What the hell is wrong with crafting?

[Hachiko]

There is seriously no rhyme or reason to anything that happens. Everything is clearly random, and it seems like there is no longer any "easy" way to level. No one knows what stats help what crafts, and now it isn't even clear what the difference between main hand and offhand are, other than slightly different stats.

Why do I have to create things up to 6 levels above myself just to get even remotely good experience? Even then I have to create 50 of them for a single level. 50! for one level! 5-7 levels above.

And inexplicably, as I get CLOSER to the level of the synth it begins to FAIL more and destabilize. What the hell? This is infuriating. Botching syntheses that sometimes I finish with 70 dura? Botching because I get 8 3/14 fails in a row, for no reason, even after using both makers muse and preserve?

Getting a destabilize on the first synth? Realy? Going chaotic on the next one despite it being white?

What the hell is wrong with crafting? It's seriously infuriating and now with grind synthing virtually taken out, it's ridiculous.

[Derkatron]

I haven't played in awhile before 1.19, but it feels the same to me, I recall doing +6 synths to get ~500 sp a craft, and being very frustrated early on by the occasional unavoidable failure when the synth totally goes awry from the start, even on even level synths. I agree with your assessment of the frustrating randomness and excessive volume of crafts necessary over level 30, but I don't agree that it's new...

[Hachiko]

I haven't played in awhile before 1.19, but it feels the same to me, I recall doing +6 synths to get ~500 sp a craft, and being very frustrated early on by the occasional unavoidable failure when the synth totally goes awry from the start, even on even level synths. I agree with your assessment of the frustrating randomness and excessive volume of crafts necessary over level 30, but I don't agree that it's new...

The difference is that before there were a lot of "easy" recipes to level on, that produced a ton of mats which could generally be used to make a lot of synths.

The new thing is that now, take carpentry for example, you get 1 lumber per log instead of 4. And there's no longer halfmasks to make to level giving you 4 synths per log. Now you get 1 lumber per log, and there are fewer things to make that simply take 1 log, making it much more tedious to gather all the various mats you need to spam the 50 weapons / armor peices you need to level.

[Estellios]

You need to plan it out more. Look at the wards and see what gear is low on stock that you can get the materials for cheaply and easily. Most items only need 1 lumber so if you get good XP from lumber you can level up on that till the XP starts to slow down then make gear that uses that lumber. Instead of making useless parts that no one buys you can produce gear and make a good amount of money if you sell them at reasonable prices.

Don't try to rush it and pace yourself, split between guildleves and making items that are needed (don't flood the wards with particular recipes too so you can continue to make money off it). Even if you do want to spam craft recipes use very few materials and stuff is way cheaper from NPCs now.

If you need recipes www.mooglebox.com is what I use.

[Derkatron]

Estellios's adivce is sound, but yes, that element is quite different, and can be jarring if you don't prefer the new model. However, I understood the OP as referring to two aspects specifically: the crafting minigame itself and its randomness, and the volume of optimal-exp crafts you need to level once you pass the halfway point. These two aspects don't seem much different to me; am I misremembering?

[Estellios]

Oh yeah, it still takes quite a bit of time to level up especially past 35 or so, but switching up what you make can keep the XP rate up and earn you some gil was my point, i guess =P

[tymora]

I think you'll go murder someone at L50.
100k exp @ ~200 per synth...= At least 500 synths

Take a step back, breathe easy and read around for information. The stats info can be found in "Ask the Devs" for example.

[Geesus]

You can also purchase the manuals from you GC for cheap and use those to help boost XP.

I do agree though the "fuzzy math" used to determine whether or not you HQ or even complete a synth is still out of whack but... that's part of the "fun" I guess. :P lol

[Reliquia]

Crafting is seriously tedious, already at lvl 15 I needed a break from LW. Compared to DoM and DoW the exp is very slow, especially considering that you can't join xp, do behest, parties or chain xp on your crafting class. I hope that there's some tweaking in the future.

However I will say this, the leve system makes crafting cheap, easy and accessible. However this game basically forces crafting down your throat as you are very dependent on crafters.

[tymora]

The best way to rank up now is probably through repeating local town leves. Camp leves needs a lot more running so can be pretty slow.