The Exarchic crafts are significantly too hard.

[Kes13a]

just curious but what are your stats for craftsmanship and control? whats your CP?

you started off saying SOME of your gear was melded, and then later said you used food.. and then added in yet later that you used potions, so are you using tea or syrup? are they HQ?

I guess first though, the primary interest are the stats you have when trying to do any of this.

[Kes13a]

thanks for posting that. first, your cp is exceptionally on the low side, so hard to do a lot with that. second, control barely meets minimum for the craft pre food is my guess

Exarchic is very control heavy, so opening with muscle memory tosses out the benefits of opening with Reflect which increases your inner quiet by 3 right from the start. At best using that rotation your inner quiet is only up to 5, which I imagine only gets you to maybe 25% quality if RNG loves you a LOT

As Aronos said, its your rotation, and maybe the low CP thats causing you the issues.

[Arkevorkhat]

thanks for posting that. first, your cp is exceptionally on the low side, so hard to do a lot with that. second, control barely meets minimum for the craft pre food is my guess

Exarchic is very control heavy, so opening with muscle memory tosses out the benefits of opening with Reflect which increases your inner quiet by 3 right from the start.

As Aronos said, its your rotation, and maybe the low CP thats causing you the issues.

I'm inclined to agree, since the low CP seems to be the crux of the issue here, without fixing that problem, the rotations that are on offer by the Balance just aren't viable; I would run out of CP before I even finished all of the quality steps.

[Kes13a]

I'm inclined to agree, since the low CP seems to be the crux of the issue here, without fixing that problem, the rotations that are on offer by the Balance just aren't viable; I would run out of CP before I even finished all of the quality steps.

you have all Aesthete accessories too? those all carry a fair chunk of your added CP

[Aronos]

I'm inclined to agree, since the low CP seems to be the crux of the issue here, without fixing that problem, the rotations that are on offer by the Balance just aren't viable; I would run out of CP before I even finished all of the quality steps.

Meld priority is always CP > anything else. That anything else is usually Control followed by Craftsmanship in most cases but not all.

Also, on a side note... if you want to look at what crafts that are actually balanced with max melded i490 crafting gear in mind you should take a look at Expert Crafts.

i510 Exarchic gear - 8591 progress, 56662 quality
Grade 4 Expert Crafts - 12046 progress, 81447 quality

Just to give you an idea.

[Arkevorkhat]

Also, on a side note... if you want to look at what crafts that are actually balanced with max melded i490 crafting gear in mind you should take a look at Expert Crafts.

i510 Exarchic gear - 8591 progress, 56662 quality
Grade 4 Expert Crafts - 12046 progress, 81447 quality

Yeah... Good thing that I'm not shooting for Relic Tools or Saint of the Firmament.

Meld priority is always CP > anything else. That anything else is usually Control followed by Craftsmanship in most cases but not all.

I see. I guess that's why CP materia is *so* expensive on Aether, and presumably the other DCs as well.

[Kes13a]

I typically do my crafting manually. macros are nice, but they miss any benefit from Precise Touch or Intensive Synthesis which can make up for a lack of CP. so, I would definitely change the rotation and start with Reflect, Manipulation, Innovation and go for teh quality first, but thats just me.

[Arkevorkhat]

you have all Aesthete accessories too? those all carry a fair chunk of your added CP

Yep, both sides, MH, OH, clothes and accessories.

It's starting to sound (see Aronos' reply above) that I've bungled the melds I've already done.

[Aronos]

Yep, both sides, MH, OH, clothes and accessories.

It's starting to sound (see Aronos' reply above) that I've bungled the melds I've already done.

If this is the case, I would highly recommend following one of the melds sets that best suits you within this spreadsheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...#gid=837247865

Keep in mind, max melds are nice and they're very viable if working in very high volumes on i510 gear, or whatever the most recent gear is in any given patch. It's also exponentially more expensive to put together. Considering the Firmament rankings are done, and i510 gear is not very profitable anymore due to how competitive it is, there's really not a lot of reason to max meld a set of gear anymore. Many of us do it anyway because we just really like crafting, so there's that. However, I would recommend either the budget or recommended meld sets, for practicality sakes and due to most profitable markets are niche markets from past patches/expansions. That being said, max melding will likely carry you to level 90, the way it did in HW, SB and ShB and it will make completing your relic tools easier too.

[LisSquid]

So basically the answer to "I don't want to waste all of my gil overmelding gear that will be outmoded in 6 months" is "Meld your gear, waste your time and money like the rest of us did."

Yes. Good luck!