Expert Macro for Points

[Kakure]

Using this macro, I have been averaging 766 points per turn-in with Dragonsung tools and standard Facet melds.

For best results, you’ll want enough control to hit 6,000 collectability with a single Good condition on one of your Great Strides touches (~2450 plus HQ Blood Bouillabaisse) and as much CP as you can get.

The Quality

Part 1:

/ac “Reflect” <me> <wait.3>
/ac “Prudent Touch” <me> <wait.3>
/ac “Prudent Touch” <me> <wait.3>
/ac “Patient Touch” <me> <wait.3>
/ac “Manipulation” <me> <wait.2>

Take Tricks of the Trade if it is available.
If Patient Touch succeeded (IQ 10), go to Part 2(a).
If Patient Touch failed (IQ 3), go to Part 2(b).

Part 2(a) (IQ 10):

/ac “Innovation” <me> <wait.2>
/ac “Prudent Touch” <me> <wait.3>
/ac “Great Strides” <me> <wait.2>
/ac “Precise Touch” <me> <wait.1>
/ac “Observe” <me> <wait.2>
/ac “Observe” <me> <wait.1>
/ac “Focused Touch” <me> <wait.3>
/ac “Great Strides” <me> <wait.2>
/ac “Innovation” <me> <wait.2>
/ac “Precise Touch” <me> <wait.1>
/ac “Observe” <me> <wait.2>
/ac “Observe” <me> <wait.1>
/ac “Focused Touch” <me> <wait.3>

Do NOT take Tricks of the Trade.
Go to Part 3.

Part 2(b) (IQ 3):

/ac “Innovation” <me> <wait.2>
/ac “Prudent Touch” <me> <wait.3>
/ac “Prudent Touch” <me> <wait.3>
/ac “Patient Touch” <me> <wait.3>
/ac “Prudent Touch” <me> <wait.3>
/ac “Great Strides” <me> <wait.2>
/ac “Innovation” <me> <wait.2>
/ac “Precise Touch” <me> <wait.1>
/ac “Observe” <me> <wait.2>
/ac “Observe” <me> <wait.1>
/ac “Focused Touch” <me> <wait.3>

Do NOT take Tricks of the Trade.
If Patient Touch succeeded (IQ 11), go to Part 3.
If Patient Touch failed, cancel and restart.

Part 3 (IQ 11):

/ac “Precise Touch” <me> <wait.1>
/ac “Observe” <me> <wait.2>
/ac “Observe” <me> <wait.1>
/ac “Focused Touch” <me> <wait.3>
/ac “Manipulation” <me> <wait.2>
/ac “Great Strides” <me> <wait.2>
/ac “Innovation” <me> <wait.2>
/ac “Precise Touch” <me> <wait.1>
/ac “Observe” <me> <wait.2>
/ac “Observe” <me> <wait.1>
/ac “Focused Touch” <me> <wait.3>
/ac “Great Strides” <me> <wait.2>
/ac “Byregot’s Blessing” <me> <wait.3>

The Progress

The progress macro is Veneration => 4x Rapid Synthesis => Veneration => 2x Rapid Synthesis.

I highly recommend you finish these by hand. It is easy, it only takes about thirty seconds, and you’ll break far, far fewer. The best approach is to land two Venerated Rapid Syntheses and then finish without RS if you can (meaning that you’re 100% sure you can finish with only the CP and durability you currently have). If you can’t do that, continue to use RS and hope for the best. There is no faster way to sabotage your craft than to spam Rapid Synthesis if you could have just finished it using Careful/Basic Synthesis.

Some general tips:

• Keep Veneration up.
• Use Tricks of the Trade/Precise Touch on Good conditions.
• Use Master’s Mend/Manipulation on Pliant conditions. If you do not have 44 CP for Master’s Mend and you don’t need to refresh Veneration, a last-ditch Pliant Waste Not can buy you an extra action or two.
• Careful Observation is not just a tool for rescuing unrecoverable crafts; use it proactively to keep out of dire situations in the first place. If your Veneration is about to expire and you cannot afford to refresh it, use Careful Observation before it falls off so you do not have to pass up a Sturdy or Centered condition while fishing for a Good/Pliant. If you are at 15-20 durability and you need two more Rapid Syntheses to finish, use Careful Observation before you fail another one.
• Sometimes you will get unlucky and your craft will break. It happens. If it is happening more than a couple times an hour, you might want to re-examine your technique. My failure rate (not counting the ones I abandon in 2(b)) is ~6% with manual progress and ~39% with the progress macro.

