Synthesis Guide Part 2 Done (with link)

[Royal]

Thank you for this guide it is wonderful. I have a question. My play time is very limited and I can only play 2-4 hrs a night. In your opinion what would be the most efficient way of leveling up a craft?

[tymora]

Thank you for this guide it is wonderful. I have a question. My play time is very limited and I can only play 2-4 hrs a night. In your opinion what would be the most efficient way of leveling up a craft?

Rank up on the highest possible recipe that you don't break too often. ~75% success rate should be good enough.
For example, at rank 39, I am doing rank 48 recipe for skill-up.

To do so, make sure you have the training book, guild support and updated equipment.

[Royal]

Ok thanks.

[Ronik]

Awesome guide. Excellently written and full of useful hard data.

I have a question - do you have any idea what Ease the Burden does or when it's useful? I purchased it, and I notice absolutely no difference after using it aside from losing 10% progress.

[twinkles]

For abilities i have tested a lot of them, and find the ones that work best for me are Hands of the Gods, Perfection, and Ingenuity. These are my workhorse abilities and i will add in stuff depending on what i'm aiming for.

Ease of Burden specifically i played around a little bit with but wasn't convinced by what i noticed in terms of effect.

Tymora's advice on rank up is very good, although i will add that using the above listed abilities will raise your success rate up quite a lot. To give you an example currently im ranking ARM doing a tuff 700sp synth and botching maybe 1-2 per rank. I am completely certain that those abilities are what's making this possible.

If you're looking for risk reduction i recommend using Harmonize, its low slot cost and low rank to learn is very nice (learned at CUL rank10). I tend to use this late synth (70% progress or there about) on HQ attempts.

[tymora]

And if you're encountering too much difficulty on a recipe that doesn't quite make sense, try switching focus from one craftsmanship to the other. The difficulty will probably be dramatically reduced and you'll have found the type of focus for that class of recipes.

[twinkles]

Good stuff Tymora, also for those looking to speed up their synth rank grinds, try loading as much control or simply using control food. Ran a bunch of tests and found that Control heavy sets completed batches of hundreds 30/40 mins faster than craft heavy sets.

Also the grid doublet is a very nice 1.18 addition for crafters giving 20 mag craft to a chest slot (although not "all class" like linen coatee)

[tymora]

Until they make food updates, all foods in the same category should give the same bonuses when all conditions are met (optimal rank, stat and attribute). So the lowly Grilled Carp is equivalent to the a Miq-abob as far as eating is concerned.

This should save some gil.

[twinkles]

Good to know Tymora, i usually just use tuna since i can either get it free or just buy from the npc in uld. As for the cost that is good to know, but honestly 9k for a 30min buff is pretty cheap when your crafting a weapon or armor that can be worth mils. Not meant to cheapen your point on the cost, but showing my viewpoint on it.

[Madruk]

One thing I'd like to know is if food does the calculation based on what you're current gear is when you eat it or changes if you happen to change gear (or does gear even come into account and it just goes off your mainhand tool?). For example, eat control food while having max control gear on to maximize the effect, then switching to what you'd craft in normally. Since of course the UI doesn't display food effects directly it'd be hard to test.