're on a Legacy server though, people might be sitting on stockpiles of crafting mats or something.

the best solution i guess is make the 4 ~ 5 coke for 1 darksteel ingot. and body+helmet & legging+boots those 2 pcs set need 2 ingot

shit i really hate myself, why i didnt stock up my coke/peacock ore and darksteel ore from 1.xx.
damn my bag is full of those hemlet junk, like kidney ore etc.

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Originally Posted by ThatSneakyRussian

However, there is a large failure rate obtaining HQ on 50 gear. I've walked around speaking to several high-end PLD's and Warriors asking them about the 11 materia slots and the HQ failure rate. Not a SINGLE one was willing to grind the tokens required for the coke, with a chance of HQ failure, for 11 materia slots for the armor alone and the HQ itself if all were successful.

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I've made like 10 pieces of Vanya/Gryphonskin/Heavy Darksteel gear. 100% HQ'd every single one of them.

It's too expensive today. Prices on coke will come down as more people get into endgame farming, particularly if they have to sell it to raise money for their Tier 3 materia.

Give the economy a bit of a chance. 3 weeks isn't much burn-in time.

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Originally Posted by Mishaela

I've made like 10 pieces of Vanya/Gryphonskin/Heavy Darksteel gear. 100% HQ'd every single one of them.

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Really? 10 pieces HQ on all, whats your Craftmanship & Control?
Sounds very unlikely you would allready have gathered more then 100 items that req, 125 tomes pr item, unless you bought them, wich lead to my next question, what stuff are you makeing to obtain 100x 30~50k items lol.
besides the other mats where i assume u had to get the HQ versions of them, so in other words u manage to farm around 10million gil since release must hand it to you, thats and accomplishment right there.

It was pretty easy to make millions at the beginning of ARR, now the market has been crushed by people selling HQ gear for less than what it's worth. And since people only need gear once the market isn't all that huge anyway.

As for crafting the i70 stuff, Mish crafted items for people in the LS/FC as well. And reaching 100% is not that hard when you have the control/craftmanship needed for the ** recipes.

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Originally Posted by Mistz

Really? 10 pieces HQ on all, whats your Craftmanship & Control?
Sounds very unlikely you would allready have gathered more then 100 items that req, 125 tomes pr item, unless you bought them, wich lead to my next question, what stuff are you makeing to obtain 100x 30~50k items lol.
besides the other mats where i assume u had to get the HQ versions of them, so in other words u manage to farm around 10million gil since release must hand it to you, thats and accomplishment right there.

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Oh, no, I haven't gathered that many tomestones lol... I didn't make them all for myself. As des noted, most of them have been for friends in my FC. By the end of headstart weekend, des and I and a few other people in my FC had made a group effort to get crafting and gathering AF assemebled quickly. des farmed lots of hippogryph skins for us, some others farmed lots of crawler cocoons and ore, and I seriously spent probably 20 hours just crafting DoH/DoL gear for us that weekend. We were definitely ahead of the curve on DoH/DoL on our server.

As for the other mats that you assume were HQ, they typically weren't. I needed HQ mats to work with at the very start on some of my crafting AF but once I HQ'd my Weaver AF (all on first try, thank you based tri-melded Dodore Doublet) it was smooth sailing from there to make my LTW AF after that, then BSM so I could HQ a good variety of Militia tools easily. Full HQ mats are not needed to HQ the i70 ** recipes--that said, since I usually work my way up on the mats (like, I take NQ ore, make nuggets, nuggets into rivets, or whatever), by the time I make the final product some/most of the mats are HQ, but I don't buy HQ mats. I can just buy or gather NQ turn them into HQ and use or sell them for great ROI. I made a Vanya hat just last night for a SCH friend and I started with all NQ mats. 100% HQ on the hat with durability to spare.

My weaver is my best geared DoH right now by a little bit. I don't remember my Control stat but my Craftsmanship is at 359 unbuffed and Control is like... 340ish I wanna say. My BSM/GSM/ARM/LTW/CRP are all pretty close to that (at least double-melded HQ AF, tri- or quad-melded accessories, HQ militia tools) with ALC on their tail. I just got CUL to 50 a couple days ago so it's still at a lowly 333/324 craft/control with no AF melds.

