The Exarchic crafts are significantly too hard.

[Kes13a]

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.

easy enough to do, Neo-Ishgard was fairly Craftsmanship heavy it seemed. Exarchic fairly Control heavy. And CP is always king regardless. so even if you arent Penta melding, I would try and do the basic stats at the very least, and pack in CP where you can

[Kaurhz]

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 I'm to treat this as legit...

You've pretty much butchered your melds, bluntly putting it, but I wouldn't be discouraged by this fact, really. You can more than aptly just guaranteed slot melds with Grade VIII, and then just overmeld 1 slot with IV- Like so, https://ffxiv.ariyala.com/1EMQJ - This will provide you with more than enough CP to work with doing Tinctures with just the Aethersand + Reagent HQ. All of the melds for the required build you can actually get just by doing a couple of Rowena deliveries and Custom Deliveries for all of the overmelds! At least in your position, this is what I'd aim for, it's one of the friendlier approaches. From the Balance rotation, and this one the only difference is you use Focused Synthesis to substitute for the low Craftsmanship, and the higher CP that you'd have

/ac "Muscle Memory" <wait.3>
/ac "Inner Quiet" <wait.2>
/ac Manipulation <wait.2>
/ac Veneration <wait.2>
/ac "Waste Not" <wait.2>
/ac Groundwork <wait.3>
/ac Groundwork <wait.3>
/ac "Careful Synthesis" <wait.3>
/ac "Preparatory Touch" <wait.3>
/ac "Prudent Touch" <wait.3>
/ac "Prudent Touch" <wait.3>
/ac "Prudent Touch" <wait.3>
/ac "Prudent Touch" <wait.3>
/ac Innovation <wait.2>
/ac "Prudent Touch" <wait.3>

/ac "Prudent Touch" <wait.3>
/ac "Prudent Touch" <wait.3>
/ac "Prudent Touch" <wait.3>
/ac "Great Strides" <wait.2>
/ac Innovation <wait.2>
/ac Observe <wait.3>
/ac "Focused Touch" <wait.3>
/ac "Great Strides" <wait.2>
/ac "Byregot's Blessing" <wait.3>
/ac Observe <wait.3>
/ac "Focused Synthesis" <wait.3>

[Greyhawk]

You can also take a look at Ashe10's site, who had dedicated a lot of time to crafting and gathering. I have gone back to his site more than once looking for ways that I can improve. I have his macros, but I don't macro the important builds, because internet lag has been known to make you skip a step at times. That causes you get hulksmash pissed. Copy the macros and put them in as a macro, but more or less use it as a guide to do a couple of things:

- Trial Synthesis the macro. If you are failing at it, or finishing it before the macro completes, you know to make some changes then try again with Trial Synth. You'll see where you are failing at the craft and when you run out of CP without losing materials.
- Use the macro list instead as a guide so you know what button to push next. I will bring up my macros, and edit the one I want to use which brings up your macro for that button. Then I will go down the line and use it as my list of what to do next.

https://ashe10.home.blog/

On the crafting macro pages he has, there is also a link to meld builds for crafting the types of crafts you want to do (3943/35 durability, etc). Kaurhz posted a link (above) to the same site Ashe uses for melding. You may find something useful there, perhaps some missed/messed up Materia in wrong slots that is hurting more than helping. I've had to fix a couple of my gear items. Paid the expensive lesson. This last expansion and patches have been very control heavy melds on gear, and understandable if you are going for HQ items. The last expansion I believe was more Craftsmanship if I remember right. You're going to need CP as well, we just don't have enough to get it done (and of course using HQ syrup).

Always use food AND tea/syrup (HQ - it really makes a difference)
FC buff if you can get it helps. It's 10 points.
Use as much HQ materials as you can if you are making HQ items until you can get to the point where you don't necessarily need to.
/pray to the gaming MMO gods (hey, it can't hurt).

[Colt47]

I think the gear is where it should be in difficulty. What I didn't like is how the exarchic gear was required for the savage tier and released the same day AS the savage tier. Those poor buggers who were trying to world first had to go around on a gathering train to crack out gear, pre-prepping ahead of time just to make sure they'd make it.

