FFXIV: Arliman's Crafting Compendium

[Tenchi-no-Ryu]

So you wanna be a crafter?


A lot of the FC have been asking advice about crafting so I thought it would be best to compile a guide covering the basics and some advanced techniques. This is a comprehensive guide and will probably be a little complicated so please don't try to absorb it all at once. Try to master the basics section before moving onto advanced technique.


Why Craft?


To put it simply, Crafting aka Synthesis, allows a player a certain degree of self sufficiency in the game and affords access to equipment across all level ranges. If used judiciously it can save you a significant amount of money and allow you a modest income by participating in the player driven economy. You will not become an overnight gillionaire through crafting. If you aren't careful it can leave you bankrupt, but more on that later.


Pros:


1. Ability to repair your own gear which is a significant cost savings over time. Level 5 Dark Matter is only 80 Gil per piece vs. 180 Gil per repair at the NPC. Score!


2. Ability to meld Materia to equipment. Requires catalyst obtained through gathering. It's obvious how this benefits the player. I can charge 2-5k per meld in our current market. Some patrons will offer you a bonus for a successful forbidden meld. Your mileage may vary depending on your clientele.


3. Ability to create equipment that can be used for yourself or others. HQ equipment sells for a premium on the Market Board (MB). This is especially useful for hard to fill slots like Jewelry.


Cons:


1. Significant time investment. If you plan on crafting, you require a basic knowledge of multiple crafts. If you intend to play the HQ game you are required to level nearly all crafts to cap.


2. Clogged Armory. While you can create a single set for crafting, realize you will need space for not only your main hand tool, but your offhand. When you get into HQ crafting specialty, you will need to find room for upwards of 6 sets of crafting artifact armor (AF).


3. Total reliance on Disciples of the Hand and War (DoH and DoW) . You cannot create works of art without raw materials. No craft is an island. You will require materials and crystals from mining, botany and spoils from fallen enemies.


4. It's expensive. If you're not willing to dabble in gathering or monster slaying, you will have to purchase raw materials and that can become expensive very quickly. When you begin the HQ game, you will need Materia. A lot of Materia. It's not cheap and if you try to convert your own it will take an incredibly long time.


Scared yet? You should be...



Crafting Basics, Part 1:


At its core, creating an item requires manipulation of two statistics: Progress and Durability.


Progress is the degree of item completion. Reaching 100% Progress means you've succeeded in creating the item. As a general rule components usually require less points in Progress to reach 100%. Finished goods have upwards of 2-6x the points needed in Progress to complete.


Durability is the health (HP as it were) of your synthesis attempt.
Actions that affect Progress or HQ will consume Durability. If Durability reaches ZERO before Progress reaches 100%, your craft will fail and you will loose the crystal and potentially all your other materials. Thankfully, if your synth reaches 100% progress at the same time Durability is depleted, your craft will still succeed.


Crafted components (rivets, lumber, glue etc) will always have 40 Durability. Finished goods that are assembled from these components will have 70-80 Durability. Needless to say components are a lot trickier to make because you have significantly less turns. They are also much harder to HQ.


For now don't worry about the HQ (Quality) bar, we will get to that later.


Statistics:


Now, Crafting is dependent on three statistics; craftsmanship, control and CP (crafting points).


Craftsmanship directly influences how much Progress certain actions can make. Higher Craftsmanship means you get more Progress per action.


Control directly influences how much HQ certain actions can make. Higher Control means you potentially get more HQ per action.


CP is the currency spent on each crafting action. The bigger your CP pool the more actions you can make.


The largest sources of Craftsmanship and Control are your main hand AND offhand tool. Do NOT neglect your offhand tool. It is half of your stat pool.


Got it? Good. Moving on...

Crafting Basics Part 2:


The process of synthesis is using a series of actions in a player determined sequence to achieve a desired result. Each action is considered a Turn. This is important to note because several of the actions you will be using create effects that last a certain number of Turns. Effects with Turn durations will appear in your buff bar with a number next to the icon. When the number drops to ONE (not ZERO), the next Turn will remove that Effect. I cannot stress enough how important knowing your Turn durations are for crafting.


