PROTIP: acquiring your Artisan Spectacles Follow

Going to try this rotation. I failed twice last night (well, one fail, one NQ) on the spicy relish using my usual lazy rotation - which involves way too much hasty touch to provide consistent results on the starred recipes. Very annoying since the HQ tomatoes are going for 5K a pop. Gonna have to go farm those myself, I think.

I actually bought and melded the CUL set before I got my crazy overmelded Patrician's set, so it's better than normal. Craftsmanship 334 and control 318 on the dot without food. CP is a titch lower though since I focused on the other two melds, but I think I'm around 305 or so.

I did this myself just last night.

I used my CUL which was already at 50. My right side is single-melded and I have partial overmelds on my left side and my offhand tool. I had tried to make the relish once before but was failing miserably - there was so much Progress needed that I basically blew all my CP on Standard Synths and Master's Mend II and couldn't get Quality above about 6-10% HQ.

So on my day off yesterday I went and speed-levelled WVR and ALC to 15 and tried again.

Inner Quiet > Standard Synthesis x3 > Careful Synthesis Until One Step From Done (blow all Goods on Tricks of the Trade). Master's Mend II > Steady Hand II > Hasty Touch x5.

And at that point I'd play it by ear. If I had enough CP from ToT procs I'd use Master's Mend I and keep going, otherwise I'd Great Strides > Observe (looking for a Good) and Byregot's Blessing. Then a final Careful Synthesis for the finish.

I actually just got BSM to 15 last night. Once I build some leves back up I'll do LTW and GSM to 15 next (only takes about 30 mins per job to hit 15 doing the highest EXP leves starting at level 5). Then probably WVR on up to 50.

Is Piece by Piece any good? I've seen conflicting advice about it.

That's the one that jumps you 30% of the way toward completion, right? Regardless of where you are.

It is good for the very first synthesis step on starred items, but after that you get more mileage out of Standard Synthesis with Steady Hand II up.

Careful Synthesis II? I have fully melded (including penta off hand) ALC, GSM and WVR with Armorer soon to follow; I use nothing but PbP and CS II in my synths. There are bigger furniture pieces that you can use the Brands for but we don't have our large house yet so I'm just making all the other starred synths.

I can't think of any situation where the 30% efficiency difference between Standard and CS II would save a step; in addition to that, you are spending either 22/25 CP to land the Standard + 24/32 for Ingenuity I/II (there isn't a situation where PbP isn't getting you more mileage out of SH 2 + PbP than SH 2 + Standard synthesis unless you are so close to completion that again, CS II wouldn't just do it anyway while saving you CP). The whole point of saving CP is to either turn Hasty into Basic touches or save you enough CP to generate steps to complete high difficulty (mainly furniture) synths. If you don't yet have CS II, I highly recommend taking WVR to 50. I've always recommended WVR to be one's first or 2nd craft to all of my FC mates and they have had great success.

It certainly is. :)

You are right, in the scenario of lower synths, if you are mass crafting and saving a step on each one, it adds up timewise for sure. Which definitely helps when cranking out gear for SBing purposes, lol.