On top of which, the food and expendables definitely should be a notch less difficult than the rest. They way oversimplified the difficulty scaling and assume the same level of difficulty for all crafts, even though the only thing you are making is the 11th variation on freaking chicken. I'm sorry, it shouldn't be this hard to make HQ chicken. At least we got the final stage of the relic crafting item now to help.

[technole]

I think the gear is where it should be in difficulty. What I didn't like is how the exarchic gear was required for the savage tier and released the same day AS the savage tier. Those poor buggers who were trying to world first had to go around on a gathering train to crack out gear, pre-prepping ahead of time just to make sure they'd make it.

On top of which, the food and expendables definitely should be a notch less difficult than the rest. They way oversimplified the difficulty scaling and assume the same level of difficulty for all crafts, even though the only thing you are making is the 11th variation on freaking chicken. I'm sorry, it shouldn't be this hard to make HQ chicken. At least we got the final stage of the relic crafting item now to help.

New ilvl crafted gear always drops the same as the raid tier. It's meant to be that everyone works together to make a world-progression team. It was much worse in HW when crafting gear was specialist locked.

Originally they make sure you weren't going to a 100% HQ chicken from 0 starting via a macro, that's what the change was originally intended. Catching procs as they occur, no different than malleable with Ishgard expert crafts to prevent full-on macros.

The dev team isn't blind to what is available, if anything this is the best expansion ever for crafting.

[Reinha]

490 ilvl crafting gear came out last year and it will probably be BiS until the new expansion. There is no reason to not pentameld it. You can even get a lot of the needed materia through doing custom deliveries and spirit bonding.

The thing about crafting is that you can't get profits without investment. Leveling gear goes for pennies because anyone can make it. High level gear is less expensive than before because more people can now make it. The profits you are hoping to make as a master crafter only exist because it takes a little bit of effort to become one.

[Kaedan]

Adressing this in general, because there's a common theme between many of these replies:

I have full normal (non-advanced) melds on all of my aesthete gear, which is all HQ, including my tools, plus some overmelds.
Using High Quality Chili Crab, I can only meet the minimum requirements to attempt the crafts.
Having spent an hour in the shed on Teamcraft, I was only able to manage 14% HQ on precrafts, with HQ materials where they are available, on one of my specialist jobs.

If I want to have a statistically significant chance at receiving a high quality final craft, I need all of the materials that can be obtained as high quality, to be high quality.

Then to be frank with you, something is wrong.

Even without Pentameld, if you have fully melded (non-overmeld) full set of Aesthete gear and use HQ food, you should be able to craft Exarchic gear with a pretty decent chance of HQ.

My first idea is that you're not using a very good rotation. Look up Teamcraft and then go to "community rotations" to find some good rotations to use for crafting.

The other possibility is that you didn't use proper materia in your gear. Should check discord Balance for some good melding builds. The base slots are usually VIII control materia.

[Liam_Harper]

Also, if you re-read my message, you'll see that I said *inexperience*, not ignorance.
I'm willing to learn, I'm not willing to be berated.

That's a much better attitude than your original posts which basically were a misinformed rant. Most crafters paid nothing for their gear or melds (I even profited a bit by having spare materia to sell) and Exarchic gear actually sells for very little and doesn't help the rich get rich at all.

However, as you've probably noticed, many of us happy to help, give advice and guide anyone to the same result. Endgame crafters like discussing theory and helping more people enjoy crafting. With this in mind, while frustration at not being able to do something is understandable I'd advise anyone in the same position to simply ask for help first before launching into a rant about something you have no experience with needing adjustment. The community like to help.

I don't think there's anything more I can add to what's been said already but any questions just ask.

A lot of the arguments made are no less than the elitists saying "Get off my lawn and out of my game."

Posts like this are pathetic. No other way to put it. Some guy attacks endgame crafting, the endgame crafters post 6 pages of advice and help and your conclusion is they're elitists who want people to get lost. I doubt you even read any of the thread, you just wanted to get a petty dig in.