Conditions:


As you synth, your unfinished product will wax and wane between several conditions. Each condition is important because they have a multiplier that influences the effect of each Action. Certain Actions can ONLY be used when a specific condition is active. Here are the Conditions:


Normal - 100% - white glow, always the turn after Poor and Good
Good - 150% - red glow - random, can only proc after Normal
Excellent - 400%- green glow - 50% success rate, random, can only proc after Normal
Poor - 50% - purple glow, black core, Always the turn after Excellent


To explain:


In Good condition, a successful action will be boosted by 150% with a standard failure rate. Good Condition can only appear if the previous Condition is Normal. It will also be followed by Normal Condition. It will not appear after Poor or precede Excellent.


Excellent condition gives any successful action a 4x multiplier but cuts your chance of success in half. Excellent condition may only appear after Normal condition.


Poor Condition always follows Excellent and will cut the effect of any successful action in half.



Before we go on, please make sure you've committed these concepts to memory. As I go into abilities and sequences, you need to understand how these are interrelated.


Getting Started:


Before we go any further, these are the skills you need to become a crafter. You need them all. I highly recommend you start with Alchemist. The sooner you have access to Tricks of the Trade the easier your life as a crafter will be.


Steady Hand: level 9, Any Craft
Improves Action success rate by 20% for 5 Turns.
22 CP


Inner Quiet: level 11, Any Craft
Gives a bonus to Control for every increase in HQ. Last the duration of the synth unless consumed by Rumination or Byregot's Blessing.
18 CP


Observe: level 14, Any Craft
Do nothing for one turn.
14 CP


Tricks of the Trade: 15 Alchemist
Restores 20 CP when the synthesis status is Good. This action does not effect Durability and can proc repeatedly.
Free


Careful Synthesis: 15 Weaver
Increases Progress at 100% Success Rate.
Free


Manipulation: 15 Goldsmith
Recovers 10 Durability each Turn over 3 Turns.
88 CP


Rumination: 15 Carpenter
Converts stacks of Inner Quiet into CP. 6-10 CP per stack.
Free


Hasty Touch: 15 Culinarian
Increases Quality (HQ) at a 50% success rate.
Free


Master's Mend - level 7 any craft.
restores 30 Durability instantly
92 CP


Once you have all these abilities, I'll go over two basic rotations: Basic Standard and Basic HQ Attempt. It is important to know that while synthesis is essentially a static rotation of abilities, there are Situational actions based on CP, HQ and durability deficiencies/needs. I'll try to break it down.


Basic Standard Rotation: This is only if you care about completion and not HQ.


1. Careful Synthesis....repeat until complete or a Situational arises. Yes it's that simple.


Basic HQ Attempt Rotation: This is for attempts for a 100% HQ finished product.


1. Inner Quiet


2. Careful Synthesis x N
(N= number of times needed to get Progress within ONE Careful Synthesis of completion)


Note: Break out the calculator if you must. Your progress points remain the same for each use of Careful Synthesis. Ideally, you should aim to get Progress to within one additional use to reach 100%. It is very easy to overshoot and regular synth the item if you are getting big gains with each Careful Synthesis.


3. Steady Hand x 1


4. Hasty Hand x 5 or until a Situational arises.


5. Repeat Steps 3 and 4, while dealing with a Situational event until HQ is 100%.


6. Careful Synthesis x 1 to Finish.



Situational Actions and Events:


1. Tricks of the Trade every activation to restore 20 CP. Try not to miss this! It can activate as frequently as every other turn.


2. If Durability becomes an issue:


a. Manipulation at any point Durability is below 50/70(80) if you are at a point to recast Hasty Hand, Inner Quiet/Rumination cycle. Remember it requires 3 turns worth of Actions to recoup all 30 Durability. If you aren't at a point where you can use your Turns for buff or CP recomp cycle, use Master's Mend. For Materials use it at 10/40 with the same considerations.

b. Once all 3 turns of Manipulation (or your one turn MM) are over and you are 30 Durability stronger ( and hopefully at least 20 CP richer), continue with Careful Synthesis (regular) or Steady Hand/Hasty Touch (HQ).

Note: When you get into HQ crafting with Effects that last multiple turns it may behoove you to spend the extra CP for the one turn Durability restore than wasting 3 turns of your buff for a modest CP savings. It's all about economy.

Note: While Manipulation's effect is active, actions that would normally consume Durability will consume a single turn of the restoration effect instead. This allows you to use 3 Progress or HQ actions without lowering Durability. However, this will not restore any actual Durability because the net gain is the same. It is extremely important that you do not use any actions that consume Durability if you are already at 10/X. Manipulation only refunds Durability once it is consumed. If your Durability drops to zero, Manipulation cannot refund it. So, if you're using Manipulation to fund Durability neutral actions, don't do it unless you have AT LEAST 20 Durability. Otherwise you will break your synth. This technique is not adviseable for beginners because you will need the Durability restore more than the free actions. Also activated TotT procs during the Manipulation effect will essentially waste the charge if Durability is already full, since TotT doesn't effect Durability.

