The Way of crafting

The Way of crafting

Study the Ways of all professions (Go Rin no Sho, Miyamoto Musashi).

This page is a stub and ongoing, and I'll continue writing and improving it. Please, correct me, if I mistake somewhere.

Here are the common words about crafting, suitable for all crafting classes. All class-specific information will appears on corresponding pages.

Crafting is a most efficient way to supply yourself and also your friends with any equipment you need. While leveling, you'll need your weapons and gear to be respective to your current level and so you'll need to periodically spend a lot of gil for it. But there is another way to keep you equipment up to date your level and spend much less of gil for this: make all what you need by yourself. But economy isn't only reason to craft: you may craft HQ equipment and gain a better performance at the same level requirements.

Certainly, the way of crafting also means that you needs to be skilled in gathering. Without a gathering your crafting would likely more expensive than direct buying. Also you'll may not find some of materials and ingredients in sale. At first look it seems that most of materials are relatively cheap, but this turns different when you want to create HQ items (you certainly want this, right?). The chance of creating an HQ item is commonly not so high, and so you'll need a lots of basic materials to create HQ derived materials to enlarge a chance of creating an HQ gear, weapon or tool. Also you can gather HQ materials, which sufficiently enlarges a chance that your crafting result will be HQ.

What profession to choose

Any crafting class is depended to mostly all another crafting classes, so you'll not be mistaken if you'll unlock all of them as soon as it'll be possible. But in this case, there is a one side effect: even a large hangar may be not enough to store all materials, you need. And of course it will take a lot of time.

This way, it will be more rational to choose most necessary crafting and gathering classes:

Battle class	Weapon crafting	Armor crafting	Preferred gathering
Marauder, Gladiator	Blacksmith, Carpenter	Armorer, Leatherworker	Miner,Botanist, Loot
Pugilist	Blacksmith, Goldsmith, Carpenter	Weaver, Leatherworker	Miner,Botanist, Loot
Lancer	Carpenter, Blacksmith	Armorer, Leatherworker	Botanist, Miner, Loot
Archer	Carpenter, Blacksmith	Leatherworker, Armorer	Botanist, Loot, Miner
Rogue	Blacksmith	Weaver, Leatherworker	Miner,Botanist, Loot
Conjurer	Carpenter, Alchemist?	Weaver, Leatherworker	Botanist, Loot, Miner
Thaumaturge	Goldsmith, Carpenter	Weaver, Leatherworker	Botanist, Loot, Miner
Arcanist	Alchemist, Carpenter	Weaver, Leatherworker	Botanist, Loot, Miner

Crafting summary

At first time, when you unlock a crafting class (approximately until 9th level), you may leveling only by crafting of an different items: this will give you enough amount of experience for good speed of progress. Craft most complex items, and you'll obtain more experience. Then you may go to respective guildmaster and complete all available quests at once.

When you join to one of Grand companies, you'll be able to extremely boost the gain of experience by completing Supplying duties for your GC. This takes not many time and not requires a lot of materials, but rewarded with lot of gil and very large amount of experience.

Except a materials, you need a crystals as catalyst for crafting. You may obtain them by gathering, but this process if too long and gives very small amount of experience for leveling a Miner and Botanist. The most effective way to obtain the crystals is completing of quests (look lists of respective quests in class-specific guides). //TODO: make list of quests, with crystals in reward, individually for each crafting class.

By the way, always try to make HQ items, even chance to success is tends to zero: you'll gain a more exp if gets more quality points, even if resulting item will be normal. Be aware to use Quick Synthesis: you'll gain a minimum amount of experience, and also you have little chance to have some fails, even the items you creating are simplest.

Increasing of quality

In fact, the crafting is a task of solving a "Knapsack problem": how to combine different actions to obtain maximum quality and successfully complete synthesis. This is too complex task to make an simple universal formula, but here is a way, how to approach this problem:

E.g. we have 192CP and needs to make some material with durability 40 and minimal complexity, requires only one step for synthesis. Lets cpmpose a different combinations of available crafting actions, which we may take with given amount of CP. Then we need to compute how much quality points we may obtain via each combination.