A couple notes about the arrangement of the macro:

Part 2(b) runs for about twenty seconds after it becomes unrecoverable. It’s not ideal, but I play on PS4 and needed a macro that fits on four buttons so I can craft with one hand while I play other games. If that isn’t a concern for you, you might consider breaking it up into two separate macro paths and changing the (b) path to better suit your needs: 1 => 2(a) => 3(a) and 1 => 2(b) => 3/4(b).

The Precise Touch blocks are absolutely critical. On a Good condition, the macro will use Precise Touch followed by Observe(2). Else, it uses Observe(1) followed by Focused Touch. The <wait.x> times ensure that it only uses the pair you want, animation locking the other two. When I added these to an older version which just used Observe/Focused Touch, it improved my point average by 28%. This is because each one doubles the chance for one of our primary quality builders to land on a Good condition, giving us 7+ chances to get over that critical 6,000 collectability threshold rather than 4+.

Good luck.

[Espritduo]

I think most people aren't aware that expert recipes points don't work the same way as collectability points. There are no thresholds like regular collectables. The amount of points you get scales directly with your collectability score, and is not a flat amount based on certain tiers. They list "tiers" in the turnin window to give you an idea how many points something of that value gives, but the actual amount you will get when you turn the item will be directly proportional to your collectability score. In other words, there is no 6000 point threshold, and something at 5999 will give you almost the same amount as 6000, and something over 6000 will give you more points than what is listed. Much more points. 766 points per turnin is actually pretty terrible when the max amount you get for a 100% turnin is almost twice as much as that at 1237 points per turnin.

[Kakure]

Actually, there are breakpoints. 6,000 is the most important threshold because there's a 200-point jump from 5,999 to 6,000. Or so I theorize. I haven't actually gotten a 5,999- or 6,000-collectability craft, but I have recorded the following (points in parens):

5903 (570 pts)
5925 (576 pts)
5933 (578 pts)
5945 (581 pts)
5949 (582 pts)
5952 (583 pts)
5984 (591 pts)
5992 (593 pts)

6010 (809 pts)
6013 (811 pts)
6035 (831 pts)
6051 (845 pts)
6101 (890 pts)

Macro crafting is never going to be the fastest way to get points, but 766 is 62% of the maximum possible, and easily 70% of what anyone actually averages (or should, if they are doing it right -- spending 45 steps to get a flagging craft to 6486 is wildly inefficient by any metric but points-per-material).

I crafted around 1300 of these by hand for the Skybuilder's competition and about that many in the past month using different macros. Hand crafting requires most of your focus and prevents you from doing other things -- chatting with people in-game or reading the news or playing another game -- because you are watching the screen the whole time and pushing buttons every couple of seconds. It gets taxing. During the competition, my productivity would trail off after a couple hours and I would need to take a break to clear my head. If someone called on the phone, I would pause my crafting and talk to them because I couldn't devote my full attention to the person on the other end and also watch conditions and make decisions about what to do at the same time. It is difficult even to eat while you're manually crafting, at least using a controller.

This is more like standard macro crafting interspersed with beast-tribe-daily-complexity progress crafting every couple minutes (albeit with more randomness). It's definitely not the fastest way to make points, but I consider the tradeoff more than worth it for the convenience of not having to pay attention to what's happening on the screen or think too much.

If that's not your jam, more power to you.

[HeulGDarian]

Actually, there are breakpoints. 6,000 is the most important threshold because there's a 200-point jump from 5,999 to 6,000. Or so I theorize. I haven't actually gotten a 5,999- or 6,000-collectability craft, but I have recorded the following (points in parens):

5903 (570 pts)
5925 (576 pts)
5933 (578 pts)
5945 (581 pts)
5949 (582 pts)
5952 (583 pts)
5984 (591 pts)
5992 (593 pts)

6010 (809 pts)
6013 (811 pts)
6035 (831 pts)
6051 (845 pts)
6101 (890 pts)

Macro crafting is never going to be the fastest way to get points, but 766 is 62% of the maximum possible, and easily 70% of what anyone actually averages (or should, if they are doing it right -- spending 45 steps to get a flagging craft to 6486 is wildly inefficient by any metric but points-per-material).