And sorry to disappoint but I didn't make 10mil. I was too busy helping FC members out to be playing the markets as hard as I could have, but I still did have time to make a few mil. Demand on legacy server for lots of high-end gear has dropped a lot now that people have their DoH/DoL geared up. As des mentioned HQ is being sold for a lot less than it "should" be but that's partly because there are enough people like he and I that can HQ with NQ that those people can afford to undercut pretty far and still make a profit. I make better money selling individual HQ darksteel/rose gold nuggets, twinthread, spruce lumber, and hippogryph leather now than I do selling most pieces of equipment. I certainly don't need them for anything :P

Also, for what it's worth, I giggled at the part where you said tomestone crafting materials are 30-50k. I haven't checked this week, but they were like 100k minimum last week. Around launch, 150k+ each. Those items could be purchased for 50k gil from an NPC in 1.x (or 100k at the "wrong" time of the week), but that's only 5k/10k in ARR money, remember. If I had stocked up on more of those in 1.x I'd be rolling in dough, but alas, I had only a handful of coke brought over.

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Originally Posted by CianaIezuborn

HQ darksteel armor is equivalent to Darklight armor in def/mdef and pretty equivalent in stats, but has the advantage that it can have stats added with melds.

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So much this. The point is, HQ Darksteel costs INSANE amounts of effort to make and has an itty-bitty advantage over Darklight. To get there, you'll burn 3x the dungeon tokens and 30 additional pieces of equipment combined with a dozen hours of spiritbond farming to get the materia. And that's not including all the effort the crafter went to in order to be able to make the stuff.

In addition, AF gear is so good that while you could make HQ Militia for the period between AF and Darklight, it's pretty pointless -- you get ~10 points of def/mdef and a few mostly-inconsequential stat boosts. But hey, at least it's not too bad to HQ once you get the gear. Pop some Mahi-Mahi or HQ Dagger and hammer away.

Quite frankly, the only solution here is to buff both one-star and two-star greens.

Lets just pretend for a moment that we are all ok with 9 crafting materials worth of tomestones per item.

The bigger problem to me is the fact that some gear requires 18 or even 27 tomestone materials. For some of the accessories it almost feels like someone looked at a lower level recipe formula and blindly applied it to this two star stuff. A lv 49 mnd neck requires 1 turquoise since you only have one neck and lv 49 mnd wrists require two turquoise because you have 2 wrists. Meanwhile, vanya pants take 2 vanya silk and one hard leather. 27 tomestone materials because "pants take 2 cloth and one leather" in general? This can't be intended. This feels like as much of an oversight as the required lv 40 rivets for your lv 12 hatchet way back in early 1.0.

i should never level an armorer knowing coke is too overpriced and small chance to craft hq if you only have 1 DoH...

Avoid Weaver as well. It's the same thing with Potash and Vanya Silk.

I'm pretty sure it's working as intended. I just haven't quite figured out what they intended to do, considering the alternatives to crafted gear directions the game has in it.

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Originally Posted by des

It was pretty easy to make millions at the beginning of ARR, now the market has been crushed by people selling HQ gear for less than what it's worth. And since people only need gear once the market isn't all that huge anyway.

As for crafting the i70 stuff, Mish crafted items for people in the LS/FC as well. And reaching 100% is not that hard when you have the control/craftmanship needed for the ** recipes.

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Nah, the market has been crushed by supply, and people realizing that making gil from NPC sources is very hard to do.

I know it's something we'll never know, but the decision making process to make this change would be incredibly interesting to me. Did no one on the development team notice how silly their token-trade in system was?

Yes, please don't level your crafting classes. There is no money to be made and the end game crafting situation will never change.

/sarcasmoff

**runs off to AH to make millions..**

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Originally Posted by Kamaru

Yes, please don't level your crafting classes. There is no money to be made and the end game crafting situation will never change.