3. If CP becomes a problem:

a. Use Rumination to refund your successful stacks of Inner Quiet into CP.

Note: Do not rely on TotT to keep your CP pool afloat. A bad streak of no proc's can leave you stranded.

b. Recast Inner Quiet as soon as Durability and CP allow.

Note: Do not waste the CP to recast if you are very low durability. It takes 2 successful Hasty Touch (20 Durability) to refund what you spent to cast Inner Quiet in the first place. Pointless if you only have enough Durability for 1-2 turns and no CP for Manipulation or Master's Mend.

Note: Successfully increasing quality (HQ) while Inner Quiet is active will illuminate Rumination, but there is no visible indicator of how many stacks are stored, so don't blow it too early! Each successful Hasty Touch will increase the stack by one charge. It seems to average 6-10 CP per stack of Inner Quiet.

Saved until the last possible second, Rumination can save your entire attempt at HQ. It can refund enough CP to cast a quick MM or Manipulation. Just don't forget to keep in mind you will need enough CP to recast Steady Hand (and hopefully Inner Quiet) for another few rounds of Hasty Touch. Toss in random TotT proc and you'll be in a much safer position than you started in. Inner Quiet is your get out of fail free card. Save it! The longer its actively stacking Control, it increases potential HQ gain and gives you a bigger CP refund when cashed out via Rumination.


The main point is that as a crafter you have many skills that allow you to better manage your resources to the desired outcome. CP is the fuel for nearly all actions, but its best usage is for durability restoration and buffing success rates of progress and HQ. Used creatively, what looks like an impossible mission at first glance becomes a simple task. You simply have to think ahead. HQ crafting is not unlike playing a card game. There is also an element of luck involved.


Once you've mastered these techniques and the cycle becomes second nature, I will teach you about Advanced Techniques. These are necessary if you hope to HQ any of the one or two star finished goods (ilevel 55-70).

[Tenchi-no-Ryu]

Advanced Crafting:

So, you've mastered the basics and think you're a baws ready for the big leagues. If so, come at me bro. I've got knowledge to impart, if you're not faint of heart.

Before we begin, you'll need a few more tools in your arsenal if you hope to attack the ilevel 55+ recipes with any hope of HQ. You'll need these skills, in this order of importance. Remember when I told you to start with alchemy? This is why...

Great Strides - any craft at level 21
Doubles the Effect of the next Action. Active for 3 Turns.
32 CP

Master's Mend II - any craft level 27.
Restores 60 Durability.
160 CP

Comfort Zone - 50 ALC
Restores 8 CP a turn for the next 10 turns. This makes all things possible.
66 CP

Byregot's Blessing - 50 CRP
Increases HQ with 100% Control Modifier PLUS 20% for each stack of Inner Quiet (will consume Inner Quiet). Success Rate: 90%
24 CP

Ingenuity I - 15 BSM
Lowers recipe level to current level for the next five steps.
24 CP

Ingenuity II - 50 BSM
Lowers recipe level three below current level for the next five steps.
32 CP

**Steady Hand II - 37 CUL
Improves action success rate by 30% for the next five steps.
25 CP

**Optional, because in most cases Version I will suffice in most cases, though Version II increases outcomes.

With that established, I highly recommend that you have your level 50 quest tool or Luminary (same stats) main hand and an HQ Militia offhand tool before attempting any one star recipes. These have a minimum Craftsmanship or Control check before it will even allow you to make the item. Two star synths are even higher and will require your full crafting AF (one star crafted), HQ'd if possible with a decent amount if Materia to reach the minimum requirements.

So, the HQ process is a variation on what was established in the basic guide. The major fundamental differences is that we need to buff nearly every Touch (Action that effects Progress or HQ). In order to do that we need a decent sized CP pool (275 minimum) and a powerful source if CP generation (Comfort Zone) on to keep the Actions flowing. Ideally I'd like for you to have around 300 CP but that's hard to reach without very specific accessories.

I'll go over optimal setup at the end of the guide. It will probably be its own section.

