A word to lvl 60 crafters who don't quite understand crafting yet

[Caimie_Tsukino]

My question to the experienced crafters is: When is the best time to start using macros?

This is an excellent question. Judging by the way you described yourself, I think you are ready for macros already.

Personally, I do not think macro is just a easy money-making tool. I think macros are more than that. AFTER a macro is completed, it is purely a tool to makes things easier. It allows you to mass-produce crafted mats like nuggets or ingots in great numbers, which is awesome for money-making or for your own crafting purposes. It also allows you to easily make collectable items for blue scrips and weekly red scrips. But BEFORE you have your macro perfected, the process of making your own perfect macro that fits you alone can be a fun process which requires a lot of thoughts. This is particularly true for "Single-button macros", which means you only have 15 lines to work with (each macro in this game can only have 15 actions at most). So it is quite an art! You obviously need very strong stats, but that is not enough. You will still need to think hard in order to generate a strong 1-button macro that works well. 2-button macros have much looser requirements on the number of actions, but it can still be very useful. For example, I personally built myself a 2-button macro while I was leveling my classes. This way, I don't have to repeated manual craft something to level up. Instead, I can spam 2 buttons to level up without thinking too much. For new crafters who are not familiar with how to manual craft, this will be a disaster, as it kills the chance for the person to learn. But for experienced crafters, this can take away the pain of boredom.

For instance, there was a time when a random crafter and I were crafting the exact same CUL item for red scrips at Idylshire. He was in a full set of Ironworks, while I had lower stats. But I used a 15-steps 1-button macro to make my items, while he had to craft his heart out manually with many many steps which I thought were unnecessary (especially because I used Muscle Memory while he used MaMa). I knew some of my items did not reach full bar of quality, so they didn't get the maximum amount of possible red scrips, but they were good enough for me. And I ended up finishing the job much faster than the random crafter. I actually felt really proud of myself developing that macro.

If you want to be an effective crafter, never.

Well, ok. Yes, macros are NEVER truly optimizing your own powers to make something. On that sense, they're definitely "not as effective as" manual crafting, for manual crafting will always give more power. However, macros can be "effective" on the sense that you can now shorten a craft, which you normally may use 25-35 steps, to something as short as 15 steps. Yes, the chance of HQ may be a bit lower, but a macro can be "more effective than" manual crafting if it produces HQ products twice as fast as manual crafting...

[MN_14]

Well, ok. Yes, macros are NEVER truly optimizing your own powers to make something. On that sense, they're definitely "not as effective as" manual crafting, for manual crafting will always give more power. However, macros can be "effective" on the sense that you can now shorten a craft, which you normally may use 25-35 steps, to something as short as 15 steps. Yes, the chance of HQ may be a bit lower, but a macro can be "more effective than" manual crafting if it produces HQ products twice as fast as manual crafting...

That's really true only where you're already overgeared. If you aren't (ie. 4*), each individual craft is shorter with macros but your HQ rates are much lower. You'd end up spending more time macro-ing intermediate mats because you have to run it over and over to prepare HQ materials for higher starting quality for the final craft. With a manual method, you cut out the process of HQing intermediate materials completely and it's much faster overall.

Edit: Forgot to consider the crafted material market. Yes, macros are useful for crafting and selling those but I think you'd be much better off selling 4* gear or weapons if you're spending the time to craft so much.