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This taru's advice is solid. You should not waste your time crafting.

(Non-sarcastic side note: Honestly though, if you don't like crafting then there really is no reason to burn yourself out trying to do it. I'm serious. You don't need to craft to stay competitive in the PvE scene in this game with good gear so accessible via simply doing PvE content for tokens and drops.)

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Originally Posted by Kamaru

**runs off to AH to make millions..**

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You do realize that pretty much everyone is just making money off other crafters, right? DoW/DoM are just going AF->Darklight->Allagan and only need crafters for relic meld. What every is really doing is making millions selling materials to crafters and gatherers, who are in turn selling to the next generation of crafters and gatherers.

Pretty much nobody is even buying this stuff on Coeurl, with gear running into the millions for a set, but that's beside the point. I've also put up HQ militia armor for 25k for a day and nobody bought a single piece, while tools and HQ crafting/gathering gear go for 50-60k regularly. I make my money by crafting HQ mats and HQ crafter gear. It's like a Ponzi scheme, honestly.

The fate system for leveling is a big reason I see why HQ gear isn't selling. Why do I need good gear when my leveling only requires me to do minimal damage when grouped up with 7 other people for gold.

If leveling was more like FFXI where you were always in groups of 4 and each person's gear made a bigger overall difference in how fast you leveled I think you would see more people trying to go get crafted gear to wear.

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Originally Posted by Soulburn32

The fate system for leveling is a big reason I see why HQ gear isn't selling. Why do I need good gear when my leveling only requires me to do minimal damage when grouped up with 7 other people for gold.

If leveling was more like FFXI where you were always in groups of 4 and each person's gear made a bigger overall difference in how fast you leveled I think you would see more people trying to go get crafted gear to wear.

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Please never que for a dungeon.

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Originally Posted by Laryndra

Please never que for a dungeon.

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I ran all dungeons 4-5 times each I did not level with fates. I don't play that way but there is 3-4 people leveling the way I described for every one of me.

Thanks for being quick to judge someone.

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Originally Posted by Soulburn32

I ran all dungeons 4-5 times each I did not level with fates. I don't play that way but there is 3-4 people leveling the way I described for every one of me.

Thanks for being quick to judge someone.

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And you're quick to being defensive. Just as you were trying to anecdotally prove your point, I wasn't so much attacking you as I was that line of thinking. If you are one of those that properly gears before a dungeon by all means go in. But that's not the case with alot of people, who then proceed to RAGE when they fail the dungeon.

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Originally Posted by Laryndra

And you're quick to being defensive. Just as you were trying to anecdotally prove your point, I wasn't so much attacking you as I was that line of thinking. If you are one of those that properly gears before a dungeon by all means go in. But that's not the case with alot of people, who then proceed to RAGE when they fail the dungeon.

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You have a funny way of wording things that aren't so much an attack. I'll be honest, it came off to me like a snarky attack directed at him. If he's being defensive, it's only because he was attacked.

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Originally Posted by Soulburn32

The fate system for leveling is a big reason I see why HQ gear isn't selling. Why do I need good gear when my leveling only requires me to do minimal damage when grouped up with 7 other people for gold.

If leveling was more like FFXI where you were always in groups of 4 and each person's gear made a bigger overall difference in how fast you leveled I think you would see more people trying to go get crafted gear to wear.

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Yep, I made a topic about this. They should of flipped it. Made dungeons provide more exp and maybe even seals or at least more gil. But Dungeons should be the main exp booster. At least that way DoL/DoH will have some impact on DoM/DoW.

I just finished leveling all the crafting classes to lv50...

My Conjurer is only lv47 so I hadn't paid much attention to the end gear stats until now.

What do I see? The gear from the class quest is basically as good as the 1-star crafted gear and the gear iLv70 we buy with philosophy tomestones is exactly the same as the 2-star crafted gear (which requires similar amount of philosophy tomestones)!!! (or actually slightly better in the paladin case)

I am very sad.


p.s.: I also found that the best gear to sell for a lot of cash is HQ crafter/gatherer gear. Ponzi scheme, yeah...