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HQ crafting, thoughts, advice?
rhavok
Member Posts: 117
I feel like I am missing something here. On my quest to obtain a HQ Iron Cuirass, I am becoming increasingly frustrated, it seems the percentages are not in my favor tonight.
I have a 19 Armorer, almost 20. I have basic touch, standard touch, steady hand, and inner calm (i think thats the name)
I have 225 CP, 113 craftmanship, and 110 control.
I am not sure how to approach synthesis when aiming for a HQ item. Of course, I will load up the initial quality bar by using all HQ items, that usually gets me halfway through the quality bar. But as fellow crafters will know, the percentage of success halfway through is around 15%. It is not until the bar is 3/4 full that the percentage is in your favor. (Even then, it seems brutally stacked against me. I have seen 85% chances fail so often that it makes me question if there is a bug)
The quality bar seems to have a mind of its own. Sometimes my quality hits give me a lot more quality points than others. I literally had the bar jump from half full to 4/5 full in one successful standard touch. I have no idea what I did differently. The bar seems to move at different values. Is there something I should be aiming for to increase the bar greater amounts. I feel like I am missing something.
Item condition for example, I know I probably shouldn't try anything if it is on poor, so I use wait to get it back up to normal. Beyond that, what can I really do?
I spent the last 30 minutes making HQ iron bars, and my success rate was abysmal, despite using only HQ ore. Basic touches were failing left and right. I wasted so many HQ ores.
Typically, I ignore most of my abilities and go with a basic touch. I get for more attempts at quality increases this way. With my current CP, I can do 3 basic touches, use master's mend, then do 2 more. It seems like standard touch doesn't net enough a quality increase to justify the increase in CP cost.
Steady Hand and Inner calm both come at the cost of an extra Basic touch as well, in my trials it seems they don't provide enough benefit to out weigh another quality swing. Especially when you need such a full bar to stand a chance an HQ success.
Other than using steady hand, is there a way to increase success rates on the abilities? Does my higher level give me any boost in this area? For example, I am 19 and Iron Ingots are a level 11 recipe. Do my extra 8 levels count for anything here? I certainly have a higher control stat now, but it seems like it doesn't matter.
Sorry if this a jumble of thoughts. I am frustrated. Are any crafters with more experience able to weigh in and give me some pointers? Am I doing something wrong or just having a horrid streak of bad luck?
Thanks for taking the time to read, and thanks in advance for any advice you can give.
Comments
In order to craft HQ items at a fairly decent rate you need to be well over the level required to make the item in the first place.
Better tools giving you higher stats does effect how the amount of gain/loss you get while using a craft ability.
You also need to expand into the other professions and pick up there abilities (for ex. if you take up goldssmith you may get another ability for increase durability which you can put on your bar and use while you are armorsmithing).
Also pay attention to the color of the sphere while you are crafting. If it is white you have a good rate of success. Yellow your chances of your ability working are Lower. Red and Blinking are the two lowest chances of success (no one can say for sure which is worse but they are both very bad to craft on.
Use your Important abilities on the White and Yellow, If you get a red or blinking you can use an ability that does nothing but increase the durability or help you on your next X number of synths and hope for the color change to go back to White/Yellow.
If you do not have any abilities you can use that will help you on a Red/Blinking go ahead and and use Wait for a time or two and hope the color stabalizes to White/Yellow. Losing 1 or 2 points is much better then a huge durability hit of failing.
Of course there is also something to be said for crafting on the Red/Blinking, since your success rate is lower there is a little bit of a bonus to your abilities and you get more points if you are successful.
In general try to never actually use an ability that might fail on a Red/Blinking.
If you can understand all these mechanics your success rate at crafting should dramaticly increase.
The most effective way is to pile on HQ components if you don't have key transfer actions from the other crafting classes. I played around this weekend with crafting a bit more and if you make full use of the Journal exper, you can level them pretty fast.
This of course requires a large variety of materials but you will have that with the gap in gathering exper and the crafting exper. Gathering is still a long haul grind to 50.
You will also need a good set of CP jewelry and CP food to make full use of your durability. CP caps out at around 250 and Makers Mend II uses up 150 of that or something. They need to tweak some of those higher skills CP use because you don't get more as you level. It's a flat stat and the jewelry is very limited. I don't yet know if you can use materia for CP. If that's the case, it changes everything.
"Because we all know the miracle patch fairy shows up the night before release and sprinkles magic dust on the server to make it allllll better." parrotpholk
Where can I find some level 20ish gear? I looked briefly but I didn't have any luck. I have earrings and rings, but none of the major pieces like chest, pants, etc.
Can it be purchased, or does it have to be crafted?
I found we had a weaver selling a few pieces on our market, but there are also a few npcs around you can buy from. They seemed to be mostly in tiers, so sets of gear at lvl 15, next at 20 etc. When I decided to purchase those the difference was amazing. Then i started a second craft to try it out and because i had been playing awhile, i had money and bought some early pieces.
I would expect outside of beta you will see more of those for sale on the market. You also will always have some of those "ahead" of the pack where you may not find stuff your level until a crafter catches up to you. However, I found even a lower lvl piece made a difference vs nothing for example.
