Barrier to entry for crafting is to damn high.

[Limecat]

The ultimate lesson of melding for L/H: You religiously do your custom deliveries every week if nothing else, and spend every single scrip on the current highest two materia ranks(IX and X in this case). That way after the months between patches you should have enough to soften any melding blow.

[Supersnow845]

Pentamelding isn’t even that bad

You can earn like 10k crafting scrips crafting giant popoto pancakes with ingredients you can gather in like 20 mins, just use that for crafting, gathering is even easier since you just spiritbond top end gear by gathering legendary nodes

You don’t need to spend 5 mil buying materia outright

[Packetdancer]

Incorrect. The minimum craftsmanship requirements to even try crafting it are 3700. I have the script gear and materia in all my accessories and still I'm not over 3200. I would need crafted gear all over, annd lots of materia. to even get close.

That seems odd to me. In the scrip set, the craftsmanship comes from the chest (+949), pants (+63), and boots (+63), giving you a total of 1075 craftsmanship. Then the main-hand scrip tool for any job has craftsmanship (+1107), as does the off-hand scrip tool (another +1107). 1075 + 1107 + 1107 = 3289; even without accessories—much less melding—you should be over 3200. Now, the accessories only add 150 more craftsmanship, and you're not wrong that 3439 does not hit the required 3700.

However, without overmelding—or even using a buffing food—you can meld enough enough materia to get to 3748. Here's a quick Etro I threw together to check my math.

You'd probably want to meld in a bit of control to help make it easier to get progress on quality as well, of course.

[Lunalepsy]

I thought "Hey, I'm enjoying crafting some stuff, why not craft the good stuff to actually make my own gear/ make some gil on the marketplace?"

My answer is that the requirements to even start are so high. I can Do my turn ins for scrips and get get a decent Ilvl... but NOPE. Not enough. Not enough to make the gear to be enough. cause you need a boatload of gil to even start.

The requirement to pentameld gear is STUPID. Sorry but it really is. You can't get to even minimum stats without being able to sink a boat load of gil into it. And how does one make enough gil to do this.... CRAFTING High level stuff of course... Its a goddamn stupid circle. and yeah Crash this "economy" There is no need to have stupid levels of gil.

I've been playing since Heavensward was current content and at no point have I ever had over 30mil. So now having all my crafters to 90, Isn't it logical to be able to craft stuff... NOPE. Only have it for people who already have all the money needed. How did they get that? Luck, thats they only way I can see how. I grind myself so much to get so little. Gather, craft, sell, 7 retainers on the go and still almost no money cause I have to buy higher level gear cause I can't get it any other way cause the high currencies are all locked behind content I don't like. I can't earn my own power before doing that stuff and helping friends. Having to rely on others to earn my power is stupid.

The scrip gear should be enough to to craft good gear, maybe that gear is needed to craft the better gear.. Makes sense but this huge wall of gil needed to start is stupid.

Yes, I am a more solo player and I feel like they are finally recognising it as a legitimate play style. But this crap makes me not want to play.

Fair enough if you require that someone know how to use the right skills and balance your stuff, like building out the right string of skills, but this is ridiculous.

I'm not asking to be handed everything guaranteed or asking for no work to be put in but what I am asking for is it be reasonable.

Just put enough god damn slots on crafter gear. Make it so you can get that crafter gear by using the scrip gear. Then it takes skill from there to choose and put in the right materia, learn your skill rotations ect. Leveling a crafter to this level is grind enough, I HAVE earned this level of power, hours and hours making things and doing turn ins, using various systems like custom deliveries, the firmament ect. To run into this wall right at the end is just stupid.

Sorry, I just had to get this stuff off my chest and here where there's maybe a 0.001% it might help something. I love this game. The story is amazing, the classes are great for the most part, the new trust stuff is awesome, and Island sanctuary is amazing to me. But isn't the point of crafting being able to make your own gear, help your friend with theirs, maybe make some gill on the side? To me it really doesn't feel like it with this broken system.

I disagree. I literally dance all day long and make millions crafting and gathering.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

If you never focused on crafting before (no pentameld no food no syrup etc), then yes it’ll be rough start. But beyond that it’s a breeze—it’s a worthy once in a lifetime investment imho.

The next thing people will complain after they made this first barrier entry easier is how nobody wants to buy their crafted pieces—not that it’s uncommon nowadays when you have every mother father brother & sisters being an omnicrafter. That’s just how accessible DoH is.

[Deveryn]

Next time you turn in Wondrous Tails, skip the MGP and take a certificate and trade it for non-combat materia clusters.

[Jojoya]

I would consider expert crafts to be more akin to ultimate, more of a personal challenge than anything else. From what I can see so far the current expert recipes also serve no purpose other than to give you a shiny landmark on your Island Sanctuary, similar to ultimate.

Except this time you can sell the crafted Expert items directly to other players so they can get that shiny landmark as well.

SE got a lot of feedback last expansion about Expert, with a lot of it centered around "the achievement rewards aren't interesting and this isn't a good way to make gil". So we're getting Expert recipes that are a potentially good way to make gil since everyone who's reached end game will get a island. There's not much interest right now because few players have maxed out their island to unlock the additional vendor option. Once more players have that done, the Expert items will probably start selling fairly well.

[RocciaSolida]

You mean low, right?

[Eraden]

Gatherer materia is super easy. Just hit the legendary nodes with a spiritbond buff active. Add durability for more spiritbond hits.

It's easy to acquire but not in numbers sufficient to allow for pentamelding of gatherer gear without being extremely patient. I had close to 100 of each tier X gatherer materia and several hundred of each tier IX gatherer materia saved up for an attempt to retool my gear to go for the new collectables. I still had to spend almost 4 million Gil for additional materia in order to successfully complete this retooling. Losses were insanely and almost routinely high with one attempt clocking in at 88 tier IX materia being lost (there were several other attempts that came close to this in terms of losses). The retooling was necessary because the levels of Gathering and Perception needed to get a decent shot at the new collectables, is insane (around 3700 for each stat).

[Naoki34]

Barrier to entry for crafting is to damn high.

And yet crafting is so casualized that it has become accessible to everyone for at least 2 expansions.

There was a time when the vast majority of crafter stopped at level 30 because it was too hard and the wealth was reserved for a minority.

It's unfortunate that I could make several million gils a day...

Now, there are so many crafter that the economy is broken in a few days and it's quickly cheaper to buy than to crafter.