Quote Originally Posted by Sartori View Post
Well then theres now way you can make the darksteel gear then because you need hq coke to do it.
This is definitely not true. I tried a few synths with 2 x HQ Nuggets and 1 Coke (bought from NPC). Quality starts at 333. I was able to push it up to a 38% HQ chance on my highest attempt. I think it was just over 700 quality? It did not HQ but that is still decent enough odds (including a 19% chance at DD).

I do not believe there is a HQ coke in the game like gathered somewhere. The purpose of this is twofold. #1 It keeps the "difficult synthesis" difficult since you cannot just go out and mine HQ coke, ultimately making these items easy to synth. The fact that the coke is only NQ makes sure that a crafter DOES need to have some skill/luck to HQ the ingot, or to HQ the part with NQ ingot.

#2 Since it's only sold from NPC for 100,000 per, it also acts as one of the few gilsinks added to the game to balance out all the gil coming into the economy.