HQ Rotation (One Star and Higher)

1. Comfort Zone - refresh every time it expires unless you are doing the HQ coupe de grace.

2. Inner Quiet.

3. Ingenuity II - I may suffice if that's all you have, but I don't recommend it if you're serious.

4. Careful Synthesis x 1-4.

Note: You need to be EXTREMELY careful here to not overshoot or undershoot progress. Because of the Ingenuity buff you will see upwards of 2-3x the amount of Progress you'd see with a single un-buffed Careful Synthesis. Just like the basic HQ, the goal is to get Progress to within one use of Careful Synthesis to completion.

I recommend you note just how much Progress you make with a single Ingenuity buffed Careful Synthesis and assume the regular will net you half that. So... If you need 300 Progress and the buffed Touch gives you 150, STOP! Let Ingenuity wear off and use an un buffed Careful Synth or two. You'll get a better idea of how much base Progress you can make and not overshoot.
The main point is that Ingenuity will save you Durability by reducing your effective Turns of Careful Synthesis. However it's a double edged sword if you're not careful.

For example:

500 Progress recipe
52 Progress per Careful Synthesis
122 Progress per buffed Careful Synthesis

Ideal:
4 buffed (488 progress)
1 un buffed finisher (488+52>500)
Total Impact = 6 turns, 50 Durability

Wasteful:
9 un buffed (468 progress)
1 un buffed finisher (468+52>500)
Total Impact = 10 turns, 100 Durability

Near Miss:
3 buffed (366 Progress)
2 un buffed (366+104=470)
1 un buffed finisher (470+52>500)
Total Impact = 7 Turns, 60 Durability

I hope this illustrates the economy of using Ingenuity to buff Careful Synthesis and how just missing one can cost you dramatically. Remember that the buff is active for FIVE turns. It is highly unlikely you will need all of them, and with Tricks of the Trade proc and refreshing Comfort Zone, chances are you won't enjoy all five Turns. Just remember, it's ok to let the Ingenuity buff wear off if you need to eek out one un buffed Careful Synthesis to reach that Progress sweet spot.
 
5. Ingenuity I or II. Yes again. This time we are going to be using it to buff...

6. Steady Hand I or II

7. Hasty Touch x 1-4

Note: Try not to use Hasty Touch without having Ingenuity and Steady Hand active. The only time you should make an exception is if the synth is in excellent condition. Then you make that gamble. 400% boost to a successful HQ Touch is worth the risk. Remember both buffs last 5 turns and casting the subsequent buff will reduce previous buffs duration by one turn already, so you're going to only really have 4 max attempts at Hasty Touch (one of which won't have Ingenuity).

7. Repeat Steps 5-7 until you have:

a. At LEAST 5 stacks of Inner Quiet.

b. At LEAST 20 Durability.

c. At least 81CP.

Note: You can get away with 56 CP only if you have at LEAST two turns left of Steady Hand I or II left.
You cannot do the HQ Coupe de Grace unless you meet these conditions! With luck you'll be about halfway to 100% HQ at this point. I'm not going to use the HQ bar percentage because it's bizarre (500/1000 HQ is considered 20% WTF!?). Just eyeball it.

The HQ Coupe de Grace:

This sequence is exempt from EVERY Situational.

8. Recast Steady Hand I or II. Only if if you have less than 2 Turns worth of the buff left.

9. Great Strides.

10. Byregot's Blessing.

Note: If the Condition is Excellent on the turn where you would use Byregot's Blessing, do NOT use it! It will cut your success in half and blow your entire setup if you fail. Use any two actions that doesn't count as a Touch (Observe, TotT if procs, ANYTHING) to clear both Excellent and Poor Condition, then immediately use Byregots. Great Strides is active for THREE turns for a reason! Hopefully you have enough CP to use it after this emergency. If not, you may as well bite the bullet and use Byregot's during Excellent condition and hope the RNG gods don't hate you.

11. Careful Synthesis to finish.

Advanced Situational Procedures:

All the Basic Situational Procedures still apply with a few new caveats and adjustments:

1. Comfort Zone. Keep this buff running. 8 CP return/discount on every Action for 10 turns is massive. At 66 CP, your getting 80 CP return. Awesome!

2. Tricks of the Trade. Do not miss this proc for ANY reason unless your going for HQ Coup de Grace. If it procs on the turn you need to refresh Comfort Zone, CZ can wait a turn. If the RNG gods love you, it'll proc on your Excellent condition during your Byregot's Turn and save you the CP on filler Actions to clear the condition.

