The Joy of Crafting

[tymora]

Craftsmanship also affects quality gained.

[Okiura]

Preventing Destabilization is based on Elemental Alignment

I also find ele resist food helps here too, if your lvl is the same as the recipes or higher then craftsmenship food will be the choice as you shouldn't be getting trouble with unstable elements.

also acting on each color adjusts how much durability reduces by and progress/quality increases by, will try find the link to an alternitave source i used, but the info you supplied is pretty comprehensive.

here's the info for penalties for unstable elements, from the Lodestone's front page the link is here.

Lightning: Progress greatly reduced
Wind: Durability consumption greatly increased
Fire: Quality greatly reduced
Ice: Progress reduced, chance of aetherial sparks reduced
Earth: Durability consumption increased, chance of aetherial sparks increased
Water: Quality reduced, chance of aetherial sparks increased

All Moon and Compass theories are as yet unproven and have little evidence.

This is unproven, I do think any compass related effets are very unlikley. However my personal experance with the moon is full is bad for sucess but good for HQ and New is the opposite.
This is purely my observation and there could be alot of additional factors (if moon has an effect) that may effect this, like Guardain, Name day, Race etc...

[Bahn]

White = High Success/Normal Chance of Perfect Synth if Successful

Red = Medium-Low(one word not a range) Success/Moderate Chance of Perfect Synth if Successful

Yellow = Very Low Success/High Chance of Perfect Synth if Successful

Wait a sec, I thought I remember someone telling me (from highest chance of success to lowest chance of success) that it was White --> Multicolored --> Yellow --> Red - this is not the case? Where does multi/rainbow colored fit in this order?

[Okiura]

Wait a sec, I thought I remember someone telling me (from highest chance of success to lowest chance of success) that it was White --> Multicolored --> Yellow --> Red - this is not the case? Where does multi/rainbow colored fit in this order?

Fast/Slow Flicker in the information.
This can be hard to tell what speed it's actually pulsing (flickering), it's normalay a good idea not to use an action while in either pulsing state while learning, but rather use "wait" untill you have a solid colour. Failing an action while in the pulsing state has a higher chance of destablizing the elements then the other states other then sparking (overload).

[Cuervo]

I just started playing the game about two weeks ago so I never really had an idea how crafting worked before 1.19 and the differences between that and the current system.

I've been looking around to find the materials needed to craft dated items, specifically ones that required parts to try to get a feel for how the old system worked compared to the new recipes. What sucks is that most of all the items that these old recipes required are removed from the game. I really don't have the gil to spend on hunting down all the stuff on the markets either. Not that it's even a valid complaint though, because I started playing right in the middle of these adjustments.

If you ask my opinion however, I believe it is a mistake to remove parts from the system. Granted, I have no experience with it, and I imagine it was pretty tedious, but I think there were better ways to handle the complaints rather than truncating half the crafting system. To me, looking simply from an "on paper" aspect, the biggest problem was almost every part had to be dyed, and each cloth/leather had a different type of dye. Now with the introduction of all purpose dyes, I think it would have been fine to allow people to craft the parts, then construct the item from the parts, and then dye the finished product as a whole. The new recipes just seem a little too simplified for a system that stood out from crafting in many other MMO's. Especially since the DoH and DoL classes are treated as being viable playing experiences, making them vanilla is a bad concept. If that's where we are heading then you might as well just do away with them and make it more like FFXI where it was more like something to pass the time. That would be a shame though.

At the end of the day, all I can say is I would enjoy a crafting system that is both complex and requires time, patience and skill, just like our ancestors did things so many years ago. Crafting was treated realistically in this game, and such a system is simply not going to be enjoyed by everyone (as clearly outlined in the many posts/threads on this subject). From the beginning this game really seemed like it wanted to have half the people enjoying the battle system, questing, etc. and the other half enjoying their time crafting armor/weapons & tools and creating an economy. The reason why this didn't happen is because the actual process of synthesizing wasn't engaging enough, and instead resorted to recipes with a long list of materials. I've noticed most of the complaints right now aren't about the parts or material requirements, but rather synthesizing itself.

