Hardcore crafters, SE has rewarded you big-time in this patch.

[Alahra]

But if you were a crafter who picked two or maybe 3 (the specialist focus in other words), odds are you had your mixture of cheap i180/i170 already set up. I can guarantee that I was in the bottom percentile of 'people prepared for 3.2' and I still managed to cheaply hobble together the bare essentials to get a tiny slice of the volatile first day market.

I made the apparent mistake of not being able to see the future and waited to see the new 180 gear before committing to melds, assuming that the gear would be a viable option just as the 180 gear was viable up until this point. By that time, prices on Diabolos had plummeted to below the cost of HQ mats, and I'm left in a position of essentially not participating in endgame crafting this patch cycle while I instead take most of it to catch up.

It actually *is* a "shocker" since the developers had told us repeatedly that we wouldn't need specialized melded armor for crafting advancement in HW and now we essentially do. I don't get why people are being so non-empathetic about this. We were told one thing, which held true for HW up until now and what we were told no longer holds true, with no advanced warning. Apparently it's my fault for not reading the developers' minds, I guess, and using what they had told us to make decisions regarding my progression.

How is that so? Full ilvl 180 with white belt and white accessories get you to 3 stars with 437/439 CP. Overmelding needed, but you do it once for all classes. No big deal. Doesn't matter how expensive the IV materia are. You get enough of them from the level 58 and 60 quests. Square did a great job in my opinion.

It's going to be millions for me, I've looked at the costs on my server (or the equivalent of millions in time and money spent spiritbonding). I'm not an Omnicrafter, so I don't have everything at 60. We were also told that they wanted people to be able to participate in endgame crafting without needing all of the crafters leveled, so I stuck to the three crafts that I focused on in ARR (I had everything at 50 then, but I was never happy about it). Now you're telling me I should get everything to level 60 for the materia, too, something that also wasn't necessary up until this point (and shouldn't be, if the developers original statements were to hold true).

Again, my issue is that what we were told about the future of crafting progression leading up to HW, and regarding the purpose of the Red Scrip system doesn't line up with the present reality in 3.2. If we had been given some information regarding this (much as they gave information for the future of tank gearing for 3.2 ahead of time), I wouldn't be nearly as frustrated as I am now.

Instead, I get to spend this crafting tier playing catch up, which isn't exactly enjoyable. I feel like I'm being punished for making a decision regarding progression according to the stated development direction that was apparently the "wrong" one because things are being balanced differently now with no indication that a change was incoming.