I am not saying everything in MikeJustice's sticky is hogwash, a lot is, and a lot is solid information. To the new crafter it can be difficult to determine what to take seriously, what to take with a grain of salt and what to give no more credit than the advice of wearing a lucky rabbit foot in RL while you synth.
I'll break some of it down:
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Guild Support 101
While crafting in your particular guild, you will notice npc's within. These helpful characters offer something called guild support, or advanced guild support. The strength in which they offer ranges from +1 upwards to +3. The +3 is a paid support while the others are free.
Why would you need this?
Every item you wish to make has a craft level cap, meaning once achieved, your current crafting level will skill no higher, for that item of choice.
Support allows you to take your current craft level, and bridge this gap, thus narrowing it closer to the item cap. This will produce safer results with fewer fails. Advanced support is absolutely worth the price more often than not.
While crafting in your particular guild, you will notice npc's within. These helpful characters offer something called guild support, or advanced guild support. The strength in which they offer ranges from +1 upwards to +3. The +3 is a paid support while the others are free.
Why would you need this?
Every item you wish to make has a craft level cap, meaning once achieved, your current crafting level will skill no higher, for that item of choice.
Support allows you to take your current craft level, and bridge this gap, thus narrowing it closer to the item cap. This will produce safer results with fewer fails. Advanced support is absolutely worth the price more often than not.
This is actually better than a lot of guides I see. On Wiki, many of the guides (which sadly were just currently written) state that you will always get more skillups if you have advanced support. This is not true. The only point of this guild support is to act like you are 1 or 3 levels than you currently are.
If you are 44 and get advanced support you can craft like you are 47. The only difference from actually being 47 is you can still get skillups on items that cap at 45, 46 or 47.
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Q: What's the best day or direction to craft on?
A: Many people will say a number of things, but for the moment, let's keep this simple. Use the timer program mentioned above and let it do the work for you. Right now your trying to come into your own, to develop your knowledge in the crafting world.
A: Many people will say a number of things, but for the moment, let's keep this simple. Use the timer program mentioned above and let it do the work for you. Right now your trying to come into your own, to develop your knowledge in the crafting world.
Let's keep it even more simple. You know those wheels that show the element each direction corresponds to? Gather them up if you have them printed out or saved on your computer. Make sure you get both as there are at least two that I know of and they do not have the same elements for each direction.
Did you get them? Ok, next either shred them if you have hard copies or delete them. They are garbage. Superstitous nonsense. You can talk to 100 people who believe that direction has something to do with crafting, and you will come up with 70 different answers. Nothing after 5 years of tinkering with this idea has been even remotly shown to make a difference.
Day of the week is the same thing. On the surface it sounds more plausible, but again absolutly nothing has been shown to support this theory.
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Q: Are sub-crafts important for HQ?
A: Yes extremely important. If you break into a new tier with your main craft, but fail to do so with your sub-crafts, you will not see increased HQ's. You must level up all crafts associated to a synthesis, above tier to enjoy a more bountiful result of HQ's.
A: Yes extremely important. If you break into a new tier with your main craft, but fail to do so with your sub-crafts, you will not see increased HQ's. You must level up all crafts associated to a synthesis, above tier to enjoy a more bountiful result of HQ's.
Correct.
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Q: Should I purchase gil online to fund my crafting, or even my character?
A: This is a personal preference. You can purchase some start up money, but you will run into problems very quickly.
A: This is a personal preference. You can purchase some start up money, but you will run into problems very quickly.
I guess its a personal preference in the same sense as stealing, scamming and cheating...
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Q: What is a tier?
A: Tiers are what the crafting world considers advancement points towards HQ progression. Once a certain tier is broken, your HQ rate increases by a set percentage. The larger the tier broken, the more often you should see HQ's over time.
Level over cap vs. item cap:
0-10 results on average a 1-2% HQ rate over time
11-30 results on average up to 10% HQ rate over time
31-50 results on average up to 25%-30% HQ rate over time
51+ results on average up to 50% HQ rate over time
Seeing this, your best course of action is to attempt to break the highest possible tier on your item of choice.
A: Tiers are what the crafting world considers advancement points towards HQ progression. Once a certain tier is broken, your HQ rate increases by a set percentage. The larger the tier broken, the more often you should see HQ's over time.