[TurtlesAWD]

Posts like this are pathetic. No other way to put it. Some guy attacks endgame crafting, the endgame crafters post 6 pages of advice and help and your conclusion is they're elitists who want people to get lost. I doubt you even read any of the thread, you just wanted to get a petty dig in.

Yeah this is accurate he's done this in multiple threads, I don't think we're looking at a consistent or complex definition of what "elitist" even entails, I think he's grouchy about something he's struggling to express and it manifests as non sequiturs.

[Packetdancer]

So, catching up on the thread... if you have full HQ Aesthete and are melded-but-not-overmelded, then as others have said, yes, that should be within your ability to do. You won't be able to guarantee HQ result on Exarchic without using HQ materials, but it should absolutely be within your ability to do. So yeah, it sounds like your melds/rotation aren't right... which is a pain, since it means redoing stuff you've done, but on the bright side does mean these crafts should be attainable for you.

(I also apologize, since my impression from the first post was more "I want to be able to 100% guarantee HQ from minimum melds". And, well, I stand by my assessment that the pinnacle of crafting difficulty -- such as it is -- should require a bit of effort. As I tend to think is the case with every system.)

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.

Yeah, CP materia is going to be the absolute worst expense for any crafter who wants to overmeld, because for anyone who is overmelding, CP is the top priority; control and craftsmanship can be found easily enough through food and such, but food increases are percentage-based and the gear is generally comparatively light on CP. In all honesty, once the initial 2-day rush on crafted combat gear is over, you can probably make more profit selling the materia itself than selling the stuff you can make if you overmeld the materia (like Exarchic gear).

So if you have nothing else to spend crafter scrip on, I 100% recommend using your weekly yellow scrips from custom deliveries to stockpile the Craftsman's Cunning VII materia (i.e., the one with no overmelding restrictions), or even some of the lower tiers. If you do Wonderous Tails and get a row and and have nothing else to snag with it, grab one of Khloe's certificates and trade it in for the non-combat materia tokens, which you can then go exchange for CP materia. If you run treasure maps, hoard any of the crafter materia that drops in there. Use spiritbonding potions and scrolls (harvested via your grand company squadron) to quickly spiritbond all your gear while crafting, then extract the materia. A lot of it won't be the CP materia, but you'll get some that way; I've gotten more than I'd have expected just by grinding the spiritbond whenever I'm making food and pots for my static.

Even if you don't use it now -- or sell it now -- you'll have that stockpile for next expansion. Cunning is one of the only materia where it's worth holding on to nearly every previous tier of it, because where it's not going to be worth melding that last +3 Critical Hit when overmelding combat gear, people will absolutely chase down "cheap" older tiers of Craftsman's Cunning materia to get that last +2 CP or whatever on a piece of gear. (I say "nearly every previous tier", because the old VI and current VIII tiers, which are restricted to only the first overmelding slot, are less useful/valuable to keep in massive bulk quantities.)

Of course, stockpiling massive quantities of CP materia for future melds doesn't help you right now.

So what I would recommend is looking into the Skysteel tools; the Skysung stage (from last round) and the new Skybuilder stage (from this patch) both give you a +6 CP boost, and if you already have HQ Aesthete gear, you can probably hit the necessary quality to get those tools fairly easily. It will be an annoying, time-consuming grind because of the ridiculous amounts of the items you'll need to craft, yes. But honestly, the final Skybuilder stage is better than an overmelded HQ Aesthete main-hand tool anyway so it'll almost certainly be a net benefit to your numbers.

In addition, though you mention using HQ Chili Crab, I would recommend stockpiling a lovely stack of HQ Cunning Craftman's Syrup, which will give you a +6% CP gain (though it maxes out at +16 CP). If you have the relic tools and the syrup, that's potentially a +22 CP gain. And while 22 CP isn't a lot... it ain't nothing, either.

That's merely for the short term, of course; your better bet in the long run is going to be stripping down the melds and remelding with CP in mind (and potentially adhering to the Balance's recommended melds). Which if you choose to redo the pieces you did overmeld makes me want to cry on your behalf, because redoing overmelds is pain and suffering. :/