Level 15 HQ Crafting Help

[mpd49]

I keep seeing how some of you are 100% crafting without HQ items. I'm currently level 15 everything and alch at level 48. I'm struggling making anything HQ even with HQ ingredients. I get too confused with what to hit and when, usually run out of CP and maybe with luck get hq progress to 20% and it never is enough to get any HQ items. I would like to gear up my classes with level 15(ish) crafting gear that I make myself (weaver/leather/bsmith, etc...). Can someone help with my rotation, which skills to cross to which other classes? Most of what I read is for high level 50 stuff. I plan on using all HQ items to help with this to compensate for some of the cross skills I don't have yet. I'd appreciate any feedback.

[Thaliss]

Advice get culinary 37 to get steady hands II

Roughly you can use :
Inner quiet
Steady hand II (steady hands works but you will have only 70% instead of 80% success with hasty touch)
Hasty touch until you get durability to 20 - (you can use the good status you get to retrieve CPs with Trick of the trades)
Manipulation

Repeat steady hands+hasty touches+manipulation when necessary.

When no more CPavailable use Rumination and finish your craft

To really make HQ you need to be 21 because of Great strides. When you get the great strides, if you are around 20% quality you can do Great strides + Standard touch (64 CP total needed)
And further more under 20 you can only cross class 3 skills if i am correct. So depending on the class you will not have access to the nice skills.

[FJerome]

I would like to gear up my classes with level 15(ish) crafting gear that I make myself (weaver/leather/bsmith, etc...).

You may also need to gear-up twice if what you're wearing in your Lodestone profile is the best you've got available right now? Your gear is about 7-10 levels below your own and not having any crafting accessories on at all is probably why you keep running out of CP.

Once you're probably geared, even in NQ gear, it'll make it a lot easier to get the HQ versions made and then once you have that made you'll have a much easier time making the next tier when you come to it.

[PROBOUND]

The most important gear to replace asap is your [Primary/Secondary Tools > Chest > Pants > Gloves/Hat/Boots/Belt > Accessories]

[mpd49]

Will do all of the above, very much appreciate the help. It's my actual crafting gear I'm trying to make HQ right now. Since I'm tinkering with all of the crafting classes I wanted to make a really nice set of all HQ level 14-16ish gear, which is mostly why my gear stinks right now. I guess it does make more sense to make normal gear first, equip that then do again for HQ. As for Culinary to 37, I keep reading that - but the first 15 or so levels were hard from an inventory standpoint, so many of those recipes needed 5 or 6 things if memory serves. I think I made the horrible mistake of leveling up all gathering and crafting at the same time and am constantly running out of space, gigantic pain in the buttocks. I was really hoping that the HQ items for the recipes I was using would carry me most of the way - turns out I'm just burning HQ items.

[Nutz]

Since you decided to level all of your crafting and gathering at once it might not be an option, but personally I just look for leves that require cheap items, or give the most exp. I either craft or buy (or just have in my inventory anyway) a bunch of that one item and do the leve over and over. HQ very much preferred, but they give great exp either way. This way you don't have to have ingredients to make a ton of different things at all times.

[Maelwys]

I keep seeing how some of you are 100% crafting without HQ items. I'm currently level 15 everything and alch at level 48. I'm struggling making anything HQ even with HQ ingredients. I get too confused with what to hit and when, usually run out of CP and maybe with luck get hq progress to 20% and it never is enough to get any HQ items. I would like to gear up my classes with level 15(ish) crafting gear that I make myself (weaver/leather/bsmith, etc...). Can someone help with my rotation, which skills to cross to which other classes? Most of what I read is for high level 50 stuff. I plan on using all HQ items to help with this to compensate for some of the cross skills I don't have yet. I'd appreciate any feedback.

Steady Hands II from Culinarian 37 is the main one for Inner Quiet >>> Steady Hands II + Hasty Touch x5 spam.
Tricks of the Trade (Level 15 Alch) is useful here for whenever you get a "good" condition you're not going to use for a touch action.

