Desynthesis Endgame Guide

[Nyalia]

To level desynth, you really have two options: Craft the items as cheaply as you can, or run dungeons/primals. Running dungeons for WVR desynth is definitely the cheapest option. If money is an object rather than time, do research to find the dungeon and/or class that has the greatest chance of getting WVR desynthable equipment, and spam it.

This guide is focusing on the crafted items, however, as that's what I'm personally the most interested in. I can tell you what is probably the cheapest way to level your desynth via crafts, but I cannot and will not say if crafting is better for you than dungeoneering.

That said, I consider 10k to be a good price on my server for a Myth mat, and 5k to be a good price for a Philo mat. Tawny Latex is like 1/3 of a Myth mat, but tends to cost about 1/2 for some reason, so the Cashmere Hat of Casting costs about 20k in myth mats, and about 5k in misc costs (like the clusters), putting it at 25k an attempt. With a 40% chance of success, that gives you a theoretical cost-per-success of 62.5k. Each success gives you about 0.5 skill points at that level, making the cost per skill level to be about 125k, so expect to spend about 625k to get from 85 to 90 this way. No one said desynthing was cheap!

Using estimates similar to the above, a Carbuncle Round Table should cost 40k an attempt, and with a 40% chance of success, that's a theoretical cost of 100k per success, or 200k per level, for an expected cost from 85 to 90 of about 1m. I don't see why that's cheaper, but prices for things may be wildly different on your server. The one nice thing about the carbuncle tables is that you have a chance to get Fieldcraft Demimateria IIIs, which are generally far more valuable than the Battlecraft Demimateria IIIs that the Cashmere stuff can get you. However, with the new glasses tanking FC3 prices, there's not really a big difference on my server between BC3s and FC3s at this point.

Quad-melding an NQ item (lower meld chance than HQ) with 300 gil materia costs an estimated (300/1+300/1+300/0.4+300/0.2) = 2850, for a total of about 28k per attempt. With a 60% chance of success, that's a price per success of about 47k. As a random note, if you only triple meld it, it would cost an estimated (300/1+300/1+300/0.4) = 1350 for a total of 26.35k per attempt, or about 48k. It's slightly more expensive, but massively less stressful, and requires half as much materia (4.5 on average instead of 9.5). I strongly recommend doing triple melds instead of quad melds. So, with 48k per success, that's about 100k per level, or 500k to get from 85 to 90. Definitely the most cost-efficient way of doing it, though still not cheap. It is, however, half the expected cost of using Carbuncle Round Tables.



One thing to keep in mind though is that if you make 5 triple-melded Cashmere Hats of Casting, theory states that you should succeed on 3 of them and gain 1.5 skill levels out of it. However, reality often crushes this silly, whimsical belief. It's not uncommon to fail 5 out of 5 with a 60% success rate. Though, it's also common to succeed all 5 of 5 with that same 60% success rate. Random is random. Failing four times in a row does not mean you're more likely to succeed on the fifth try. It all averages out in the end, but you could fail the first 10 attempts and be out a ton of money with nothing to show for it. That's why I prefer the meldable stuff - the chances of that happening are much less than using unmeldable items.

I still remember the pain of using Summoning Bells to level BSM when they were mathematically far superior to any other desynth item, but I only had a 27% chance with my 78 skill. I failed the first ten or so summoning bells before I succeeded even once. It was pretty demoralizing. When I mathed out how much I spent getting from 78 to 88 (something like 2m), it was actually pretty reasonable (mathematically, that's pretty expected since I can't meld materia to things), but it certainly didn't feel that way while I was doing it!


EDIT: Oh, and it's about 0.5 skill per successful i90 desynth at dSkill 85, and goes down to about 0.25 skill per success at dSkill 99. Of course, the exp gains vary WILDLY (at dSkill 98, I got 0.2 from one success, and 0.3 from another, and at dSkill 80, I got ~0.7 from one and ~0.5 from another, so we're talking like a variance of about +/- 20%).