Need Help Crafting HQ Items

[qaija]

I am leveling up all crafts and they are all now at least lvl 40 or higher. I have been crafting HQ items by gathering enough mats to make one with regular syn and then use quick syn to make a bunch more hoping one of them will be HQ, which normally happens when I can make 15 or more. I suspect that as I gain higher levels this is no longer going to be a worthwhile way to obtain an HQ item, and it uses up time to gather all the mats to make 15 or more of the item I am trying to craft.

I have tried to google HQ crafting guides but there have been so many changes to the game that this is proving difficult. Most of them use "steady hand" which I understand has been deleted.

I understand crafting HQ items can get complicated. Is it possible to explain here how to do it, at least with a reasonable success rate? Or are there accurate guides available that you know about and could let me know the website address so that I may access them.

Thank you for your help!

[Vidu]

At a very basic level you have four types of actions when crafting:

Synthesis actions that will increase the progress of your craft (the ones you've been using).

Touch actions that will increase the quality of your craft (thats the one you want to push as much as you can, ideally 100% to get HQ)

Buffs like Veneration, Innovation, Great Strides... that will make your next Synthesis or Touch action more powerful

Actions that influence the durability of your craft like Waste Not, Manipulation and Masters Mend - if your durability hits 0 before you finish the craft, the craft fails and you'll lose your materials.

Most of these consume CP - but dont worry, all CP are restored after each craft! So dont be afraid to use them all up!
Synthesis and Touch actions also consume durability - most of them 10 durability for each time you perform the action.
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When it comes to crafting HQ-items there is one important mechanic and that is "Inner Quiet" (IQ) and raising Inner Quiet stacks. Those stacks will buff your control-stat (control influences how much the quality increases if you use Touch-actions) and they will buff a skill called "Byregot's Blessing" (you probably dont have that yet, but its gonna become your best friend as crafter).
That is why I'd advice you to start your craft using "Inner Quiet".

After that you want to push the quality, using touch-actions, as much as possible while not letting the durability hit 0 - you can achieve that by using abilities such as "Masters Mend", which will restore durability or by using "Waste Not", which will half the durability used by your actions (so 5 instead of 10).

Since I dont know your stats, its not possible to give you a complete rotation, but depending on how much CP you have, your can try something like this:

Inner Quiet
Waste Not
Synthesis-actions until you only need one more Synthesis action to finish the craft
Touch-Actions to increase the quality - depending on your CP either Basic Touch or Hasty Touch; if you have a lot of CP you can use Innovation to buff the next for Touch-actions aswell.
Finish the craft with the last Synthesis needed when you hit 10 (or if you've been using Waste Not maybe 5) durability and dont have CP left to restore durability with Masters Mend.

It could end up looking something like this:



or like this:



I want to stress the "could" - at your level it depends very much on the craft you're attempting (both of the examples above assume a durability of 80, for example) and I dont know your stats. I hope it gives you a rough idea on how to craft and with that a start on figuring the finer things out by yourself! Basically:
Inner Quiet is key.
Push progress til you have one Synthesis left to finish.
Push Quality using Touch actions and buffs.
Dont let durability hit zero by using actions that restore durability.

A little sidenote: This forum has subforums - you should try putting your posts in the appropriate subforum (if there is one) instead of posting them all in "General Discussion". The appropriate forum for anything crafting related is either "Dsiciples of the Hand" or "Items, Synthesis and Gathering" - both are good places to get advice from people who are into crafting! There are subforums for other categories of questions aswell and you should try picking the correct one for them.

[Mykll]

If your aim is to craft HQ items you won't want to use Quick Synthesis. If you use 100% HQ mats you will have your Quality filled halfway, but still have a low chance of crafting an HQ item. So you will want to manually craft each item.



You will need to use some of your Touch abilities, and other buffs that will increase the Quality like Vidu says. Once you fill up that Quality all the way, you will have 100% of creating that HQ item.

[Jojoya]

Keep your gear up to date and melded. The greater the difference between your gear level and the recipe level, the harder it will be to get HQ. Use a CP/Control food to supplement your stats.

CP is important. The more CP you have, the more actions you can use that conserve/restore Durability to allow more Touch and Synthesis steps (not to mention be able to afford the Touch steps themselves). The Control bonus from Inner Quiet at higher stacks is a lot more effective than adding a little more control directly to your gear and having fewer Inner Quiet stacks because you ran out of CP.

Be careful when using Waste Not/Waste Not II. Using any action that does not have a Durability cost while they're active is wasting their effectiveness and part of the CP spent on them.
They're very good at higher levels when you're also using Groundwork/Preparatory Touch and still are useful at lower levels but you need to use caution with your timing.

[qaija]

Thank you Vidu! Your post includes all the information I was hoping for. That gives me a basic idea to begin with. Also thank you for the advice regarding the sub forums. I never paid any attention to that possibility but will use the crafting ones next time I have a question on crafting.