This game is really fun to play, but I find I get really tired of crafting because it just feels to monotonous. I've done the research on what I need to do to be successful, but I don't like that I still get those few synths that no matter what you do, they are doomed to fail. Crafting should be as skill based as possible. The current system does not feel like I'm using skill, even if people are arguing whether it does or not. The funny thing is what qualifies as 'skill' is different for each individual. For instance, some people equate skill with tactics, or calculations, while others equate it with timing and quick reflexes.

[UnsayMoon]

You are joking. There is no skill in it. You destablize, wait 3 synths it doesnt drop you do normal and it goes chaotic. There's no skill. It's 100% luck. To argue that luck has a minimal effect is just you talking out your ... to justify a stupid system.

You talk a big game about gear and other nonsense like not using pie on a gladiator, as if that wasn't common knowledge. I have the best gear possible on my char for my level. I have ALL the conversion stats for GSM and CRP. And yet I STILL fail synths around my level sometimes. It's patently ridiculous. Doing synths above my level and I end up with unlucky pieces getting 2 destabilizes per item. I fail with makers muse on a white orb AND it destabilizes. I use preserve and fail consistently until it ends.

That is PURE rng.

And to top it all off, even worse is the fact that SE doesn't even TELL YOU THE RULES OF THE GAME. No one even knows what gold, red, or flashing orbs mean. They just guess and the only thing that is known for sure is that they aren't as good as white. Then there's the whole items issue. Yeah, we're supposed to know intuitively whether the item requires Mag. Craftsmanship or just Craftsmanship. Because we're all psychic. Of course. And we also need to carry around 2 full sets of gear to craft on a single job, because that makes SO much sense.

It's stupid that your idea of "skill" is rng.

There is not a single defensible aspect of the crafting system as it stands. To pretend that there is is just blatantly ignoring reality. It isn't fun. It isn't rewarding. And spending 3 minutes per craft to get 500 exp when you need 50,000-100,000 to level is simply RIDICULOUS. Going from 25-50 is something like what, 10,080 minutes of pure grinding on 500 exp synths. over 180 hours. Seriously. You think that's defensible?

And quit joking about HQing. It's a ridiculous system. Getting an HQ chance of around 30% when your item has over 300 quality is ridiculous.

Relying on so much RNG takes 100% of the skill out of crafting. If even the best crafter who knows everything and uses HQ mats still only has a 30% chance at HQ item, then there is something wrong.

The fact is that DoL is designed much better. There are still RNG elements, like what you will get and where you have to harvest to get them, but that's fine because it's part of the game to figure that stuff out. It's not an rng element that throws your progress back in your face and spits on you and requires the insane timesink that crafting does.

Spot on brother...couldn't have said it any better.

[tymora]

No one even knows what gold, red, or flashing orbs mean.

They already did. Can't remember if it was one of the interviews or "Ask the devs" though.

[MANTASTIC]

They already did. Can't remember if it was one of the interviews or "Ask the devs" though.

I think I remember that, but the answers were vague at best.

"Flashing orb is the least stable," etc.

[Savasana]

Thanks Kiote.

[UnsayMoon]

White = High Success/Normal Chance of Perfect Synth if Successful

Red = Medium-Low(one word not a range) Success/Moderate Chance of Perfect Synth if Successful

Yellow = Very Low Success/High Chance of Perfect Synth if Successful

Slow Flicker = Random Chance of White/Red/Yellow leaning toward White

Fast Flicker = Random Chance of White/Red/Yellow leaning toward Yellow

Sparking = High Risk of Destabilization

Fixing Destabilization is quite literally pure luck. A Player of remote skill can mitigate deterioration by swapping between Wait, Skills and Standard synth.

Preventing Destabilization is based on Elemental Alignment

Control effects Success rates

Craftsmanship effect progress on physical based items

Mag Craftsmanship effects progress on magic based items

All Moon and Compass theories are as yet unproven and have little evidence.

This can be said about everything you typed. None of this has been documented by SE. It's all player speculation and I would bet that everyone has counter examples for each. I think that players are generally perturbed by the fact that SE never clarifies anything. They'd rather that the player piss through all their resources attempting to decipher SE secret formulas only to discover randomness.