Yellow script augmentation an alternative to overmelding

[XenabelleS]

If you can't afford to buy/overmeld the 320 gear, is the augmented 330 yellow scrip gear (aside from the yuckiness that it is class specific), a good goal to aim for?

[Elamys]

Token/scrip gear for crafting has never been so bad that you can't craft with it, so I'd say so, if you don't want to invest in overmelds. Just bear in mind it's a long long grind and your costs incurred in collecting the sets could very well outweigh your cost in materia and the ala mhigan gear itself (dependent, of course, on your server's market).

[Faeon]

Token/scrip gear for crafting has never been so bad that you can't craft with it, so I'd say so, if you don't want to invest in overmelds. Just bear in mind it's a long long grind and your costs incurred in collecting the sets could very well outweigh your cost in materia and the ala mhigan gear itself (dependent, of course, on your server's market).

I agree don't bother with it, it is not worth the grind imho! the DOTL tools are okay though. Use the yellow scripts for the materials you need to craft with. You can still make the requirements with Grade V's materia, you can compensate the control with HQ items which you should be doing anyway with the new 3*** recipes

[Alien_Gamer]

In general the pattern seems to go scrip gear < crafted gear < augmented scrip gear < pentamelded crafted gear in terms of highest stats. Regular scrip gear will let you craft any of the one star stuff, crafted should let you craft the 2 star (maybe with a few cheap melds or food), augmented scrip and pentamelded should let you do 3 star at this point. Your ability to HQ the items will suffer a bit with lower stats but its still possible to HQ a lot of non end game stuff even with just scrip gear.

But if you want to HQ the 3star stuff reliably, your best bet is pentamelded crafted gear.

[Faeon]

In general the pattern seems to go scrip gear < crafted gear < augmented scrip gear < pentamelded crafted gear in terms of highest stats. Regular scrip gear will let you craft any of the one star stuff, crafted should let you craft the 2 star (maybe with a few cheap melds or food), augmented scrip and pentamelded should let you do 3 star at this point. Your ability to HQ the items will suffer a bit with lower stats but its still possible to HQ a lot of non end game stuff even with just scrip gear.

But if you want to HQ the 3star stuff reliably, your best bet is pentamelded crafted gear.

Yes, but if you look at the time to get yellow scripts for a single piece and augment it, I personally don't think it is worth the time to gil ratio. But that is my two cents. For the topic on hand, the choice is yours to make.

[Caimie_Tsukino]

I kinda looked into this matter a little bit. What I found is:
(1) After pentamelding, an i320 has much better stats than the augmented i330. This includes better control, better craftsmanship and most importantly better CP. This came to me as a bit of a shock, since I was expecting the i330 to have at least 1 better stats (e.g. control) than the i320 despite having less CP and less of the 3rd stats.
(2) They did reduce the amount of yellow scrips required to get i300. But when you are upgrading it to i330, the amt of yellow scrip is still pretty substantial. (e.g. i300 tools used to cost 1300 yellow scrips. Now just 500-ish in patch 4.2. But still, need another 700-ish to upgrade to i330.)

So I agree with all of you (Elamys, Alien_Gamer, Faeon). I don't think it's worth the time to grind yellow scrips for i330 (especially because they're class-specific). If you already HAVE the yellow scrips to spare, and you don't have enough stats to craft your own i320, then sure, why not boost your stats a bit and grab a piece of i330. But still, it's just a stepping stone, so don't overdo it.

I admit that overmelding can be expensive, but since we now have the flexibility of removing materia. One can now meld whatever he/she can afford on Tier VI first, and then just cheaply overmeld some Tier 4 CP materia. Later, remove those CP materia at 100% rate, and re-meld again with Tier VI or Tier V.

[XenabelleS]

OK thanks.

I see what you all mean about the progression between script gear < crafted < augmented scrip < overmelded crafted.

The thing is as I am just reaching endgame now, I simply don't have a lot of gil. I am up around 3 million and that is the most I've ever had. When I read about the expected prices for either buying the 320 HQ gear or overmelding, I just can't imagine my 3 million getting me very far. I've only ever seen 1 of each of the DOH VI materia and that was from M'Naago's custom delivery rank ups which are done.

So it seems to me that crafting and overmelding the 320 would involve :

a) making the 290 HQ gear and hopefully being able to gather mats for the 320 gear or else needing to buy them (or buy the 320 gear if it is cheaper)
including grind yellow scripts to get the alchemics

b) overmelding the 320 gear itself would require:

- needing to spirit bond a ton of stuff to get more VIs or buy it
- grind red scrips to buy more Vs or IVs or buy them
- use however many materia it takes

I anticipate that this will be more than I can afford to do with 3 million gil and since I can't really make anything that will sell, I'd be needing to grind the living daylights out of DoL mats anyway to be able to afford any of this.

So I thought grinding scrip gear might be a viable alternative.

If you only had 3 million gil at the this point in the expansion and were just hitting 70, what would you do?

[Elamys]

I gathered and made all of my gear myself, which significantly cut down on costs. Gathering materials yourself will always save the most costs. I also had a lot of grade V materias left from stockpiling at the end of Heavensward, which isn't so much an option for you now, but can still be purchased with red scrips. Like Caimie said, you can do cheaper melds and replace them later. Also, if you have a lot of combat materia, Mutamix's roulette is a much better option now for getting good materia. I turned all my unused combat materia and by the end of it had pretty much all gathering and crafting materia.

I think it's also important to consider what your goals in crafting are. Is it merely to be able to make some leveling gear, do your own repairs, etc? Heck, a twinsilk set is enough to get you past, and that's inexpensive to make. Is it to make endgame gear and do hard crafts? You'll want to eventually get a pentamelded Ala Mhigan set. Is it to make furnishings? An unmelded or partially melded Ala Mhigan set might be good, or basic scrip items. It's up to you to decide how deep you wanna get into crafting.

[Shadygrove]

....
If you only had 3 million gil at the this point in the expansion and were just hitting 70, what would you do?

To start, wonder what I had done wrong.

Buy the NQ set in Ala Mhigo, meld open slots with IVs, use a squadron spiritbonding manual, get my FC to use the SB buff, eat NQ warrior's stew from the vendor in Reunion, and rapid synth materials like twinthread and durium nuggets. I would grind red scrip for the books. (I always seem to hit 70s gathering before crafting so I pay nothing for the raw materials.)

Selling the materials will give you an income and you will be stockpiling materia.

[Roth_Trailfinder]

You might consider, in that spiritbinding, crafting the accesories from that set, HQ. Stick one materia onto them and they’ll SB at the same rate that the NQ left side stuff with 2 materia does.

More materia for the crafting time spent is always a good thing. Oh, if your Ixali beast tribe is leveled up, burning a few BT Allowances on them can get you a bunch of low grade Materia for slotting into the SB’d gear.