Cosmic Exploration: Crafting and Gathering Megathread

[HyperiusUltima]

So, since we're already close to a week in, people are starting to see the problems with Cosmic Exploration as shown in General Discussion.

Tools Requiring Higher Level than Required

Cosmic Exploration Opinion Thread

Disparity between DoH and DoL in Cosmic Exploration

Base Progression Poorly Handled

There's a multitude of issues with this, and I'm making this thread to try and highlight some of those that are egregious to the experience.

Disciples of the Land

Pros
+ Easy to level with little effort.
+ Quest Sync makes it level with you, meaning no node or material is ungatherable at that level.
+ Highest rate of farming Lunar Credits during Red Alerts due to easy gathering abilities such as Bountiful Yield.

Cons
- GP restores at an abysmal rate.
- GP does not reset akin to Disciples of the Hand after a Mission, leaving it the same as every Gathering Leve in the game.
- Incentivizes you to gear yourself for higher levels, even at low levels which then makes Crafting become required or large amounts of gil.
- Extremely tight timers, especially on FSH where RNG can screw you.
- Chain Missions for MIN/BTN are extremely tight due to GP cost of Solid Reason/Ageless Words.
- Cordial Spam being a requirement on A Rank for Gold, and for Sequential Missions(that have a 5m timer on them).
- Large area makes travel times horrendous even with Stellar Sprint and the Cosmoliner once unlocked.

Gatherers have the worst of it in Cosmic Exploration even if they have it easy initially because of the fact that compared to Disciples of the Hand, GP does not reset on completion of a Mission. What's more, the trait that we obtained this expansion, Revisit, does not work in these Missions. Considering we're getting to the point where we are closing in on 1000 GP, this is pretty bad at Lv 100 where you essentially have 931 GP if you're Best in Slot and have the Cosmic Tool equipped.

While Collectible Missions are a bit easier with the tool(+20% Collector's Standard chance for MIN/BTN), the problem is exacerbated when you're trying to clear and hit Gold on every mission for the title. Some are just annoying, and others are near impossible to manage except when RNG blesses you. GP yet again becomes the common problem in Cosmic Exploration.

Disciple of the Land Fixes

! Fix GP Restoration to recover at end of mission when Reporting, or on failure.
! Increase Timers to allow proper time for FSH to gather fish as required due to requiring specific fish to complete.
! Increase Timers for MIN/BTN to allow them to complete Stellar Reduction Missions, which are notorious even with the tool to Gold Star.
! Reduce the cost of Solid Reason to 200 GP to meet Chain Mission Score requirements for Gold reliably.

Disciples of the Land

Pros
+ CP Recovers after a Craft, allowing you to spam endlessly as needed.
+ Expert Craft Action allows for skill expression in Crafts that require it.
+ No movement required, can sit and spam craft.

Cons
- Heavily incentivizes gearing, meaning either dropping gil or crafting the item yourself to keep up with gear.
- Some crafts higher level than Lv 100 3* Master Crafts, becoming notoriously difficult to complete even with Cosmic Tool, Food and Potions.
- Macros become a necessity nearly for each individual craft to spam efficiently.
- Expert Craft Conditions unknown to a majority of playerbase with no tutorial on what each does.

In general, Crafting has quite a few good things going for it. This becomes easier over time, and it actually is a great way to level towards 100 if you're crafting for the first time. However, the issue that comes up more often than not in A Rank is that some crafts feel nearly impossible without some RNG involved, and for Sequential Missions and Timed Missions that can become a headache to complete for the title.

The good thing though is the return of Expert Crafts through a Duty Action. However, with it being a 45s timer, I feel as if you're pressured into hurrying the craft while keeping an eye on what Condition you get just to try and be efficient as possible with the timer.

Disciple of the Hand Fixes

! Reduce difficulty to be on par with Mastercraft 3* Crafts.
! Change Crafts that use the Duty Action for Expert Crafting to be labelled instead, while the Duty Action guarantees an Excellent on the next step.

There isn't a whole lot for Disciple of the Hand since they got it right for the most part this time around with some tweaking that needs to be done in terms of difficulty, as well as Expert Crafts needing to feel how they did in Ishgard Restoration again.


I wouldn't mind a discussion being had about these changes, and if there are things that are better proposed, I'd be willing to change the OP to reflect it as well as a changelog.

[Supersnow845]

I’m not sure what you are suggesting with the crafting stellar action.the action is useful on crafts that are both already an expert and ones that aren’t

If the craft isn’t an expert then you can insert the stellar action into your macros to remove the chance that byregot’s falls on an unfortunate poor because experts don’t have poor condition. If it is an expert it simply removes normal condition and good omen. Removing normal is objectively an improvement. Removing good omen is generally good as long as you don’t do it right at the end of your finisher phase

[Exmo]

All these suggestions would be helpful but ultimately they do nothing to make the fundamental experience of CE more enjoyable.

I'd like to see more interplay between players in the zone, beyond words shared in the chat window and common global progression bars. An internal economy of sorts where people can help each other out and depend on one another in jolly cooperation.

Furthermore, the sense of community progression is hindered both by how it's weirdly gated (you should not have so many players getting FOMO on week 1) and how the progression events themselves are so laborious and boring to actually play. There is a stronger feeling of community in Eureka when spawning fates, even six years after the zones first launched. The devs need to reassess the image of "community" they aim to acheive with this game mode.