The 4th Forge: A Craftsman Reborn

The Journey Begins!

Since Ascy is the bloggy side of the blog, I'll refrain from commenting on login issues and try to stick to my crafting. I've already surpassed my Arcanist's level with half of my crafts -- even my botanist -- marking my transition toward being a full-time craftsman. There have been happy times, proud times, sad times, and times when I did an angry crab dance after failing a 98% chance to HQ an item -- aka I was flipping off my monitor -- but so far it has been enjoyable.

Furrow your brows, the crafting battle begins!

 Current Goals for FFXIV

1. Level cap all crafts/gathers before leveling combat
2. Obtain full artifact armor for them
3. Obtain all luminary items for them
4. Make pretty things for Ascy... and others, I guess

Of course, I already leveled Arcanist to the appropriate level for Grand Company access and chocobo riding; if I didn't have those, it would be a giant hassle -- you need to be level 10 to craft anyway, so forget a pure craft character with no combat at all. Sad.

I want to craft to there.

 Random Observations

Quick synthesis is particularly punitive because of its decrease in base experience, loss of quality bonus experience, failure to craft items that couldn't be failed manually, and decrease in overall high quality results. I'm sure that quick synthesis isn't so bad if used later in the game for luminary hunting or even on low items that you can secure an HQ on even when using normal materials, but currently I just try to one-button macro my way through stacks of materials -- not because I aim to make HQ items but because a secured 250% bonus to experience is better than a 50% decrease by quick synthesis.

Hempen chamises don't do that to every girl. Sigh.

They removed dark matter from gathering and it kind of irks me since it seems to be a vendor-only item now. The repair NPC fee is dependent on current condition, so even if it might be cheaper to buy dark matter and repair, it is more effective to do so when the condition is around 10%. This is just from what I have noticed in the low to mid levels, where you can save a couple gil by repairing -- I'm guessing you can save more later?

How come our FC Lalafell are always up to no good?

Gathering achievements can be quite silly. I was mining for the 300 gathers between level 11-20 in the Black Shroud and noticed that there was only one item? So I had about 260 gemstones that weren't really worth anything and the other 40 I just decided to get crystals. Basically, not all achievements are created equally -- some zones just have gathers that are more worthwhile. Do I need to harvest 1,000 food ingredients because the area doesn't have lumber?

**As a follow-up, I decided that crystals were the way to go. Weaver really destroys my lightning crystal supply.

Pretending to be Bane. Lalabane? Sounds pretty weak.

There was an awkward moment when I hit level 25 on my botanist and gained the ability to acquire a high-quality item without failure if I reached a fourth chain, but a problem arose when nodes were reduced from six gathers to four. That meant that this ability was absolutely useless; I even tried to use an additional gather ability on one of the already +1 gather nodes, but because they couldn't stack I still couldn't activate the 100% HQ -- I never reached the opportunity to use it. I'm hoping this wasn't some oversight when they decided to reduce the number of gathers and I can use it during higher levels.

Not really what I thought I was going to fish up.

Something unexpected during my crafter/gatherer first playthrough happened when I wanted to bleed off some leve allowances as I was approaching 100. Due to having no combat class over level 25, I was unable to continue unlocking outpost leves, which are the only kind of leve that gathering has. So I've been forced into leveling solely through node farming; while it does follow into my goal of one day getting all the luminary tools, it certainly wasn't the optimal way I wanted to reach gathering level caps. Regardless, I'm hoping that it continues to provide me with a more than adequate material pool through this method of leveling -- I'd be surprised if it didn't!

Always looking for the next fashion trend!

Level progress as of 8/31/13:

Carpenter -- 26

Blacksmith -- 22

Armorer -- 21

Goldsmith -- 24

Leatherworker -- 23

Weaver -- 27

Alchemist -- 24

Culinarian -- 26

Miner -- 22

Botanist -- 25

Fisher -- 19

I'll post my level progress again for the end of September.

It's been quite entertaining to play this way and I'm looking forward to trying combat classes when all these crafts are said and done. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them! Also, suggest a topic to write about! It makes it easier for me!

See you next time!

The 3rd Forge: Guildleves

What are Guildleves?

A new mascot has a appeared! -- Introducing Nyaascy!

