Ideas for bringing skill back level with luck in 3- & 4-star crafting

[scarebearz]

The issue I have is that it's possible to have made all the best/correct decisions given the hand you are dealt and still fail because the game decided you failed.

If you do everything perfectly but still fail, you take it on the chin and keep going, your successes will far outweigh your failures.

E.g. I've made 100's of 4* items, not all have been successful, but the successes (profit) far outweigh my losses.

[Kenji1134]

If you do everything perfectly but still fail, you take it on the chin and keep going, your successes will far outweigh your failures.

E.g. I've made 100's of 4* items, not all have been successful, but the successes (profit) far outweigh my losses.

In other words, if you plan to go into 4* crafting for profit or personal use/gain, make sure you have a heavily padded bank account.
At times you will fail (to HQ) through absolutely no fault of your own. (92% chance -> NQ says Hello)
When that happens, and it will at one point or another, you must have an abundance of resources (mats or gil) available to just try again, and again, and again.

If not, and you suddenly have to go through the long process of grinding out Sealants, or MC's, or just money in general, then that latest failure will just kinda sit in the back of your mind, and eventually you start to wonder "What's the point? I did everything right, and in the end the game decided I shouldn't succeed. How is it going to be different once I finish all this mindless grinding this time?"

So yeah, 10-20 million gil first, 4* crafting later. Unless you somehow ALWAYS get super lucky.

[scarebearz]

So yeah, 10-20 million gil first, 4* crafting later.

Actually I'd say you need a fair bit more if you want to start/be successful at 4*.

4* is not aimed at fresh lvl 50 crafters, your expected to have put in effort crafting the previoys tiers of gears, before progressing to 4*.

20mil is not a lot if you've been activly crafting/selling 1*/2*/3*.

The fact is, skill is needed in order to HQ most of the time.

If anything the i110 crafts are too easy, I just NQ the 4* mats for those and start on around 700-1000 quality.

I hope 5* requires people to try and always start using all HQ mats.

[Sibyll]

Actually I'd say you need a fair bit more if you want to start/be successful at 4*.

4* is not aimed at fresh lvl 50 crafters, your expected to have put in effort crafting the previoys tiers of gears, before progressing to 4*.

20mil is not a lot if you've been activly crafting/selling 1*/2*/3*.

The fact is, skill is needed in order to HQ most of the time.

If anything the i110 crafts are too easy, I just NQ the 4* mats for those and start on around 700-1000 quality.

I hope 5* requires people to try and always start using all HQ mats.

You realize that not everyone crafts for the singular purpose of playing the market board, right?

You also realize that smaller servers don't have the market for 3*/4* crafting to be profitable right?

Also, you say skill is the gate to 4*, but from this post you make it sound like gil is the gate to it.

[Kenji1134]

Gil is the gate to surviving game-based rng-driven failure.

TBH, I am entirely confident that the "elite 4 star crafters" not only have a LARGE sum of gil to throw around, which GREATLY lessens the impact of am rng-driven failure.
( Losing 1M in mats is "meh" when you have 50M in, and "FFFUUUAAA---tableflip" when you have under 100k to your name after you got an NQ. )

But I am also sure that many of the "elites" have a desynth network. A nice group of people who all together have every desynth (cept prolly Cul) at 100. So if someone in the group does fail to HQ, they can just meld 1-2-3 materia onto the item, and have someone in the group desynth it, probably with a 100% chance, and they have yet another chance to recoup their losses.

For those of us that do not, well bond 3 materia to the NQ, ask around, have a couple uh, "friendly folk", say they'll desynth it for 100k (yeah, that happened), finally find someone who'll do it for free cause they do not have a 100% chance, in my case the guy had a 88% chance... and boom goes the NQ! More profits lost for the "non-elite".

Don't get me wrong. Those who are calling themselves "elite crafters" did put in significant time, effort, and gil to make these items. Then likely spent a lot of time playing the markets to make their massive profits, and built a circle of friends to help recoup when something goes south. So yes, after putting in that much effort, I do think that the "elites" are justified in saying that skill is important, that 4 stars are not terribly difficult, and that when you fail all you can do is to just try again.

But please, for a moment, put yourselves in the shoes of someone who is not here to play the game solely to craft, play the market, and earn GILLIONS! A lot of us here are primarily raiders, but want to experience all parts of the game. And often times, you guys make it sounds like this is easy as long as you have a modicum of "skill", yet you ignore all of the other resources at your disposal. Would you still say this is all so easy if you had enough cash to get the mats for ONE attempt? And if that attempt failed to yield an HQ, if you did not have any reliable way of recouping your loss?

If this really is the way that SE... not you guys, the devs... want top end crafting to be, where you must overcome several gear, time, and MONEY based hurdles before you can even make a serious attempt at making worthwhile 4 star items... Then isnt that just excluding people who do not in effect have money?

Skill can be learned. Rotations and adaptations can be perfected. Money... gotta have money to make money, gotta spend tons of time to get money, and need tons of money to comfortably break into 4 star crafting... If you guys were to start from scratch right now, with all of your amazing knowledge and skill... I can safely say you would not break back into 4 star crafting before it was rendered useless by new content or the expansion.

[Rath]

If you only have enough gil to make one attempt at an item, you shouldn't be making that item. You should be making Lower cost items you can afford to lose. Trying to jump into 4 star without doing well at 2-3 star first is not smart.

[Ooshima]

You realize that not everyone crafts for the singular purpose of playing the market board, right?

You also realize that smaller servers don't have the market for 3*/4* crafting to be profitable right?

Also, you say skill is the gate to 4*, but from this post you make it sound like gil is the gate to it.

It depends on which stage the crafting community is at now.

If you are talking about day 1 of patch, you will need both skill and gil to get there. I'm one of the first 5 dude or so on my server that could do at least two 4* jobs on day 1 (LTW/WVR). The cost of doing both books combined is about 4-5m. The few mil gil there is the capital you need, of cos it varies with your luck and skill to devise a workflow to get there. I've known people who have dumped more gil trying to get the 4* books unlocked during week 1 of patch but still failed, until the successful pioneer crafters revealed their rotations and tips.

Now that the way to 4* is no longer a trade secret and prices of everything have definitely dropped since day1/week1, both the gil and skill barrier have already dropped.

If you aren't those crafter that plays the MB then I guess you could probably wait for prices to drop. I bet these people doesn't have the skills and vision to dive into new crafts blind either, they'd probably have waited out for people to share rotations.

But if you are one of those guys who can make stuffs right from day 1, then the bank is waiting for you. Unless you are a new player then you would have tons to catch up before being able to compete with the established crafters on your server.

[Lyrinn]

I went into 2.4 with only 1.5 million gil. I literally did nothing but farm materials for two weeks prior to the patch and ran countless hours of T4 after. All this complaining about requiring a large gil foundation just sounds like an excuse for not willing to work for results.

[Ellatrix]

lol

I'm sorry, in what world can you desynth a reclaim failure? I can try to craft you a tin foil hat hq if you want though.

[Kenji1134]

I'm sorry, in what world can you desynth a reclaim failure? I can try to craft you a tin foil hat hq if you want though.

In other words, you either:

A. Always Reclaim if you dont get an 11 stack IQ with an Excellent on BB resulting in a 100% HQ.
or
B. You have NEVER had a sub 100% HQ chance yield an NQ.

This is what I mean. When the new meta is Reclaim until you fish up 10-11 IQ AND an Excellent for BB, that is not "skill", that is "adapting to RNG" or "Reclaim if the stars don't align right"