Crafting mystery: Moon phases, elements, days, and hours?

[Mikita]

Does anyone have insights into the relationship between moon phases, the elemental relationship between days and hours, and their effects on crafting?

Moon phases appear in the upper righthand corner of the screen, and they do seem to have some effect on crafting success rates -- with certain players favoring certain moon phases, perhaps determined by your guardian, birth date, or even race? With observation, you can figure out which moon phases work better for you and which to avoid if possible.

But elemental alignment is still a big mystery. I have read that some days and some hours are aligned with certain elements, and indeed performing a synthesis during certain hours just seems destined for failure no matter what abilities I apply. There seems to be no way to tell which element is currently dominant.

I hope someone here is more insightful than I am, and has managed to make sense out of these aspects of crafting.

[Wynn]

I've been trying to experiment and see if there is anything to any of that, but I haven't really found any reproducible patterns so far. There is info out there about this though, speculations and nothing concrete, but there are theories out there on the net. Here is a post from Core by ZetsumeiTsunarashi that describes their theories about how stuff impacts crafting: http://www.ffxivcore.com/topic/17925...ng-the-cosmos/

[ArkhamNative]

Given that other systems (battle, attribute points, etc.) are such a mess, I wouldn't be surprised if crafting suffers from similar flaws. I think SE made it very complex, but didn't test it well, then "unbalanced" some parts as quick fixes so players wouldn't suffer during "wrong' element days or months that could make them wait hours or days IRL to craft a particular recipe well.

Timing synthesis methods (standard, bold, rapid) is definitely based on some system, because I can make "wrong" choices and fail almost always. But as others found out, spamming "Standard" without worrying about the orb status gets you almost guaranteed success on crafts slightly below your level. So the system rewards mindless actions over caring about the result. That just seems broken to me.

As far as moon influence, so far I've found that whether the moon is waxing or waning has the most profound influence. In my personal theory (far from perfect) the moon's "polarity" basically reverses my choice of which synthesis method is best at a given point in time.

As for the link in the previous post, it lays down a lot of theory, which is a great start, but I haven't been able to use it to any benefit in my crafting.

Early last week Mr. Yoshida said "I plan to explain the 'introduction of new synthesis concepts' bit from last month in a little more detail", so hopefully we'll see a more understandable system soon. If not, maybe we should start to compare notes on what works for each of us.

[Peregrine]

We will need statistical analysis programs with high sample sizes to ever be able to comment on these issues intelligently. That is really the brass tack.

We just need to demand an ask the developer session dealing with moon phases, because what we all do now is voodoo and we really don't have the means to test this ourselves. I'm way too old and tired of doing player mmo blackbox research to be running stats like these even if I know how. My hq rate seems highest at half moon. What does that amount to? Nothin. I'm crazy and my brain is physiologically incapable of detecting these differences that it swears are real.

[Miry]

I think there is defiantly influences from weather, time, and moon. My main crafting job is weaving, so that's where I have most of my experience.

I first noticed weather influences when I was struggling with a thread recipe. Thread takes a lightning crystal to make, and I had been making tons of it to level since you use cotton thread all the way to 50. I was crafting it below level, and it would take everything I had to not break. Then I took the boat to Limsa and a thunderstorm came. The synths were not only suddenly really easy to make, but I made 5 hqs in a row. This is just one example but I definitely notice big changes with weather all the time.

My other experience was that I had been crafting like crazy to level again, but this time I was making easy stuff (I can't remember what it was anymore). As soon as it hit midnight and started a new month (in game), I started breaking every single synth. I literally did not make 1 successful synth that whole game month. As soon as the new month started my crafting went back to normal. My guess is that it just so happened that all the outside influences just so happened to align against me for that month. I haven't had this happen to me again, so I guess it could have just been a coincidental streak of terrible luck. It also happened during the first month of the game, so things could have been tweaked since then.

[MyauNei]

I recall that there are some books you can read at the Conjurers' Guild which hint at certain elements being associated to certain times of the day. When I skimmed over the text, I wondered if it might tie into crafting, but I've been too lazy to start recording crafting observations.