Level over cap vs. item cap:
0-10 results on average a 1-2% HQ rate over time
11-30 results on average up to 10% HQ rate over time
31-50 results on average up to 25%-30% HQ rate over time
51+ results on average up to 50% HQ rate over time
Seeing this, your best course of action is to attempt to break the highest possible tier on your item of choice.
Yes. End of guide. This is all you needed. I tend to believe now the rates are 1%, 10%, 25%, 50% but his numbers are still good enough. Note you don't turn that 50% into 70% on Darksday. A new moon doesn't bump it down. Tier 3 is 50%. HQ 8/10 during a new moon on Darksday one time does not prove anything.
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Q: What is the best level gap to skill up with?
A: When all possible, 1-5 levels away from item cap. Your success ratio decrease greatly beyond 5 levels out.
There is no difference in skill up rates whether you stand 1 level away from cap or 5 levels away from cap.
A: When all possible, 1-5 levels away from item cap. Your success ratio decrease greatly beyond 5 levels out.
There is no difference in skill up rates whether you stand 1 level away from cap or 5 levels away from cap.
This is actually correct. It is believed by many that a range of 3 or 4 levels from cap gives better results (including lotyst's program he linked to earlier) as far as skillups are concerned. You must be within 5 levels of the cap to get skillups from failed synths however.
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Have you ever wondered how certain players could almost HQ items at will? Obtain items so rare, that it would seem as if impossible to craft?
Often times we wonder how certain individuals can amass so much wealth in one game. Have they done something different? Sure they did, they thought differently.
In today's common way of thinking, we as crafters are too busy trying to decipher the HQ code, to easy to accept purposed ideas without any verification (I am guilty of this as well). Even after the release of this game 3+ years later, we have yet to figure out one independent factor within the HQ equation.
But there was hope, there was a confirmation of a tier structure. A factor which absolutely contributed to the HQ code, more significantly than some would ever know.
SE is very secretive in the way they have structured this crafting system. While there are indications of a star system, a chart which directs us to the correct direction, nothing has been independently confirmed as accurate or not.
Instead of looking at what we don't know, lets look as what we do know. Since we can not crack any independent portion of the HQ code, lets try and find a way around it, a backdoor method.
Often times we wonder how certain individuals can amass so much wealth in one game. Have they done something different? Sure they did, they thought differently.
In today's common way of thinking, we as crafters are too busy trying to decipher the HQ code, to easy to accept purposed ideas without any verification (I am guilty of this as well). Even after the release of this game 3+ years later, we have yet to figure out one independent factor within the HQ equation.
But there was hope, there was a confirmation of a tier structure. A factor which absolutely contributed to the HQ code, more significantly than some would ever know.
SE is very secretive in the way they have structured this crafting system. While there are indications of a star system, a chart which directs us to the correct direction, nothing has been independently confirmed as accurate or not.
Instead of looking at what we don't know, lets look as what we do know. Since we can not crack any independent portion of the HQ code, lets try and find a way around it, a backdoor method.
Here we go.... Someone has this magical "HQ code" and is making hundreds of millions of gil at will. Wow...
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Factors - What do we do with these?
Day
Time
Moon
Items worn
Elemental aura
Direction
Etc
Etc
Etc
Lets keep this as simple as we can.
Moon percentage sets up our database table. The percentage is the key in the moon phase factor, to determine whether we can match tables again in the future.
Every other factor mentioned or not, determines how the HQ / NQ/ Fails are arranged upon the table. Quite frankly, you want to control all factors you believe you can control, as we don't know exactly how many contribute to the table.
My suggestion is to pick a day, pick a moon percentage, face "X" direction, wear ONLY your guild gear, change to a level 1 job or any job you will never ever level again, etc, and then document your results.
Be very accurate with your game minutes (seconds) in which the synth is created, as that is your synthesis result.
Now one week from the day, or any exact moon phases in the future, repeat the exact scenario you just laid out, as your table should be relatively similar.
This HQ method is best used for a end level craft, as when you advance in rank, it is a possibility you can re-arrange your table yet again. Turn 90 degrees different, attempt with a different job, your bound for different results. Remember when we level up our jobs, statistically our characters change. We need to control EVERYTHING we can think of, because we don't know exactly what contributes and what doesn't.
After your testing has taken place, you have some data gathered. With weekly testing, you should start noticing HQ zones to stand out. While it's not known as to why some zones HQ 100% and others more than average, but less than 100%, we try to locate the 100% zones. Again this could be because of a factor we haven?t controlled, something we failed to think about controlling.
