Crafting 3 X-potions = 12.5 tomes of philosophy.

[Ksenia]

Crafting in general is dead weight right now. I plan to level cap them all because I do enjoy crafting, then drop my sub until they take the dungeon grind out of it and fix the shard situation. If they don't, it was fun while it lasted.

None of the two star are worth tomes. It isn't just Alchemy.

[Thorauku]

None of the two star are worth tomes. It isn't just Alchemy.

Eh?! I'm not so sure about that.

[Lemuria]

Eh?! I'm not so sure about that.

Some 2-star recipes are worth tomes, but not nearly the amount required. The ones I'd recommend are the goldsmith recipes like bracelets, earrings and so on, since the Darklight/Hero versions for those slots are extremely limited on stats, whilst the the crafted ones can be slotted with materia to boost them and make them more useful.

That said, at 2 rose gold ingots each (a whopping 2250 tomes), they're abhorrently expensive in terms of time investment compared to simply buying the hero accessories. SE really needs to re-evaluate the costs of these recipes.

[Curcio]

Crafting in general is dead weight right now. I plan to level cap them all because I do enjoy crafting, then drop my sub until they take the dungeon grind out of it and fix the shard situation. If they don't, it was fun while it lasted.

None of the two star are worth tomes. It isn't just Alchemy.

What shard situation are you talking about?

[Teykos]

What shard situation are you talking about?

I'm guessing the fact that once you get through the starter shards from the initial quests, things just cost a lot of shards. (Nowhere near 1.0 numbers, but a lot given how slow you can harvest them now.) If you don't buy shards or have some similar arrangement, it's a significant chunk of time to harvest more.