A few questions from a returning player

[MisterWiggles]

1) I don't remember where I read it, but I heard that guild marks were going to be taken away? If so, does anyone know when and have they announced what will happen with leftover guild marks? Will we then have some other way of getting training books?

2) Do leves reset every 12 or 36 hours? Reason I ask is when I type /clock in game, it shows that it is 12 hours right after the timer goes to 0.

3) Are there any good crafting guides out there anymore? I've looked on the forums here, but a lot of the stuff seems to be out of date.

4) Any good links I should bookmark to use like yg or zam?

I had a bunch of other questions, but I can't seems to remember them at the moment. Will post again when I remember

[vax]

1) Yes, but i think the only thing that will go away are the traits that you will be getting at some levels. Attacks abilities will be still on guild marks (i think, not sure).

2) Reset every 12 hour. 4 Leves every 12 hours is now.

3) Check recipes from http://www.mooglebox.com/includes/index.php

[MisterWiggles]

1) Yes, but i think the only thing that will go away are the traits that you will be getting at some levels. Attacks abilities will be still on guild marks (i think, not sure).

2) Reset every 12 hour. 4 Leves every 12 hours is now.

3) Check recipes from http://www.mooglebox.com/includes/index.php

Thank you for the reply vax. What I'm mainly concerned over are the Training books. Are those considered traits? I'm just buying the Tanning Training book for my LW and I'm concerned that there won't be any use come 1.20 or whenever they implement it.

I do like leves resetting every 12 hours though! Definitely going in the right direction from the 36-48 hour crap we use to have.

Is mooglebox reliable? I recently found out about it and I like how it loads much faster than yg (yg seems to load slow for me) and it's easy and simple to read compared to yg. I'm just wondering how accurate the skill levels are on moogle.

[Estellios]

The training books are actually not used at all in the new recipes. Crafting was revamped in 1.19 and streamlined the process so you don't have to gather a million materials or take a ton of steps to craft things. Guildmark-bought abilities for crafters I believe are going to become learnable as you level up.

As for what will happen to Guild Marks, it seems like the devs are heading into the "get rid of them" direction, and will implement a system to trade in guild marks for items, gear, company seals, and/or gil, but they are still deciding on the specifics.

Concerning leves: They don't exactly "reset" now. What happens is every 12 hours you get 4 slots that you can use towards any combination of Battle, Crafting, and Gathering leves. You can stockpile up to 99 slots. The leves at the counter replenish themselves when you get new slots (so 12 hours), or if you complete or fail a leve.

Mooglebox is the best item/crafting database I've come across so far. Yg took months to update with the new recipes and in that time Mooglebox updated all their recipes, added new search methods, and yes, nearly every recipe there has the correct level since the owner had a campaign asking people to input their xp from synths which were used to calculate the levels.

[MisterWiggles]

The training books are actually not used at all in the new recipes. Crafting was revamped in 1.19 and streamlined the process so you don't have to gather a million materials or take a ton of steps to craft things. Guildmark-bought abilities for crafters I believe are going to become learnable as you level up.

As for what will happen to Guild Marks, it seems like the devs are heading into the "get rid of them" direction, and will implement a system to trade in guild marks for items, gear, company seals, and/or gil, but they are still deciding on the specifics.

Concerning leves: They don't exactly "reset" now. What happens is every 12 hours you get 4 slots that you can use towards any combination of Battle, Crafting, and Gathering leves. You can stockpile up to 99 slots. The leves at the counter replenish themselves when you get new slots (so 12 hours), or if you complete or fail a leve.

Mooglebox is the best item/crafting database I've come across so far. Yg took months to update with the new recipes and in that time Mooglebox updated all their recipes, added new search methods, and yes, nearly every recipe there has the correct level since the owner had a campaign asking people to input their xp from synths which were used to calculate the levels.

Thank you for the response Estellios. I haven't looked a whole lot into crafting since I came back, but I did notice the recipes that weren't "dated" did use a lot less mats, which I like! Crafting use to be so much more tedious. So with the new recipes, there is no need for training anymore? Reason I ask is because to make buffalo leather, it's very tough even if you're above to level to make them. I only get roughly 200 exp per synth and had failed 5 times in a row. Grinded some LW leves last night to get enough marks to buy the tanning training book and now I never fail. I don't think I saw a "new" recipe to make buffalo leather like some of the other items. Would that mean they will be changing it later?

I guess I shouldn't even bother doing the level 30 LW quest which is available to me now? http://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Designer_Imposters It gives 3k guild marks which will be useless very soon.

[Estellios]

I would do the quest if you want the story, looking back on it now I think some crafting abilities will be rewarded as quest rewards after 1.20. Buffalo leather is an old recipe that will be eventually removed, and old recipes still use the training manuals. Unfortunately, the crafting quests and guildleves still use old recipes but they are going to be revamped in the next patch, which should hopefully be released in 1-2 weeks. In the meantime, I would go ahead and pick up at least any immediately needed training books you need for quests or guildleves because you get a TON of guild marks now if you do leves in the city that houses the guild. So for leatherworker, doing leves in Gridania would reward you with marks.

Lodestone's Synthesis section is a good way to check if a recipe is "Current" or not, as it only has new recipes. If a search there turns up in failure, that recipe is old.

Also, if you are curious, here is a huge list of items that are getting phased out. This streamlines the crafting AND gathering process significantly. If you have any of them, I suggest getting rid of them in whatever method is best for you.

[MisterWiggles]

when you say crafting abilities, do you mean ones like preserve, tender touch and the likes?

Thank you for that list. Will the items still exist or will they actually go poof once 1.20 hits? I'm assuming 1.20 is when all of these changes will occurr?

[Estellios]

Yeah those are the crafting abilities I was talking about.

As for the items, they will still be around and remain in your inventory for the forseeable future, but you won't be able to actually obtain them eventually.

The changes I've been talking about should be hitting this coming patch. There's a handy list of what will be coming in 1.20 and what will be coming in the patch after that in the latest letter from the producer.

[MisterWiggles]

ah okay so with crafting abilities, you'll have to do quests to get them later and not just get them with levels. I've seen that link, but I haven't really gone through it extensively to read all the details. I should sometime though.

I did think of another question though. Does repair gear still not do anything? I remember about 10 months ago just before I had quit, I would never repair any of my crafting gear. Reason being on your character sheet, you would still get all of the bonuses even if the durability on the gear was at 0. I haven't done any personal testing, but from the testing that others have done, it shows that durability really doesn't affect gear. It's just there and having 0 durability will still give you all of the bonuses a 100% durability item would. I'm just wondering if they fixed this. I noticed all of my gear is still at 0, but I still get the bonuses. Maybe SE has been too lazy to fix this still?

[Estellios]

yes they've fixed it, i'm not sure if it shows up on your status but you will notice it, especially for weapons. 100% - 1% durability you have no penalty. Once you hit 0 you get absolutely NO stats from that piece of gear. If it's a weapon you'll do 0-1 damage all of a sudden. Durability drops very slowly now, and only takes major hits if you return while KO'd as it's become the death penalty.

Repairs are much much easier to do now. Dark Matter has been introduced so repairs have a standardized material and NPC's repair to 99% and are much much much cheaper than before. 1.20 is going to allow the npc's to repair accessories so after that you'll only need to seek out a crafter for repairs if you want to resell an item.