New Crafter - Confused!

[Ehayte]

CRP 50, CUL 37, and BSM 15 at least, if you wanna get serious into crafting.

Get your 15 skills then take stock.

The best part about leveling crafts from 1-15 is that you pretty much never have to even leave the guild.

Awesome - that's what I will do! I got my ARM to 50 last night and completed the quests to get my little Blue hammer this morning, then bought HQ i55 ARM armor. I stemmed my bleeding coin purse by not buying the i50ish accessories, yet. I'm gonna go ahead and get all my other ones to 15 in my upcoming down-time, then take all of your advice and take stock of what I still want to accomplish - I have two different characters with battle classes to feed Myth and coil gear to after all!

[Simaril]

I'm 50 in all DoH, as well as Min and Btn. I've made more than a few ilv70 HQ 2 star items, and only got NQ once, because of a dumb mistake.

For 1 star and above, I pretty much always HAVE TO use: Steady Hand II (cul 37), Waste not (ltw 15), hasty touch (cul 15), manipulation (gsm 15), ingenuity (bsm 15), byregots blessing (crp 50), careful synthesis I or II (wvr 15, or 50).

I'm confident I can have a reasonable success rate making HQ 1 star threads/nuggets/etc from NQ raw materials using only abilities from: Crp 50, Cul 37, Ltw 15, Gsm 15, Bsm 15, Wvr 15. With HQ 1 star mats it's not very hard to make 2 star gear. I made a Vanya Robe last night WITHOUT Byregot's Blessing, which seems to be far and away the most useful crafting ability in the game. I wouldn't want to risk the 30,000gil worth of mats on crafting without it though.

Tricks of the trade (alc 15) and comfort zone (alc 50) really help until you're totally geared up (alc is among the easiest to level). Ingenuity II (bsm 50) can make a huge difference (I can complete the progress bar on 1 star materials in one turn instead of 2). The more of these abilities you hvae the less you depend on RNG, and the more you can take advantage of every situation. I think I could make HQ theads/nuggets/etc from NQ mats, and make HQ 2 star gear without Byregots Blessing, but I'd need many/all of these other abilities and it probably wouldn't be 100%

***I make gear that I can use myself, but post it on the market until i need it hoping for tidy profits. It's paid off so far

[MithrasInvictus]

You will probably want to take CRP to 50 for Byregot's Blessing; you'll want your GSM to be at least 15 for Manipulation (take it 50 for Innovation, which is handy for speeding up the processing of items below the 1* or 2* categories); LTW to 15 for Waste Not (to 50 for Waste Not II, which is miles better); the ALC level 15 ability Tricks of the Trade can save a problematic synthesis; you definitely want CUL to 37 for Hasty Touch and Steady Hand II.

There are obviously other skills, but these will see you able to make just about anything that your heart desires (with a bit of materia on your ARM, that is).

[Ehayte]

Awesome! I am motivated to get started on all this, although crafting using bums me out after about 90 minutes.

I'm gonna get everything to 15, spend a week or 2 spirit bonding to raise more cash, then make another push at CRP to 50 and CUL to 37 for those essentials. It seems like everything else is nice to have, but not needed to start my serious crafting career.

My main goal is to be able to craft spirit bonding stuff for my tank. And I secretly suspect that there will be i90+ craftable items in 2.2, as well as level 5 materia that will make the end-game crafting stuff much more valuable. Spend me myth on me healer and craft some armor for my tank, as long as it doesn't look like a tin garbage can.

[juniglee]

Awesome! I am motivated to get started on all this, although crafting using bums me out after about 90 minutes.

I'm gonna get everything to 15, spend a week or 2 spirit bonding to raise more cash, then make another push at CRP to 50 and CUL to 37 for those essentials. It seems like everything else is nice to have, but not needed to start my serious crafting career.

My main goal is to be able to craft spirit bonding stuff for my tank. And I secretly suspect that there will be i90+ craftable items in 2.2, as well as level 5 materia that will make the end-game crafting stuff much more valuable. Spend me myth on me healer and craft some armor for my tank, as long as it doesn't look like a tin garbage can.

Glad to see you are motivated! While crafting does not have much purpose in this game, but I still enjoy crafting, because I like the crafting system in this game.

It is pretty easy to level using leves now. Courier leves give a lot now, if you are willing to burn the gil to travel back and forth - just set both destinations as favourite points, and port back and forth. Alternatively, consider doing couriers for multiple classes at once. For example, pick up Level 30 Courier leves from all classes, then go to Quarrymill and hand them all in at once. 7 quests in one trip makes for some great profit.

My leves are almost hitting 100 again, I might look at leveling Armorer next myself too. Leveling also goes a lot easier once you have some cross-class skills.

It depends on how you plan to get spiritbonding done. If you are planning to spiritbond in dungeons, I do not recommend changing your armor set for a lower level set because you need the VIT. I usually do a full set of accessories, which is why to me GSM is the best crafting class you can have if you like spiritbonding. If you are doing chocobo grinding in the overworld, then a full set (including accessories) is better.

Since my main is a full i90 Paladin, this is my setup for spiritbonding in dungeons:
- Replace Valor Coronet with Gambler's Crown
- Replace accessories with spiritbonding accessory set.
- Keep everything else.

I usually sit at 5.3k HP in party, which is good enough to tank all dungeons. If you spiritbond in dungeons, do change back to your proper gear before boss confrontations, as you don't get any EXP/spiritbond for boss fights.

[DancingEdge]

once you start crafting its hard to stop, the crafting system is great. its lots of fun gearing yourself up with HQ stuff and melds. since there isn't a proper endgame content yet, what better activity is there in the game than crafting?