Henceforth known as "levequests," they are an alternative means of acquiring experience points and lesser rewards for all the disciplines and are naturally unlocked through the main storyline at the same point in which crafting and gathering become available. A few details on leves:

• 3 levequest allowances are renewed every 12 hours*
• A maximum of 100 levequest allowances can be held
• Up to 16 levequests may be taken at a time
• A player will reach 99 levequests after 16.5 days (396 hours)

Shot of the in-game timer.

*To avoid confusion on what time your allowance is renewed, they've included a nifty timer menu (Hotkey: Ctrl+U) that displays when the next batch becomes available.

Where Can I Obtain Them?

Hello miss Mi'qote! One leve, please!

In the starter cities' adventurer's guild there will be an NPC who will prompt you to pick from the three categories of levequests: battlecraft, fieldcraft and tradecraft. We'll focus on the last two since this is a post on crafting after all. Aside from the starter cities, there are occasionally levequest NPCs located in some sanctuaries throughout Eorzea; these providers will give some additional quests for each leve's level bracket that are not given by the cities' NPCs.

The normal prompt you see from Levequest NPCs.

Something that I noticed, which may or may not always be the case, is that you must be in the respective guild's country in order to acquire the levequest; in other words, a miner picking up a levequest for mining will need to speak to an NPC somewhere in the Ul'dah region.

Doing A Levequest

For this example, I'll be using a level one field quest for botanists that I picked up in Gridania.

Leve information presented in the Journal menu.

After picking up the quest, players can see the starting location summarized in their journal, in case they forget, and also a red area designating the gather area. It should be noted that it makes sense to already be in the red area when you start a fieldcraft leve because you receive a bonus reward for quicker completion.

When confronted with multiple circles, usually means one gather per.

Now that we've arrived in the area, we'll find that there is nothing to harvest yet. To start the quest we need to enter the journal menu, select the appropriate quest and click the initialize button; this is so players are able to store the quest until they're ready to attempt it -- Usually harvest quests take two to four minutes, by the way. Once initialized, you'll notice that the quest proceeds in the same fashion you would do any harvest, but each point will be designated with a leve icon above it.

Standard harvesting procedure; now in two flavours.

The first thing we'll probably note, if we don't see a sparkling harvest points immediately, is our objectives that come up on the right side of the screen. This is the easiest way to see your tracked progress, and can infer whether you need to raise or lower your difficulty; if you've taken 8 minutes to gather 40 items, then you'll probably want to change difficulty, etc. 

Wrong quest, but the right kind of information. One of the few quest you can fail too.

Much of the early harvesting, even in the levequests, have no aggressive monsters around but later on they'll be more prevalent so familiarize yourself with the quest area beforehand or at least expect some bumps on your first attempt of each quest -- You never know what you might run into while wandering the wilds in search of materials.

Get outta my way, FATE frog! I need my harvest nodes!!

Typically after finishing the harvest, you'll find the turn-in NPC in the same area you obtained the quest. If you've completed multiple fieldcraft leves, you'll collect all the rewards in succession -- You won't be able to choose to finish one quest at a time like tradecraft.

Only works for tradecraft since you have to hand over items for each quest.

Normally a quest is always finished with a difficulty bonus because the leves start at a flat level and must be scaled up to your level; e.g., if you take a level 1 quest and are level 4, then you'll probably have taken difficulty +3 recommended or you might even take +4.

Regular reward and bonuses are shown separately for transparency.

For the most part, these are the two bonuses you'll almost always receive.

Sometimes, you'll receive a bonus for speed and excellence. Speed is a straightforward explanation but excellence, I've found, occurs only on the evaluation quests when you have received an exceptionally high score such as 400 points or more. 

Optimize your harvests to get really high evaulation scores! You might even get 20%!

The same works for tradecraft and turning in an HQ item for a bonus!

Why Should I Use Them?

This is one of the tougher questions to answer but I'll try to give my thoughts on it anyway; keep in mind there is no right or wrong answer, I think. I found that as I did crafting or gathering, things became very monotonous -- This was after a couple hours of straight crafting. I was building the same items from the ground up each time and though the experience points for trying to make high quality goods is exceptional, it becomes very repetitive to mass produce ingots, cloth or whatever you're trying to create. This is normally the time you want to break monotony by hitting stuff in the face with your spells and weapons, but for a crafter who has no interest in that, the options become more limited.

