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

[Silverbane]

I might be able to play a bit more during my maternal leave this June.

Here's hoping you have a problem-free pregnancy and a healthy child you'll share a life full of love with.

Perhaps we'll see you both playing "FFXVIII Online" together some day, doing VR crafting, pounding your virtual hammer on your virtual anvil - clang! - and pulling a virtual needle through virtual cloth. Be sure to keep the stitches even if you want HQ!

[Shadygrove]

I was confused at first when it came to crafting, but after reading the guides and leveling all my crafters (all are around 57-59), I am starting to understand them alot better. I have so far never used any macros and been able to HQ craft stuff with no difficulties. My question to the experienced crafters is: When is the best time to start using macros?

There is no best time. I was using macros in 2.x. I have macros for crafting low level stuff as well as one for 35 duration materials. I guess as soon as you are comfortable with them.

[Gemina]

I am glad you brought this up. I ALWAYS take at least 1 Trick of Trade during that first SH if available

I do mostly freehand crafting, and this is one of the most situational circumstances I come across. For me, the stacks of inner quite is the determining factor. Modifiers to quality progression can make or break a synthesis, even in the early stages, so it has to be carefully evaluated because every failure hurts just as much as progression helps. Ability to recover from failure, value of mats vs risk, level of recipe, gear, food, etc. So much goes into the decision making of how to proceed.

In the simplest of methods, I almost always use ToT if IQ stacks are at 1 or less. At 2 stacks, I will think about it because risk vs reward immediately comes into play at this point. The higher the IQ stacks get, the less I use hasty touch as it eventually gets to a point where 80% is not worth the risk. This stack number though, is up to the crafter.

From my own experience, I have had more success taking ToT the majority of the time. The IQ stacks have to be 3+, and I have to have plenty of CP to warrant a CP touch. CP is also what allows you to recover from a mistake/failure. I dunno, it really just comes down to risk vs reward. And how big your balls are.

[Caimie_Tsukino]

I do mostly freehand crafting, and this is one of the most situational circumstances I come across. For me, the stacks of inner quite is the determining factor. Modifiers to quality progression can make or break a synthesis, even in the early stages, so it has to be carefully evaluated because every failure hurts just as much as progression helps. Ability to recover from failure, value of mats vs risk, level of recipe, gear, food, etc. So much goes into the decision making of how to proceed.

In the simplest of methods, I almost always use ToT if IQ stacks are at 1 or less. At 2 stacks, I will think about it because risk vs reward immediately comes into play at this point. The higher the IQ stacks get, the less I use hasty touch as it eventually gets to a point where 80% is not worth the risk. This stack number though, is up to the crafter.

From my own experience, I have had more success taking ToT the majority of the time. The IQ stacks have to be 3+, and I have to have plenty of CP to warrant a CP touch. CP is also what allows you to recover from a mistake/failure. I dunno, it really just comes down to risk vs reward. And how big your balls are.

Yea, I agree with your analysis. Usually, the first Good is better to be taken as ToT for CP. Precise Touch seems to work better after IQ becomes a bit higher. But of course, everything is situational at the end.

I agree with your switching of Hasty to Basic Touches near the end too. For instance, if you are at IQ7, and you have a choice of doing 4x Hasty vs 2x Basic. If you know IQ9 gives >90% HQ rate, then there's no point to push the 4x Hasty. Might as well go for the 2x Basic instead.

[Caimie_Tsukino]

Here's hoping you have a problem-free pregnancy and a healthy child you'll share a life full of love with.

Thank you!

[NJA]

Welcome back Caimie

Minerva has actually made the point I was going to make in response to the OP. Whilst in ARR each new crafting endgame level required thought and analysis to master, in HW each patch simply introduced a new stat requirement - which would allow you to use almost exactly the same rotation once you had the new gear. This 'dumbing down' has allowed people to just copy over-cited rotations (mainly Rath's) again and again without really needing to understand them. I don't blame new crafters for this at all - the problem is that without changing and challenging endgame content, there is simply no drive for anyone to further their understanding. We are effectively, as you say, in the same boat as someone who quickly levels a DPS to 60 through PotD and then just looks up their endgame rotation.

I have hopes that SB will find a happy middle ground. HW clearly intended specialist skills and scrips to be the focus of the new crafting content, but both were so terribly executed that there were never really taken further. The new Zhloe content introduced this morning is far more entertaining and has a lot of potential, so is a good sign that they have given a lot of thought to changing things in SB. The fact that even combat cross-class skills are being replaced suggests big skill changes may be afoot. And with great changes comes the fun of relearning the system!

Anyway, hope all goes well in RL Caimie and I look forward to hearing your thoughts once we know more about SB

[Kallera]

I want to get into high end crafting always have a problem with gearing and getting the materials, espwcially when HQ is sought after, I don't know what to do without blowojg a lot of money or spending weeks trying to gather scrips.

[MN_14]

I want to get into high end crafting always have a problem with gearing and getting the materials, espwcially when HQ is sought after, I don't know what to do without blowojg a lot of money or spending weeks trying to gather scrips.

I don't think there's any easy solution to this. In order to get into high end crafting, you either have to spend the time to gather/earn scrips or spend time earning the gil to buy your materials (and maybe startup gear). I got into crafting back in the day by first farming shards for over a week and then starting a small lowish level (30-45) weaver crafted gear business. It actually earned enough for me to upgrade to level 50 3* (single class glamour) crafting and then eventually to 4* once I leveled my other classes.

Fortunately, in terms of materials, if you have all of the level 50 cross class skills and half decent starting crafting gear, you won't ever have to spend gil on any HQ materials from level 50 crafts all the way to level 60 non star (or even 1*) crafts. The only time I found some HQ materials to be really worthwhile in HW was when crafting 2* scrip materials at the minimum 2* requirements and that was only because I didn't want to risk NQing my crafted materials due to their scarcity at the time. Once I upgraded my CP and offhand, I switched to all NQ.

I'd recommend starting a small business selling lower level crafts (if there are still markets left) or maybe selling some gathered materials if you can get them. Then spend time practicing level 60 crafts to work out effective crafting strategies. It will save you gil and time in the long run if you don't have to buy HQ materials or craft HQ intermediate materials.

[Laerune]

At Caimie Tsukino, Minerva Nakts and Alya Mizar, thank you for responding. I have decided for now not use any macro's, gonna focus on leveling my crafters and gearing them up, when I am geared and experienced with endgame crafting, that is when I will start using macro's.

[Canadane]

It was a sad day when that guy didn't want to learn to fish.