Crafting in General - OMG Fix It

[VenusDoom]

Like someone above said, Critical failing the very first action (white orb) on a synth you really shouldn't seems to be very common. It's almost like the synth forgets to load your skill levels until the second action or something. Ditto with using abilities as the first action leading to failure. And abilities like Tender Touch and Fulfillment seem to just fail my actions more until they wear off. Then there is the ~1:5 synths that experience the downward spiral effect where one failed action seems to trigger a chain reaction of failed actions until you've lost 7 in a row and blown up before 50%. Maybe this is all in my head and just bad luck from the random number generator, but these things seem common enough to me.

[Reika]

It's too bad they arent going to start working on the crafting system before the battle system is complete. I am tired of my stats not doing anything, craft food not doing anything, synth skills not doing anything, and getting constant unstable elements ever other fail.

[Jinko]

I agree the randomness needs to go, crafting should be based on skill not luck.

Many times I have got 400+ quality and not even a frigging +1 result, what the hell is that about ?

[Amineri]

Two points I'd like to toss in:

1) There is a factor called "risk" that is referenced in quite a few advanced synthesis abilities, but is (afaik) not very well understood. It does not appear to be orb-color (Preserve references "beneficial synthesis conditions", not risk). It does not appear to be aetherial sparking (Grand Design references "reduces aetherial sparking", not risk). Some of the abilities that reference risk are Harmonize ("Reduces Risk") and Comfort Zone ("Temporarily Reduces Risk") as well as Flawlessness ("Temporarily Prevents Increases in Risk").

Unfortunately just what risk is about is not particularly transparent right now. However, if there is a persistent synthesis attribute of risk, it could go some way toward explaining apparently odd behaviors. If the risk is high, synthesis steps may consistently blow up, while if risk is low, things may sail smoothly.

This is just a hypothesis of mine at this point.

2) It seem pretty clear that quality is not the only factor that goes into determining HQ likelihood. Trying to map HQ chance (and degree) strictly to quality is a pretty inconsistent trend. Sure quality affects the outcome, but there really must be some other factors at play, which are not (or not generally) well understood.

[Jinko]

As for point 1 you are correct, it seems risks increases with ever successful synthesis, what that risk is though is anyones guess it could be a risk on failure or a risk towards instability, and whether it resets after the occurance of one of those is anyones guess.

As for point 2 the other factor would be luck or randomness, whatelse is there ?

[Fabijansven]

As for point 2 the other factor would be luck or randomness, whatelse is there ?

what about the moon phase, the weather or the direction ure facing? (never tested but im quite sure they have an impact on crafting...)

[Embers]

Completly agree!
the randomness of crafting is so agrivating!
I do my crafting leves at every possibilty but because of the massive required sp per level, I have to sink gil into my craft,
It is so disheartening to fail after completing 5 synths with plenty of durability left then fail at bearly 50%, wasting time and gil!

this needs to be adressed just as urgently as the battle system, because of the time people put into leveling crafts.

[Jinko]

what about the moon phase, the weather or the direction ure facing? (never tested but im quite sure they have an impact on crafting...)

Personally I think all of those are stupid, and even in FF11 they were never proven.

Perhaps if the devs actually told us how they effected crafting it would be different, although still stupid.

[Amineri]

Perhaps if the devs actually told us how they effected crafting it would be different, although still stupid.

So far the information that has been released on other topics (those which I have figured out) has been accurate, yet a little vague and incomplete.

The two examples I know of so far :

1) The Mind Stat affects Cure amounts.

This is true, but a small-ish effect, 1 point of cure amount per 2 points of Mind, with no cap that I've been able to find. However, what hadn't been said was that magical potency ALSO affects Cure amount, with every 3 points of magical potency adding 1 point of cure amount (slightly less impact than Mind, and part of the reason DoW cures are smaller).

2) The output stat affect number of gathering extraction.

True, it take between 22 and 30 more output to get another extraction attempt, depending on some particulars. However (and this may be obvious), your gather rank is a strong influence on how many times you can extract -- each rank you gain gives the equivalent of 4 points of output. At end-game, about 60% of the "output" potential of a gatherer is from rank, and 40% from gear. Naturally, this "rank effect" is not displayed in the attribute panel.

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The upshot is that the developers seem to be providing enough information to "get along", and do not provide complete information or formulae.

Given that a crafting class is supposed to be a complete class unto itself, I would expect a level of complexity commensurate with the combat classes. If the complete formula to consistently HQ items were laid bare, crafting classes would (in my opinion only perhaps) become even more of an empty shell than they are now.

Ideally, the process of HQing an item would depend upon skill, but since SE has not appeared to come up with such a mechanism, they have instead resorted to obscuring the mechanisms that lead to HQ results. Hopefully one day it will be replaced.

Perhaps as the game evolves this will become more true. Currently the cap is rank 50, but clearly there is/was an envisioned rank cap of 100 (NPCs mention gather grades to 10, implying gather rank 90 to 100 to gather from them). I can easily envision far more crafting skills being made available from ranks 51 through 100, and perhaps this will enable more skill to come into play, in a similar way that selecting your skills in Guild Wars did.

One can only hope ...

[lordpyriel]

The biggest thing that annoys me in crafting is needing a piece that is rank 19 that is going to be using in a final product that is rank 7..

Take a "bronze saw" which is a rank 7 final product, one item needed is "iron rivets". rank 23ish item so you probably could start making that around rank 20ish. then another is "ash saw grip" it's rank 14ish then the last piece needed "brass plate" which is rank 13ish to make......... for a rank 7 final product... really... This is stupid. I dont mind relying on other crafting classes to get some of the items to make a bronze saw but the extreme rank difference, espically the iron rivets.. That's alittle stupid to me. The crafting team must of been drunk or something.