Armorsmithing is useless. Coke is WAY too expensive / Needed WAY too much @ lvl 50

[Haymore]

Got lvl 50 recipes open while back and I am honestly shocked how useless it is.

To craft lvl 50 green gear, Darksteel that has item level 70 you need to make Darksteel ingots. Well that is not bad at all but those ingots happen to need 9x regeant called "Coke" that costs 125 each.

So you can buy item level 70 Darklight gloves with 475(?) tomestones, but if you want to craft Darksteel gloves that require 2 ingots you will need 2250 tomestones.

Every other Darksteel piece requires 1 ingot, so those cost "only" 1125 marks. That is more expensive than any item level 70 piece.

Only exception is if you get heavy armor for tanking, that is actually cheaper as those head+body combos cost something like 1400+, IF I remember it correctly. Didn't bother to check as I am so disappointed because I wasted time on leveling Mining to 50 and Armorsmiting to 45 and now I have no need for it.

I am under assumption that those ingots required 2x Coke in 1.0. So why is it so expensive now?

[Haymore]

In my opinion, crafting items should always be cheaper than buying them when you bother to level the gathering skills too. But in this case it is not so, but Armorers actually get punished for selecting that craft. Also there is no materia slots in other lvl 50 gear than Darksteel (or I just haven't seen it yet if there is) so nobody will need materia melding either, because there is no armor available that would have those materia slots.

SE, please make the hours wasted in Armorsmithing and Mining useful.

[nelar]

that's disappointing to hear... guess I should quit AS now before I invest to much time in it.

[Leonas]

But can you HQ the piece you can craft versus the vendor bought? And does it have materia slots because its crafted?

[Polaritie]

But can you HQ the piece you can craft versus the vendor bought? And does it have materia slots because its crafted?

Yes, the top-tier crafted items can be HQ'd, which puts them at among the strongest items available in the game when melded, from what I hear.

[ThatSneakyRussian]

Yes you can HQ it, and has materia.

However, there is a large failure rate obtaining HQ on 50 gear. I've walked around speaking to several high-end PLD's and Warriors asking them about the 11 materia slots and the HQ failure rate. Not a SINGLE one was willing to grind the tokens required for the coke, with a chance of HQ failure, for 11 materia slots for the armor alone and the HQ itself if all were successful.

Also, getting the Materia you want for the piece you want just isn't worth it either. It's so hard, grindy, and random to work getting your set completely materia'd the way you want. Not to mention the minor bonuses you seem to achieve.

No one wants to work on darksteel if darklight is just so much easier to get.

Oh, might i also mention that no one wants HQ armor pre-50? I've got 9 sets all varrying throughout the levels of HQ armor that hasn't sold in 3 days.

WHY DID I WASTE SO MUCH TIME AND EFFORT ON ARMORSMITHING IF IT IS WORTHLESS?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!

[Arbitrage]

Oh, might i also mention that no one wants HQ armor pre-50? I've got 9 sets all varrying throughout the levels of HQ armor that hasn't sold in 3 days.

WHY DID I WASTE SO MUCH TIME AND EFFORT ON ARMORSMITHING IF IT IS WORTHLESS?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!

except they do, because hq gear will last 10 levels compared to five, I sell my hq gear before i sell my nq..I also update prices so I have the best one, but I still price hqs about 3k more than the nq's (45 arm, 44 gsm, 38 alc, 42 wvr)

[Mishaela]

However, there is a large failure rate obtaining HQ on 50 gear. I've walked around speaking to several high-end PLD's and Warriors asking them about the 11 materia slots and the HQ failure rate. Not a SINGLE one was willing to grind the tokens required for the coke, with a chance of HQ failure, for 11 materia slots for the armor alone and the HQ itself if all were successful.

I've made like 10 pieces of Vanya/Gryphonskin/Heavy Darksteel gear. 100% HQ'd every single one of them.

[Mistz]

I've made like 10 pieces of Vanya/Gryphonskin/Heavy Darksteel gear. 100% HQ'd every single one of them.

Really? 10 pieces HQ on all, whats your Craftmanship & Control?
Sounds very unlikely you would allready have gathered more then 100 items that req, 125 tomes pr item, unless you bought them, wich lead to my next question, what stuff are you makeing to obtain 100x 30~50k items lol.
besides the other mats where i assume u had to get the HQ versions of them, so in other words u manage to farm around 10million gil since release must hand it to you, thats and accomplishment right there.

[Mishaela]

Really? 10 pieces HQ on all, whats your Craftmanship & Control?
Sounds very unlikely you would allready have gathered more then 100 items that req, 125 tomes pr item, unless you bought them, wich lead to my next question, what stuff are you makeing to obtain 100x 30~50k items lol.
besides the other mats where i assume u had to get the HQ versions of them, so in other words u manage to farm around 10million gil since release must hand it to you, thats and accomplishment right there.

Oh, no, I haven't gathered that many tomestones lol... I didn't make them all for myself. As des noted, most of them have been for friends in my FC. By the end of headstart weekend, des and I and a few other people in my FC had made a group effort to get crafting and gathering AF assemebled quickly. des farmed lots of hippogryph skins for us, some others farmed lots of crawler cocoons and ore, and I seriously spent probably 20 hours just crafting DoH/DoL gear for us that weekend. We were definitely ahead of the curve on DoH/DoL on our server.

As for the other mats that you assume were HQ, they typically weren't. I needed HQ mats to work with at the very start on some of my crafting AF but once I HQ'd my Weaver AF (all on first try, thank you based tri-melded Dodore Doublet) it was smooth sailing from there to make my LTW AF after that, then BSM so I could HQ a good variety of Militia tools easily. Full HQ mats are not needed to HQ the i70 ** recipes--that said, since I usually work my way up on the mats (like, I take NQ ore, make nuggets, nuggets into rivets, or whatever), by the time I make the final product some/most of the mats are HQ, but I don't buy HQ mats. I can just buy or gather NQ turn them into HQ and use or sell them for great ROI. I made a Vanya hat just last night for a SCH friend and I started with all NQ mats. 100% HQ on the hat with durability to spare.

My weaver is my best geared DoH right now by a little bit. I don't remember my Control stat but my Craftsmanship is at 359 unbuffed and Control is like... 340ish I wanna say. My BSM/GSM/ARM/LTW/CRP are all pretty close to that (at least double-melded HQ AF, tri- or quad-melded accessories, HQ militia tools) with ALC on their tail. I just got CUL to 50 a couple days ago so it's still at a lowly 333/324 craft/control with no AF melds.

And sorry to disappoint but I didn't make 10mil. I was too busy helping FC members out to be playing the markets as hard as I could have, but I still did have time to make a few mil. Demand on legacy server for lots of high-end gear has dropped a lot now that people have their DoH/DoL geared up. As des mentioned HQ is being sold for a lot less than it "should" be but that's partly because there are enough people like he and I that can HQ with NQ that those people can afford to undercut pretty far and still make a profit. I make better money selling individual HQ darksteel/rose gold nuggets, twinthread, spruce lumber, and hippogryph leather now than I do selling most pieces of equipment. I certainly don't need them for anything :P

Also, for what it's worth, I giggled at the part where you said tomestone crafting materials are 30-50k. I haven't checked this week, but they were like 100k minimum last week. Around launch, 150k+ each. Those items could be purchased for 50k gil from an NPC in 1.x (or 100k at the "wrong" time of the week), but that's only 5k/10k in ARR money, remember. If I had stocked up on more of those in 1.x I'd be rolling in dough, but alas, I had only a handful of coke brought over.