With tier 51 items, this is rather easy and cheap, tier 31 not too bad, but when you get into tier 11 or 0-10 end game items, it gets insanely costly, aside from all the test work involved.
First, you need to get lucky and "Find" the HQ zone to attempt to repeat it. On a piece your 0-10 over cap, this could take a very long time. Then hope it's a 100% or high HQ percentage zone. This is why you don't see millions of cursed hauberks -1 all around, or the equivalent. It takes much time and much gil to test for items in tier 11 or less.
Stamina is the key here.
Day
Time
Moon
Items worn
Elemental aura
Direction
Etc
Etc
Etc
Lets keep this as simple as we can.
Moon percentage sets up our database table. The percentage is the key in the moon phase factor, to determine whether we can match tables again in the future.
Every other factor mentioned or not, determines how the HQ / NQ/ Fails are arranged upon the table. Quite frankly, you want to control all factors you believe you can control, as we don't know exactly how many contribute to the table.
My suggestion is to pick a day, pick a moon percentage, face "X" direction, wear ONLY your guild gear, change to a level 1 job or any job you will never ever level again, etc, and then document your results.
Be very accurate with your game minutes (seconds) in which the synth is created, as that is your synthesis result.
Now one week from the day, or any exact moon phases in the future, repeat the exact scenario you just laid out, as your table should be relatively similar.
This HQ method is best used for a end level craft, as when you advance in rank, it is a possibility you can re-arrange your table yet again. Turn 90 degrees different, attempt with a different job, your bound for different results. Remember when we level up our jobs, statistically our characters change. We need to control EVERYTHING we can think of, because we don't know exactly what contributes and what doesn't.
After your testing has taken place, you have some data gathered. With weekly testing, you should start noticing HQ zones to stand out. While it's not known as to why some zones HQ 100% and others more than average, but less than 100%, we try to locate the 100% zones. Again this could be because of a factor we haven?t controlled, something we failed to think about controlling.
With tier 51 items, this is rather easy and cheap, tier 31 not too bad, but when you get into tier 11 or 0-10 end game items, it gets insanely costly, aside from all the test work involved.
First, you need to get lucky and "Find" the HQ zone to attempt to repeat it. On a piece your 0-10 over cap, this could take a very long time. Then hope it's a 100% or high HQ percentage zone. This is why you don't see millions of cursed hauberks -1 all around, or the equivalent. It takes much time and much gil to test for items in tier 11 or less.
Stamina is the key here.
Blah. Blah. Blah. All these guides (and there are a ton, I'm just picking on the sticky here) basically say the same thing. The moon effects synths. The day of the week effects synths. A zillion other things do as well - I've heard barspells, elemental staves, time of day and a ton others.
The advice is always this: watch yourself what works. Why not just tell us? Because it only makes sense if we are watching for it. It is kind of like those television prophets. You know the guys that can make you believe they can tell your past or talk to your dead loved ones by asking general open-ended questions.
These guides say things like, synth facing the direction of you crystal. Notice if you get more HQs or NQs. Try other directions. Try equiping staves. You do all these things and you are going to eventually hit a streak where you HQ 8 out of 10, break 5 in a row, or get great or horrible skillups. You start thinking your luck (good or bad) was based on all these factors, even though no one can really show you the same results. It's like the guy who doesn't change his underwear until his favorite team finally loses a game.
If B happened while I was doing A and the moon was at position C and I was wearing D, B must be influenced by A, C and D! No? Well if it happened twice, that would prove it right?
I am going to wrap this all up by giving the forums something that many have been searching for years - the long hidded HQ Formula!! You don't have to believe it, but this is it and we've had it for years.
HQ Formula = Your crafting level (via core level plus gear and guild support) - the level of the synth
You can complicate it if you want. Go talk to those NPCs with their star maps. Keep a close eye on the moon and the day of the week. Have someone cast barfire on you before your synth. But once you start accepting that the tiers is all there is to it, the better positioned you will be to making smart mathematical decisions on what to craft for profit. And you won't waste your time waiting for the stars to become aligned for no good reason.
Edited, Nov 27th 2008 3:37pm by VawnLakshmi
The way I see it is this, everything posted has just been either lies or people saying what they're results are without any actual data. There's a couple situations then: 