This is kind of random, but for the most part will help you build up Inner Quiet stacks; which boosts your quality chance and is where your HQ chance comes from.

For the finisher, you can't go wrong with Great Strides --> Byregot's Blessing (uses all your inner quiet stacks to inflict a MASSIVE quality boost) but it needs a level 50 Carpenter.
Careful Synthesis II is the next big one - this effectively replaces your synthesis actions, but needs a level 50 Weaver.
Having a 100%-chance-to-hit synth action that is more powerful than Basic Synthesis and costs no CP saves you a LOT of headaches.

Since you very nearly have a level 50 Alchemist already, you are going to be able to use "Comfort Zone" quite soon - use this at the beginning of your synth for a little extra free CP.
Manipulation is also quite handy - grants the same effect as Master's Mend over time for less CP cost.

At level 15, your cross class skills are usually going to be "Hasty touch", "Steady Hands II" and "Tricks of the Trade"
At level 20 and 25, I'd go for Byregot's Blessing, Careful Synth II and/or Manipulation depending on what you have available.

At endgame there are better rotations that don't use Hasty Touch - and so take away the randomness.

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My usual rotation in the mid levels would start with:

Comfort Zone (if available)
Inner Quiet
Waste Not + Steady Hand II + Hasty Touch x5 or
Steady Hand II + Waste Not + Hasty Touch x4 or
Steady Hand II + Hasty Touch x5 + Manipulation

and end with:

Great Strides (optional)
Byregot's Blessing (make sure to use this under the effect of Steady Hands unless feeling very lucky)
Careful Synth II until synth is complete.

In the middle, I'll usually need to use Manipulation at least once and "Tricks of the Trade" whenever I get a Good condition providing that it isn't going to waste any buffs.

I'd get Carpenter to 50 first, then Weaver. Getting Byregot's Blessing first would allow Weaver to be able to HQ most of your own gear as you level it up. After you have both Byregot's Blessing and Careful Synthesis II; you can crossclass them on other Crafting jobs and have a huge HQ chance and 100% chance to complete all your synths as you level up.

[mpd49]

Ok - first off, I'm printing all of this now so I have it. I made some proper gear last night and was able to equip to most of my crafters (all level 15ish so that was fairly simple). What I'm most struggling with is what each of these skills actually do, when to use them, when not to - I'm hitting buttons then sitting there with 3% HQ, 0CP, 0 durability 90% of the time, seems like "synthesis fails" likes me an awful lot. Can someone help me with a simple level 15ish rotation using skills that I have access to now (all crafts are at 15 or above)? Assuming I have the necessary HQ items for the recipe, what is a simple rotation of skills I have now that can help boost this chance? What I'm doing now, hit the steady hand thing - get normal progress bar within one act away from completion then play around with the HQ part until I run out of CP then finish the craft. Any feedback is much appreciated.

[FJerome]

At lower levels a static rotation isn't as viable because you're missing so many of the 100% success-rate moves. This is what I remember from my low-level crafting, you'll have to change it up again once you start hitting the level 37 moves.

Inner Quiet - this should always be your first step because it gives you a stacking bonus to your quality for each successful increase in quality you make (so if you've got Inner Quiet up and manage three successful Basic Touch moves, that third Basic Touch will increase quality a lot more than the first). Inner Quiet's stack can also be spent on Rumination (Carpentry 15), which will remove Inner Quiet but restore CP proportional to how big the stack was. At higher levels most people tend to spend their stack on Byregot's Blessing instead but where you are Rumination can be incredibly useful if you've run out of CP but still need more to recover durability or hit 100% quality.

Keep Steady Hands up to boost your Basic Synthesis to 100% success and your Basic Touch to 90%.

Tricks of the Trade can recover 20CP whenever your material status is "good" and can be really useful especially if you've got nothing pressing to do that move.

Which is the best durability-recovery move is really up to personal preference, I stuck with Master's Mend for flexibility but Manipulation and Waste Not are more CP efficient.

