Have a Materia Melding NPC

[RyuSaarva]

I have a better idea, lets make this game into a single player game, that way there are no dungeon wait times at all and nobody is stealing my kills when I farm item drops.

[Steady]

Never heard so many sensitive people on this issue. Why don't we just take away the repair vendors as well. I leveled my GSM for this purpose to 50, it was tedious, I didn't enjoy it, and it was barely worth the effort.. had it not been for Ixal dailies I'd not have bothered. I have no shortage of crafter friends, but it is equally tedious to go through the menu options of repeatedly trying to get a 8% meld to hit. Their time is valuable, my time is valuable. There is barely any social interaction in getting a meld.. it's usually me asking my FC... them changing to GSM, me spamming them with materia melding requests.. and them being stuck doing it till they get sick of doing it, or I run out of items to attach.

[SchalaZeal]

As for the FC airship stuff, I've never seen an airship on my server's marketboard besides the Tiny Bronco, and those are normally listed for well over material price. They usually don't even have all four pieces listed at once.

Then you didn't read what was said.

Current step asks for Varnish x12? Go on MB, buy Varnish x12.

An FC with every craft except armorer can't turn-in darksteel plate, and thus can't finish their airships, even if they have all the darksteel they need from the marketboard. It's not like crafters are being cheated if that restriction is removed, because SOMEONE on the server crafted that darksteel plate.

How about buying that darksteel plate??

[Jynx]

How about buying that darksteel plate??

You misunderstand. Multiple items actually require a specific rank of crafter to turn in these items you can just waltz in with any crafting job and submit materials, things such a garlond steel require high level crafters to turn the items in.

[SchalaZeal]

I doubt crafting is 'mandatory', given I'm the only one in the FC that has all crafts at 60. Sure, I end up solo crafting the airship, but that's me not caring about cost or time. Since gil means nothing, while airship could be useful. Others are less motivated to craft, because of the low rewards, or other interests. Except "crafting itself" being enjoyable, there ain't much of a draw. You'd have to like it like a teacher likes teaching so much they do volunteering.

[Terrini]

If anything, I think it might be nice if Drake, Gerolt's Apprentice, would be able to meld the weapon you need to for the Relic quests in the future. It's a rather simple title to earn at 50 but that stage was always a bit annoying.

If there were a melding NPC though, I'd have to say it probably couldn't pentameld. like most gear only shows 2 materia slots at best? well then the NPC can't meld more than that on an item. Keeps crafters still relevant for that endgame pentamelding.

[SchalaZeal]

BUT, this is just me throwing World of Warcraft ideas at the wall. FFXIV has a ton of that already, and I'm not sure we need more. Still, there are plenty of alternatives, and the devs need to be more creative than "let's chain everything new to crafting".

Suppose capped tomes in 3.2 are i230, upgradable to i240.

Make craftable i225-230 gear, that also needs untradable items obtained from exploratory missions. That craftable gear would also be untradable. i230 would drop in 3.3 from the 24-man, i240 from the 8-man hard raid, and in 3.3, probably up to i240 from exploratory.

The craftable i225-230 gear wouldn't include weapons, and I'm saying i225-230 because I want it to not be better than i240 when the crafted is pentamelded, but i220 might be too low because of the reduced weight of secondary stats, even counting you'd meld V tier. The untradable bit makes it a reward for top-tier crafter that can't be sold, the from-untradable drops bit makes it not trivial content like expert roulette, while not outright being the raid itself. Raiders who aren't already top-tier crafters would keep doing what they're doing. And they'd still have BiS from upgraded tomes and raid. Crafters would simply be an alternate (and costly, and time-consuming, and untradable) way to get close to there.

Hopefully the 'costly' part is mainly the materia, not 2 million a piece mats. The time-consuming would be finding the untradable mat.

[Amelia_Pond_Behemoth]

I like the convenience of being able to meld my own gear, and I still don't understand what the big deal is melding a slot for someone. The resources are taken from the requester's inventory. I think it's greedy for crafters to charge.

I do think there should be a melding NPC with 2 conditions:
1. They are unable to meld beyond the available slots
2. It's one of the goblin NPC's in Thanalan.

[Zumi]

I would say no because it is not hard to level your crafts. If you want to be self sufficient then level them crafts.