Also took pretty long for my first Ifrit drop. My last ~80 melds all failed. The last 10 meld attempts were around 40% success chance. Half of those meld attempts cost me more than 2m each. But I think it's common knowledge now that those percentages in the melding window are pretty much a lie for some players xD
I'm pretty lucky at HQing though! Already had two HQ @ 1% in a row :P