Hasty Touch (culinarian 15) is a 0 cost but low success touch move that can be useful if you're not at 100% quality yet and have no CP left but still some durability.

Careful Synthesis (weaver 15) will increase 90% of the progress that Basic Touch increases but has a 100% success rate, great if you've got one step left, not much progress to go and are out of Steady Hand. You can also use it to replace Basic Synthesis entirely, so you don't have to waste the Steady Hands buff on it, but if your craftsmanship isn't high you can end up wasting a step to make up for the progress loss.

Don't forget food; the bonuses can really help. You can make your own but at level 15 the food from the NPC vendors at Buscarron's Druthers and Camp Drybone will still be useful.

[Maelwys]

Ok - first off, I'm printing all of this now so I have it. I made some proper gear last night and was able to equip to most of my crafters (all level 15ish so that was fairly simple). What I'm most struggling with is what each of these skills actually do, when to use them, when not to - I'm hitting buttons then sitting there with 3% HQ, 0CP, 0 durability 90% of the time, seems like "synthesis fails" likes me an awful lot. Can someone help me with a simple level 15ish rotation using skills that I have access to now (all crafts are at 15 or above)? Assuming I have the necessary HQ items for the recipe, what is a simple rotation of skills I have now that can help boost this chance? What I'm doing now, hit the steady hand thing - get normal progress bar within one act away from completion then play around with the HQ part until I run out of CP then finish the craft. Any feedback is much appreciated.

There are usually three parts to any Synth:

(i) The "Setup" phase - Comfort Zone and Inner Quiet

(ii) The "Building Quality" phase - Hasty Touch spam when levelling, with a Byregot's Blessing at the very end if you have it.

(iii) The "Building Progress" phase - Careful Synthesis II if you have it, a mixture of Basic Synthesis and Careful Synthesis if you don't.

The rest of the abilities you use are mainly just there to make sure you don't run out of CP or Durability whilst you're using the above abilities: In order to not run out of durability, you need to use Manipulation (or Master's Mend) and Waste Not. In order not to run out of CP, you eat food, upgrade your gear and use "Tricks of the Trade" at opportune moments.

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There are also a few buffs to consider:

In order to make sure your Hasty Touches have as large a chance to work as possible, use "Steady Hand II" if you have it, or "Steady Hand I" if you don't. If you use Byregot's Blessing or Basic Touch, these also have a 10% chance to miss (fail) unless you use "Steady Hand"... but Careful Synthesis I and Careful Synthesis II can never miss. Great Strides (and Innovation if you have it) is handy to use for more Quality if you have spare CP but not Durability.

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In terms of a rotation, it depends on how much CP you have, what the durability is of the item that you're synthing is, and how many Synthesis actions you need to use in order to complete the synth.

I'd do something like the below:

Comfort Zone (from your Alch)
Inner Quiet
Waste Not
Steady Hand
Hasty Touch x5 (You should now be at 5 Durability on 40 Durability Items)
Manipulation
Steady Hand (Manipulation recovers 10 Durability here, and 20 more over the next two steps)
(A few Hasty Touches to use up your remaining spare Durablity)

Make sure you leave yourself enough Durability at the end to complete the synth via Basic Synthesis (if under Steady Hand) or Careful Synthesis (if Steady Hand has worn off)
If you don't know how much you need, you can use a Basic Synthesis immediately after the second Steady Hand and measure how much it grants you (be careful of one-shotting the "easy" synths this way though!)

Once you get comfortable with that rough rotation you can start using Tricks of the Trade to recover extra CP, which will allow you to use "Basic Touch" in place of "Hasty Touch" a few times, or add a few extra buffs in, etc.

Finally: since you don't have Byregot's Blessing yet, you may want to look at "Rumination" - this uses up all your Inner Quiet stacks to grant you extra CP.
It might be worth using this at the very end of the synth once you have no CP left for any good "Touches" but still have some spare durability.