"Because we all know the miracle patch fairy shows up the night before release and sprinkles magic dust on the server to make it allllll better." parrotpholk
When quality says "excellent" your chances of HQ are good but not 100%, had more HQ items from looking for the quality then finish crafting the item, you don't always need high durability but it helps. high CP is a saviour though. I was also using std until I was one std away from finishing then use the skills to increase durability, keep your eye on the cp though. I had cp around 195 @ lvl 20 due to lack of crafting gear. couldnt make HQ Velveteen cloth for I think was the last quest.
Another essential will be to mix it up a bit, have a number of various crafts, at later levels you are definitely going to need them and the gatherers if you wish to save yourself a bucket of gil, as from what I could see the merchants are only selling low level crafting mats during Beta, hopefully that doesnt change but I would like to see their sale prices increase by a large margin, as the prices as they stand during Beta are going to kill low level gatherers on secondary market sales.
If you wish to level up fast but don't wish to use your leve allowance, there are leves that will ask for example 3 x scepters, if you craft as many as possible in multiples of 3 you are able to hand them in multiple times for the same xp without using extra leves, HQ items handed in on leves give an extra 200% xp and gil, took 3 leves to get lvl 20 - 21 and same for 21 -22 with HQ items at around 20k xp per leve, that doesnt include the xp gained from crafting HQ items which varied from 1500 - 2k durability dependant.
Everything can be NPC purchased up to 30.
Battle gear vendor splits to battle and field. Field is for gathering/ Crafting. Tools matter most though for crafting. Make sure you have the best available tools at all levels.
I feel for new crafters. I have Weaver 50 so I can 1 step the progress bar. If I didn't have that, HQ wouldn't be an option. You really only have 4 to 7 then you need to decimate your CP with a Mend and you only have progress actions left. The system implodes on itself right now due to the rigid CP allowance.
Thanks for the follow up free2play. I was looking in the main cities for gear, should I go out to a level 20ish outpost instead? I don't recall seeing anyone around Drybone, but perhaps there is an NPC tucked somewhere I missed.
How were you able to turn in more than one batch for one leve? So are you saying for example of they want 3 lumber you turn in 9 and it counts it 3 times on one leve, or how does it work?
"Because we all know the miracle patch fairy shows up the night before release and sprinkles magic dust on the server to make it allllll better." parrotpholk
Main Cities, in the market alley. Ul'dah market is where you find the retainer bell. If you stand at the Aetheryte, hang left the way you would go to get to the Adventurers Guild but don't go up the steps. Just keep going, you will see the bubbles to instance and the two rows of Vendors. He is on the right, the other side of the retainer bell, beside the Jeweler merchant.
note to self: Should I really be able to map Ul'Dah out from a picture in my head like this?
I watched( I haven't experienced it myself yet) several videos detailing gathering and crafting.I have to say I don't think I have seen a deeper system of gathering(yes..its just not whacking away at a node ,for example) and crafting.
I really appreciate a company giving their future customers a very deep and seemingly well throughout craft/gather system.
I agree Shadan. Crafting is a marker for a good game. It isn't done. I really hope not anyway because at this point it's a shadow of 1.00 crafting.
While the ARR gathering is better in interface and the journal system is better, I still need to see a means of leveling it at the higher levels that I'm not seeing. I mined on a 21 Miner hitting silver nodes (24) and when I got HQ Silver I would get 500 or so exper but most of the time I was running in the 250 range and I was getting a lot of nothings. With 60K to level the speed was simply too slow because I know how the exper curve in this game works. 45-50 in each Gathering will take months if you do it in a reasonable manner. That's not practical where it's a means to an end.
Crafting is good now but they need to make CP like the GP or have some CP materia that doubles the CP we have now. That might be in the game, we just haven't been seeing it in the CBT. As for all my moans and groans about other aspects of crafting, it's more wants than anything. I'd like to be able to blue crit craft. Make those rare drop items but I would like to see them be very rare. That as well might even be there. Just not something you can test in a 3 day CBT.
Your original observation is true though. The foundation for a solid craft/ Gathering system is in place. It's one of those things we won't realize until after launch because it is indepth. It's not a 3 day tinkering mechanic.
Thanks for that, I primarily looked in Limsa Lominsa, but I will check Ul'dah next weekend.
Haha, I know exactly where you are talking about. Ul'dah was my home city in 1.0 and again in ARR.
more or less, when you hand in the first batch of 3 another window pops up asking if you wish to hand in more? there are 3 answers available, "yes", "no" and "let me think a bit longer" if you have at least another 3 then yes you can hand these in aswel, I was able to do it 3 times as I only had enough to hand in that many times, how many times you can do this? that I'm not sure of yet. Whether this is available for all leves that require batches of multiple items is another question I yet cannot answer, best to test the leves yourself to find out.
"Because we all know the miracle patch fairy shows up the night before release and sprinkles magic dust on the server to make it allllll better." parrotpholk
I never really tried but add to this the fact that you don't need to make the stuff, just obtain it, this will be interesting. Go buy 500 Cobalt Ingots, bam, you are now a lv. 50 Blacksmith.
derp