New crafter looking for help/tips to be able to create HQ Silver Brocade

[Squand]

MD gear is skippable, and the crafted artisan's is bis. Do some shouts and see what people are charging for synthing them with your own matts.

[NorthernLadMSP]

MD gear is skippable, and the crafted artisan's is bis. Do some shouts and see what people are charging for synthing them with your own matts.

I will at some point. I haven't reached the point with my Ixali quests to be able to purchase sealants yet. But, once I can start getting those, I will take your suggestion.

[Gillionaire]

I will at some point. I haven't reached the point with my Ixali quests to be able to purchase sealants yet. But, once I can start getting those, I will take your suggestion.

Key is to cut corners using NQ gear instead.

For the artisan's set left gear, other than the apron, none of them have a very high meld cap.
in fact, you can reach meld cap even with NQ version which gives you the same stats.
So instead of buying hq at bloated prices, you can buy NQ sometimes for even less than the cost of mats, you slap on an extra 4 control and a tier 1 CP materia on it, and BAM! same as fully melded HQ gear.
So you're basically looking to spend the extra cost of the Control 4 materia plus any materia lost from overmelding. But, Artisan's gear already has 3 materia slots in them, and your 4th and 5th melds are likely to be cheap materia anyway, so you can afford to make a sacrificial offering out of those to the RNGesus.