So why are the crafter relics.. bad.

[Gemina]

I recommend reading this fully.

All credit to OP:

TL;DR Use the Crystalline Tool for Expert Recipes. It is far superior after just 1* Good.

I wanted to add some notes I made about the Crystalline Tools and their "good" bonus, as far as expert recipes goes.

With the current tier of available tools - we either have pentalmelded Indagator or unmeldable Crystalline. The latter comes with 7 CP on it and equal craftsmanship/control. However, without those melds, we are probably leaving off upwards of 60 control. Which begs the question, is the extra 25% on a good better than 60 control when expert recipes are concerned?

The loss of that much control costs around 0.78% of quality per hit. So, if a Touch would hit for 500 with the Crystalline Tool, it hits for 504 instead. We can extrapolate out its value by working backwards from our goal. I'll use the Island Sanctuary Water Otter Fountain parts for this example. We need 13500 quality to synth it.

Let's pretend that the Crystalline Tool had two options - the 25% bonus to Good states or 60 control. This is essentially the Crystalline vs Indagator's tool.

Let's say I normally hit for 3945 on a Great Strides / Innovation / Byregots with the Indagator Tool. I'll hit for 3915 with the Crystalline Tool. A loss of 30 quality. Which means that I need to get to 9555 with the Indagator's Tool vs 9585 with the Crystalline Tool in order to finish (without a good state). However, let's change these numbers in relation to the Crystalline Tool. Since that tool is getting 0.78% less quality per hit, the Indagator's Tool would need only an equivalent of 9480 if it was the Crystalline Tool but with the extra 60 control.

Essentially, that means that 60 control buys us 105 quality over the course of the synth, prior to finishing it.

Is the Good bonus better?

If we get a Good with 0 IQ stacks and use something like Precise Touch, we get 580 from Indagator's (60 control bonus) vs 672 with the Crystalline Tool. That's 92 of the 105 quality to close the gap. If we have a good state at any point past an IQ stack of 2, the difference in control of the two tools is already overtaken.

In those cases where you need to fish for a good using Careful Observation, the threshold you need to hit 13500 is much more stark. With the Cyrstalline Tool, you will receive 6851 quality. With Indagator Tools, you'll receive 5917. That's 934 extra quality. Working backwards, that means that if you have to rely on luck, the Crystalline Tool could conceivably reach the quality threshold with as little as 6650 quality (if you are at 10 stacks) whereas you'd need 7583 with the Indagator Tool.

While many of these numbers were specific to my melds, changes to control won't make the Indagator Tools superior for expert recipes. Generally speaking, landing 1 touch on a Good at any point brings you even or ahead. Any other Good used on a Touch is gravy. I've found that even with catastrophic RNG early on, if you care to work through the synth, in the hopes of leveraging Careful Observation and Observe to fish for a Good, you can turn very bad RNG into success if you get that little bit of luck at the end. It isn't hard to get to 6800ish quality if you know you just aren't going to get to 9500 due to really band RNG. At least you have up to 5 shots at fishing for a Good.

In short, the Crystalline tools are invaluable when it comes to expert recipes. If you do those recipes, you will know exactly how important it is to maximize the quality you get from a good status. The effectiveness only continues to outshine the crafted tools with each stack of inner quite. Also don't forget that you need to pentameld all eight of your tools in order to get the control required to even compete with the relic tools. If you're a single melder with the crafted tools this isn't even a discussion to be had.

[DixieBellOCE]

I recommend reading this fully.

All credit to OP:



In short, the Crystalline tools are invaluable when it comes to expert recipes. If you do those recipes, you will know exactly how important it is to maximize the quality you get from a good status. The effectiveness only continues to outshine the crafted tools with each stack of inner quite. Also don't forget that you need to pentameld all eight of your tools in order to get the control required to even compete with the relic tools. If you're a single melder with the crafted tools this isn't even a discussion to be had.

The TLDR from this is 'if you manage to hit a good on IQ2+ then the relic is better, for expert recipes'.

Now how many expert recipes are there in Endwalker, since pre-endwalker recipes can just be brute forced via macros.

Is the relic perk actually worth the small niche use that it gets used for?

[Gemina]

The TLDR from this is 'if you manage to hit a good on IQ2+ then the relic is better, for expert recipes'.

Now how many expert recipes are there in Endwalker, since pre-endwalker recipes can just be brute forced via macros.

Is the relic perk actually worth the small niche use that it gets used for?

Like I said before, you need to overmeld your tools in order to actually gain anything, particularly with the control stat. And you lose one of those slots if you decide to meld CP in order to negate the loss of the +7 stat from the crystalline tools. You also need to keep in mind that not all players are in i620 gear, and the relic tools will undoubtedly help the ones who are not get there.

Another thing to keep in mind are for the players who have put in the effort to craft and pentameld their tools. Do you really think it is favorable for a first stage relic tool to just wipe out that effort?

As for expert recipes, the value of doing those recipes is up to the player. I would wager most crafters don't even touch them, and the crystalline tools can encourage more players to try them without enduring the expense of pentamelds.