Need Advice on Gear, Primary/Secondary Weapon

[Zell]

I'm a rank 44 Alchemist but currently lost on some issues. I'm hoping the community can help.

What does Alchemy use more Magic Craftsmanship or Craftsmanship? The Thermal Alembic as primary tool has more Craftsmenship while the Second Mythril Mortal has more Magic Craftsmenship.

Do most of our recipes require magic or Craftsmenship? Do I need to stack one more than the other?

I currently have a Vintage Robe +1 that has 20 Craftsmanship and 12 Magic Craftsmanship, is there a better Robe for R50?

I guess my questions revolve around R50 Alchemy crafting.. what gear I should focus on.

My other biggest concern is that I have no idea when its better to use Secondary or Primary weapon? Is there anyway of determine if a particular synth uses Magic or regular craftsmanship? Do some recipes use both?

Thanks in advanced.

[Urthdigger]

A few things of note. First, I believe that when you equip a tool, what's listed in your attribute menu is the greater of the two tools (I may need to check this myself in-game). This would mean that which tool you use does not determine your statistics.

Now, I believe Magic Craftmanship is used more than craftmanship, for a few reasons. For starters, alchemy has always had a certain "mysticism" surrounding it. Also, what you're essentially doing in alchemy is boiling things down, mixing them together, things that supposedly emulate spells. Whereas craftmanship seems more for recipes where you use your own strength to force the materials to be how you want them to be. However, these are only mere rumors I've picked up here and there, and to the best of my knowledge there is no real research on which recipes are affected by craftmanship, and which are by magic craftmanship. The highly random nature of crafting doesn't help either.

As far as gear goes... vintage robe +1 is pretty good, or was at least. There may be a new piece of gear that may be better, or at least close, which can exceed your robe with materia added to it.

Lastly, as far as primary or secondary tool, as I mentioned above it seems to use the best stats of either tool, regardless of which tool is currently being used. I personally have not experienced a noticeable difference between using rank 17 primary tools, and rank 10 secondary tools (though as I mentioned before, the random nature makes it difficult for me to give a definitive answer). What IS known is that your use of tool dictates what the HQ result will be: While armor and weapons just get an HQ result regardless, with material synths (making lumber, ingots, nuggets, etc) one tool will usually offer more materials, while the other tool will give HQ results. Sometimes one tool will give different kinds of materials from HQ depending on tool use (An example being the recipes from yellow copper ore).

Hopefully someone can offer some more light on the subject, but that's my own observations and rumormongering.

[Zell]

Thank you for your response.