3. When you have low Durability, you have three options: Master's Mend, Master's Mend II and Manipulation. Since most things you will be HQing are finished products with 80 Durability, MM2 has good viability if you have enough CP to play with.
You can push a synth deeper into the red and still pull out a full durability recovery because the synergy of TotT and CZ will leave you with excess CP in the early stages of a synth.

Remember the less turns you waste on recovering CP, the more uses you'll get out of your Touch buffs. I can't give you hard and fast rules on this because there are many situations where a slow recovery with Manipulation may be more CP efficient for you than a massive cost like MM2. There are also cases where you're nailing the HQ and getting a lot of TotT procs and you can afford MM2 because your spilling over in CP. Just realize you have three Durability recovery tools in your kit. Use them accordingly.

4. Unless you've gotten lucky with a Hasty Touch on Excellent condition and are nailing HQ without needing Byregot's Blessing, do NOT use Rumination for CP recovery. Strike that Action from memory unless your struggling to even finish the Synth.
Byregot's is entirely dependent on your Inner Quiet stacks. If you blow Inner Quiet for the sake of CP recovery, Byregot's is useless, even with Great Strides active. The CP cost of the combo is much too high without Inner Quiet's modifier. You'll go from a potential 1k+ HQ points to barely 300 for 56 CP. Don't be that guy!

Now, as you can see the process is significantly more involved and a lot more risky than basic HQ, but if your stats and CP pool are high enough you will be amazed at your efficiency and HQ success rate. Gear makes a huge difference, but so does practice. There's a lot of shit that can go wrong with one or two star recipes. Even with buffs I've gone 15/0 on unsuccessful Hasty Touches before on a synth. If you follow these guidelines, you'll have the best chance of HQ success, and at minimum you won't blow up your attempt.

Good luck!

Gear and Materia caps to be added later!

[Klutz64]

tl;dr

jk

thx

[Esper_Crusader]

I'm 17 in carpentry but now need elm logs, iron, growth formula beta and other stuff not in stores. I'm going to have to start mining and gathering aren't I?

[Hathen]

Yes. Or you can use the market boards. Remember that there are things you can make other crafters will need too.

[Raze]

 Dropping gathering and just buying mats off crafting profits was the best thing I could have did for myself ingame.

 I kind of of doubt that all crafts are created equal as far as making gil goes, but if you can make money to buy mats you should. Because crafting is fun and gathering is awful.

[Taelus]

Thanks for your effort putting this up, man.

[Daggerstrike]

Great guide. I started as Weaver because of-

Careful Synthesis: 15 Weaver
Increases Progress at 100% Success Rate.
Free

It makes leveling the others a little less stressful for me.

[Hathen]

About excellent condition, I've done several Steady Standard Touches on it before and I've never failed once. Something makes me think that it only cuts your success in half if you're using a non-100% touch. If you're still steady'd while Excellent procs you can probably Standard/Advanced Touch or Byregot's without failing. I'll report back if I ever fail one of these though.

Also seems like a good thread to mention that 80% success rate actually means something like 50% in SquareEnix language. Those times I fail 4 Steady Hand II Hasty Touches in a row make me want to smash my computer. Yeah I know, probability, but given that that happening is something like a 0.2% chance you'd think it'd only happen once every 500 synths or something. I should buy a lottery ticket.

[Hathen]

Dunno if anybody still reads this thread but I found some interesting information on another site about Ingenuity I and II:



This test was done using basic synthesis/basic touch so the y-axis is the raw increase and not an efficiency %. As you can see, control barely increases when the recipes fall below your level, and the progression increase levels off too (-3 levels will get you +~18% more than +0 levels), so that significantly decreases the usefulness of Ingenuity 2. Of course, if you're on anything but Blacksmith you might run of of cross-class slots if you decide to slot both Ingenuity 1 and 2, but just something to think about if you want to balance between spending that extra bit of CP for better progress.

Also apparent from this that attempting to do anything above your level without using Ingenuity is a really, really bad idea. The penalty's pretty brutal.

[Tenchi-no-Ryu]

Good to know. At least all the star recipies have a minimum Control/Craftsmanship requirement so you aren't capable of doing them under-leveled.

[Hathen]

As far as I know the game will consistently treat the star recipes as being higher level than you (+5 for 1 star, +10 for 2 star), I might be wrong though. If that's the case Ingenuity is ridiculously important when you plan to touch those except when you're just spamming low level touches to try to build charges, which is what a couple (well, most?) people do, spam steady2+basic/hasty for charges and then explode the quality bar using Ingenuity 2+Innovation+Great Strides+Byregot's.