Demimateria

[StouterTaru]

I desynthed several of the vendor weaver needles leveling up my gsm desynth a couple weeks ago, and saw no FC3 or MC demimateria, but I did see some FC2s. This included pieces up to ilvl150. Does anyone know if the higher level stuff can give these, or are we back to crafting tokens for artisan crap again?

[Sibyll]

HWs materia and demimateria are handled oddly in the sense that they don't follow the linear scheme that they did in 2.x. Never got higher than BCIIs on armor desynth and when I convert I have gotten anywhere from Tier II to Tier IV materia from i150 gear. If I had to speculate I'd say that the i160 greens convert to Tier IVs at a higher rate similar to how the i70/i90 gear did. Unless they give an easier way to get MCs I can't imagine it being worth it to do over i70 artisan tools.

[Kenji1134]

You also have the i180 artisan tools... likely from Rowena's Tokens. No meld slots, but from what Ive seen on Lodestone they are SIGNIFICANTLY better in terms of Crafts/Control.

Same for armors. The 180 armor has 30 Crafts and 13 Control more than the NQ crafted. So maybe fully melded HQ crafted "may" be slightly better. Most likely we'll be able to trade some Crafts/Control for CP by using the HQ Melded 170... but cmon, who in their right mind will LOWER their Crafts/Control for a bit of CP AND PAY OUT THE ASS FOR IT VIA MELDING!

So all in all SE screwed the pooch on crafting.
What we have here is the inventory congestion and complication of 2.0 AF crafter gear, PLUS the what was it 2.3? demimateria mess.
And if reports are to be believed, we now have to go back to grinding the old tokens to get things like MC's... Granting this is MUCH easier now but still.
Couple that with inflated materia prices and the fact that higher meld caps now require more expensive materia with a lower melding success rate, and anyone who's lived through this before can foresee the ridiculously high prices crafters will to charge to recoup their expenses.

But thats OKAY! Because we can Red Scrip gear which is (mostly likely) as good as OR BETTER than HQ AF2 crafter gear without blowing millions on exploding materia!
But wait! There's more! All crafted combat gear maxes at 180, which you can buy by grinding more Law! Alex Normal is 190, and likely equal to or better than pentamelded 180, and infinitely cheaper! Then comes Eso gear which is 200 and simply blows any crafted gear out of the park!

So... we're pretty much left with Cul (who it seems received 0 new recipes) making food, and Alc (who got no new potions) making either Draconic Pots... one at a time... or going back to X-pots such that people can make the dps checks in Alex Savage.
I understand that you need 6800-6900 dps to barely beat Faust, so food and pots will likely be required until people gear up for 2-4 weeks.

And there we go, the current state of crafting. Abso-fuckin-lutely useless. GG SE, GG.

[Sibyll]

snip

Not agreeing or disagreeing, but curious what any of this has to do with the OPs question.

[Alexiell]

you need a complete set for each class, so if you dont wanna craft the expensive stuff you have to wait forever before you get all the gear, or you have to stick to a single-few crafter class, which is probably what SE wanted to keep the market alive.
also, with full melds we can expect the new crafted gear to be noticably better than red scrip gear. take legs for example:

crafted NQ ilvl 170 is 7 craftsmanship, 62 control

now looking at the ilvl 150 legs, we had a difference of 7 control between NQ and HQ, add this to the i lvl 170 and we get

7 craftsmanship, 69 control

add the i lvl 150 meld caps to it, we gonna have at least:

15 craftsmanship, 80 control, 4GP for full melded HQ ilvl 170 legs, compared to

8 craftsmanship, 75 control of the ilvl 180 red scrip legs

[Aeyis]

you need a complete set for each class, so if you dont wanna craft the expensive stuff you have to wait forever before you get all the gear, or you have to stick to a single-few crafter class, which is probably what SE wanted to keep the market alive.

There is one problem. In order to get the meldable, craftable items you also need a mountain of red scrips; just like you do for the turn in equipment pieces.

[StouterTaru]

Looking at the new tools, the 170s require MC to make, so probably no go on using them for MC, and the 180s aren't desynthable. The rest of the green crafted gear takes FC3s, so I don't see any alternative to MCs.

Looks like I can put a dent in the 5 stacks each of rose gold/darksteel/spruce/twinthread/hippo leather that I stocked up in preparation for 3.0.