I crafted around 1300 of these by hand for the Skybuilder's competition and about that many in the past month using different macros. Hand crafting requires most of your focus and prevents you from doing other things -- chatting with people in-game or reading the news or playing another game -- because you are watching the screen the whole time and pushing buttons every couple of seconds. It gets taxing. During the competition, my productivity would trail off after a couple hours and I would need to take a break to clear my head. If someone called on the phone, I would pause my crafting and talk to them because I couldn't devote my full attention to the person on the other end and also watch conditions and make decisions about what to do at the same time. It is difficult even to eat while you're manually crafting, at least using a controller.

This is more like standard macro crafting interspersed with beast-tribe-daily-complexity progress crafting every couple minutes (albeit with more randomness). It's definitely not the fastest way to make points, but I consider the tradeoff more than worth it for the convenience of not having to pay attention to what's happening on the screen or think too much.

If that's not your jam, more power to you.

ive managed to get to max quality a couple of times per day by being lucky. i got 6th place as alchemist, i had help by my friends who were gathering stuff for me , i did it for 4 days nonstop till i was burned out completely at which point i had reached first with 1 day remaining before the results were out and if i remember my average was 5700+ per craft. and since i was getting around 70-130k point per day , reaching 450k total, i realised that i was doing around 100 collectibles........per day. not sure how worth it it was.... but im wearing that title now and it aint leaving till my ptsd is gone and have to tackle the 500k points in all jobs challenge TT

[Espritduo]

I'm not gonna argue about macros being bad or not, but 766 is still terrible. It's twice as much time and resources spent than just doing the things manually once you get the hang of them. I've crafted enough of these things to get the mount and yes, after a few thousand you are basically running on autopilot. I was averaging 1200 points per turnin at 30-40 steps and was doing it in my sleep by the end. I mean, if you just have to find an easier way to do it regardless of how wildly inefficient it is, you can use these macros, it's not like they don't work. Just be prepared to take WAY longer and use up WAY more mats.

[Kakure]

I'm not gonna argue about macros being bad or not, but 766 is still terrible.

Then what exactly are you arguing? That my results are terrible relative to other macros? That's flatly wrong. I tried the few macros I could find and nothing produced results anywhere close to the ones I've been getting from this setup. If anyone has a better macro system for expert crafting, prove me wrong. Seriously. If there is a better macro out there, I would happily use that instead.

It sounds like you are arguing that my results are terrible because they don't compare to what you were getting manually, which is an argument about macro crafting. The goal of manual crafting is to maximize your points. The goal of macro crafting is to maximize points while minimizing effort and tedium. It's apples and oranges. Of course you get more points for staring at the screen and playing "respond to the condition" than for crafting in the background while you do other things (though not as many more as you suggest: double 766 would be 1532 points per turn-in on average -- substantially more than whatever you were getting).

Realistically, manual crafting would take me roughly 2/3 as long as it does using this macro. I consider that a pretty good tradeoff and I posted this for anyone who is either struggling with expert crafting or simply doesn't want to suffer through 100-some hours of tedium to get the achievements. You're entitled to think that is a bad tradeoff. That's your prerogative. I am not trying to convince anyone to use this macro or any other, but I am proud of the results I have gotten over a month of theorycrafting and tracking and tinkering and I take issue with the characterization of my results as terrible. If you have a more efficient way I can grind skyward points while playing Age of Wonders, I'm all ears.

ive managed to get to max quality a couple of times per day by being lucky. i got 6th place as alchemist, i had help by my friends who were gathering stuff for me , i did it for 4 days nonstop till i was burned out completely at which point i had reached first with 1 day remaining before the results were out and if i remember my average was 5700+ per craft. and since i was getting around 70-130k point per day , reaching 450k total, i realised that i was doing around 100 collectibles........per day. not sure how worth it it was.... but im wearing that title now and it aint leaving till my ptsd is gone and have to tackle the 500k points in all jobs challenge TT

Nice! I completely understand the burnout. I needed a three-month break before I was ready to start expert crafting again.

[Jojoya]

The goal of macro crafting is to maximize points while minimizing effort and tedium.

Just my personal opinion, but I would find using your macros even more tedious and annoying than doing Expert crafting manually. You're still stuck there waiting on macro progress so you can switch to the next one, which is a constant interruption of whatever you're doing with your time while the macros are running. Effort isn't that much less if someone is manually doing the opener and finisher you have listed.

At least with manual crafting, I'm watching conditions and reacting to make the best use of them. That makes it a more interesting use of my time than watching the game play itself.

Each to their own, of course. If someone wants to use those macros, it's their choice. Thank you for sharing with those who are interested.