In addition, we shall keep in mind that most of crafting actions have probabilistic nature, which we need to take into account

So the rough formula is floor((availableCP-summaryImprovingActionsCP)/touchActionCP))*touchActionEfficiency*touchActionSuccessRate and here are results for example:

CP avail.	Actions taken	AVG efficiency	Max efficiency
192	1 Masters' Mend, 5 Basic touch (CP:18, eff:1.0, prob:0.7)	3.5	5
192	1 Masters' Mend,1 Steady Hand (22CP), 4 Basic Touch (CP:18, eff:1.0, prob:0.7+0.2)	3.6	4
192	1 Masters' Mend,3 Standard Touch (CP:32, eff:1.25, prob:0.8)	3	3.75

Here we see, that maximum amount of quality we may obtain using Basic touch 5 times. But probability of this seems too small (//TODO: calc it). So this method is most suitable when you couldn't reach 100% of quality points, bu have a lots of materials, lot of time and need to make a few HQ items.

The Standard Touch in this conditions losses in both of average and maximum efficiency due to much more CP cost and lesser advantage in efficiency. So it isn't a right choice when you have small amount of CP, but it will be useful when limit of Durability is more tight, than limit of CP.

At last, the most interesting method: buffing Basic Touch with Steady Hand, which increases probability of first one up to 0.9 (90%). This method gives a maximum average efficiency and is a best choice if you needs to create a lot of HQ items (commonly - crafting materials).

Also, some times a few number of crafting steps may left, when CP is over. And this is a time to use Hasty Touch from Culinarian. Certainly, if you can use Careful Synthesis from Weaver, otherwise it'll be better to leave them for reserve, cause there is a chance that some of synthesis steps may fail.

Crafting of an simple items

The items, which you able to create by only one step, are may be considered as "simple". This factor determines the order of crafting actions: at first - get maximum quality, using Basic Touch (or advanced modifications of it) and Master's Mend to restore durability, until you have CP for these actions. And finally synthesize the item.

Two cases are may be:

1. Low CP is limits increasing of quality, before available steps runs dry. It is usual when level of item recipe is lightly lesser, than yours. In this case CP increase food will help you to take more touches, which will give you more quality points, than increasing of Control.
2. You have enough CP, but not enough crafting steps. This case have place, when your level grows more above the level of item recipe. So you'll, certainly, need to use meal for increasing of Control.

The third case, when your level significantly greater, than level of recipe, is not interesting, cause you'll may easily reach a maximum quality points in first 3-5 steps, and even don't use master's mend.

Crafting of middle-complexity items

Generally middle-complexity items are simple armor, clothes or weapons (lets call them "equipment items"), whose recipes are nearly equal to your crafting level. Also these may include a crafted materials with same level. Both of them may not be crafted in single step and requires greater amount of Quality points to reach a good chance of HQ result.

Materials have lesser amount of durability, so you'll have a lack of steps, available for working with quality. In this case the decision is to use all available improvements for increasing of quality. If you have a little shortage of progress to complete crafting with a single step, use a food, which increases craftsmanship. Otherwise calculate, how you can get more quality points: by increasing CP or Control and use corresponding food.

Equipment items have durability on 20 or more points greater, and about 2x greater difficulty, than materials with the same level. But because usually you'll able to synthesize material by 2 steps, the equipment items will require 4 or just 3 steps. So you may reach more chance to create HQ equipment, than material with same recipe level, because of greater number of steps, available for increasing of quality. And in this case you may not spend HQ raw-staff to craft HQ materials. //TODO: this consumption needs to be verified in practice.

Anyway, because you can reach only 50% of maximum HQ points or less, you need at least a half of high quality materials (how much of HQ materials you will use, so much starting quality points you will get).

The feature of crafting of of middle-complexity items is that you able to mix increasing of quality with synthesis, aiming to catch more moments when condition of materials becomes good or excellent, and do it without loss of productivity.

For example, start crafting with synthesis (or with Master's Mend, if you plans to use it), and look for materials condition. If it turns good or excellent, use that touch action, which has maximum efficiency and probability, to gain maximum effect. If materials still normal or becomes poor, continue synthesis, or restore durability points, or do something else usefull. And at last step finish the synthesis. Also it's adviceble to reserve 1 extra step for reliability, if you have not Careful Synthesis).

Crafting of an most complex items

//TODO: describe tactics of crafting of most complex equipment (relatively current level).

Class-specific guides

//TODO: describe usage of specific abilities for each class

Alchemist Guide

Armorer Guide

Blacksmith Guide

Carpenter Guide

Culinarian Guide

Goldsmith Guide

Leatherworker Guide

Weaver Guide