No more harvesting, please! I don't want to work in the mines anymore, boss!

So one of the solutions is to change the pace and receive a quest reward for doing so -- Don't you want to spend your leve allowance anyway!? The argument I have against that is efficiency; Why should I use my leve when I can make a few ingots and receive the same experience? Why should I harvest items that won't help further my crafting later?

I've got a secret... There is no one answer.

I personally look at tradecraft leves as a means to augment your craft. Sometimes you are going to produce an item that has little or no demand and that's just the way it goes, but you can then turn in some of those items for experience, gil and more crafting components such as crystals or raw materials by completing a levequest. Similarly, if you just harvested for materials and only leveled off the chain experience, you'd likely end up with a giant surplus of items. The fieldcraft, at least by the current numbers, provides a faster route to leveling and thus quicker entry into higher tier components.

When Should I Use Them?

Sometimes it's like asking, 'How do I get my kitty down from there?' Hmm.

For levels 1~10 of crafting and gathering, I didn't find them very useful because you'll be passing through that range so quickly, but after that it is really up to the player when they want to spend their allowance. I think that the best time to use them is when the monotony becomes too great or when you are really wanting to bolster your experience points. Keep in mind that it does take some time to cap your leve allowance, so think about how often you play before you start spending them. How fast would you level the class without using a leve? Those might be better spent on a higher tier of levequest; just food for thought.

Closing Thoughts

I didn't really think that levequests for gathering and crafting were very interesting, but I think that it is a nice little augment to crafting in general. I ask myself, "What would crafting or gathering be like without any levequests? Would having them level faster make it more fun or less fun?" I'm not really too sure how I'll feel about them in the long run, but for now I plan to use them mainly on harvesting because the current leveling pace felt pretty low in comparison to crafting. Does it really add variety to leveling or is this just another rested experience mechanic to encourage players who can't play as often a way to "catch up"? Either way, I hope that they'll add to the flavor of the game and hopefully come out with some that are genuinely fun and interesting to play.

I made two spreadsheets with some basic levequest data for my own benefit:
Fieldcraft - Disciplines of Land
Tradecraft - Disciplines of Hand

I don't know how beneficial they are to other people, but I'm using them to optimize my leve selection and hopefully to remind myself what the quest was like in case another player asks me for levequest advice.

Anyway, please feel free to post comments or questions or whatever! Next post might not be for awhile and I haven't really decided what the topic will be. Bit tough to write anything when the game isn't available for source material... Hope you all stay sane while we wait for the next phase of beta!

See you next time! Nyaa~

The 2nd Forge: Durability Reborn

A Quick Report On Repairing

What Is Repairing?

Our equipment loses durability as we use them and must be repaired every so often; if we don't and the item falls to zero durability, then it cannot be used until it has been repaired.

Enjoying a show with a certain somebody before getting down to repairing!

Where Can I Repair?

NPCs with the tag “mender” can fix your items, individually or in sets, but it does cost gil; later the price starts to add up and can become a significant daily expense for active adventurers. However, there is another way to repair equipment – players!

Example of the different equipment groups the repair NPC can sort by.

Shut up and take my gil!

There are two basic requirements for a player to fix their own gear:

     +Dark Matter, which can be gathered from harvest points

     +Crafter Level, which is simply meeting a level requirement

Grade 2 Dark Matter gathered from Thanalan mining points.

Grade 1 Dark Matter gathered from The Black Shroud botany points.

Once these criteria are met, we can repair our equipment by going to the inventory, armoury chest, or character sheet and right-clicking the piece we need to fix. This consumes the Dark Matter from our inventory and also gives a small bit of exp to the respective profession that did the repairing – e.g., Blacksmith will receive EXP for repairing a pickaxe. Probably the biggest lure of repairing our items is escaping the NPC repair bill, but remember that depending on the armor, you will need a different crafting profession to fix your items.

First we have the item we want to repair, but we're on the wrong job.

Switch to the respective class to repair the item and find it in your inventory or armoury.

Right-click on the item to bring up the repair option and it'll give another prompt.

Finally, once your item is repaired you get a small amount of EXP for doing so.

What Repairs What?

Carpenter – Bows, Staffs

Blacksmith – Tools, Swords, Axes, etc.

Armorer – Heavy Armors

Goldsmith – Necklaces, Rings, Wrists (?)

Leatherworker – Light Armors, Some Crafting Gear (?)

Weaver – Most Crafting Gear, Caster Clothing

If you remember reading my last post on picking a craft, you might have noticed that basically whatever the profession can make, it can repair. Makes sense to me!

So Let's Wrap This Up With A Quick FAQ!

Can I repair items that I'm not currently wearing?

Yes, you can repair items in your inventory (Hotkey: I) and armoury chest (Hotkey: Ctrl+I) directly.

Can I repair items while I'm on a different class/job?

No, even if you meet the level requirement, you need to switch to respective craft to fix the item.

Can I repair another person's armor?

The short answer is yes and the long answer is no.

Oh... Why is the repair button greyed out? Sad...

Where can I find Dark Matter?

Currently, both Botanists and Miners can find Dark Matter from certain harvest points. Remember to check your gathering log in case you forget where you found some Dark Matter!

Is there a gil cost to repairing our own armor?

No.

This is robbery! Crooks! Swindlers! Thieves!!

Closing Thoughts

Currently, we can't repair another person's armor even though the UI and support is there for it. I'm not sure if they haven't activated this beta phase or if it is currently bugged, but the option to repair somebody's armor is greyed out. However, the bright side is that it should be just as easy to repair a friend's armor – simply examine them and you'll see a large button labeled repair.

I tried again with Ascy just to make sure it wasn't just Vanh. Sad...

I was happy that it was a very simple system and didn't require the player to jump into a repair mini-game or similar activity, but I wish there was better inventory sorting for it. If you are on your battle class and switch to repair, I hope you have a better memory than I do because you'll need to repair whatever you were just wearing individually. Here is to hoping sorting and auto-sorting help to alleviate that! 

Leave a comment down below on what you think I should blog about next – maybe I will blog about it later! Also, if you have additional questions, I might update the FAQ! For next week's post I will probably be writing on Leves and how they work for crafting and gathering; so stay tuned!

Might be cool, but you aren't getting my gil, pal!

The 1st Forge: Before the Journey

"This is the first of (hopefully) a series of guest posts! Introducing Ark with a topic that I have no clue about... crafting! -Ascy" 

 

Preface: I did not craft very much in FFXI, nor have I played FFXIV 1.0. Please don't ask me how this compares to other MMO crafting, as I really don't know. This is also just my thoughts and inferred information on crafting in 2.0 and as such, shouldn't be taken as 100% accurate. All images shown are copyright of Square Enix Co, Ltd even if they aren't watermarked as such, as I have edited some images for simplicity. 

Wheee! Let's Get Started!

The Bismarck! Limsa Lominsa's finest restaurant and home of the Culinarian Guild!

What is Crafting?

The desire to immerse ourselves in the world of Hydaelyn can be engaged in a number of ways: we alter the appearance of our character into something meaningful that we connect with, we learn of the world's lore and take part in their unfolding stories, and we fight with foes in grandiose battles. Another way we interact with Hydaelyn is crafting: Not only could I wear a brilliant set of armor, but I could have made it too!

The lovely Ascy showing us some fancy needlework.

In terms of gameplay, it attempts to give us options other than fighting, and provides a relaxing alternative where we can gather resources and convert them into items we can use. Whether we use those items for ourselves, give to our friends or sell to other players in our community, the items we make will always bear our name!

The next prodigy of apparel perhaps? Victoriascy's Secrets?

Which Discipline of Hand is Right For Me?

The current list of crafters is as follows:

Carpenter – Bows, Staffs
     +The Black Shroud, New Gridania, Corgg

Blacksmith – Weapons, Crafting Tools
     -Tools La Noscea, Limsa Lominsa Upper Decks, Randwulf

Armorer – Heavy Armor
     +La Noscea, Limsa Lominsa Upper Decks, G'wahnako

Goldsmith – Accessories
     -Thanalan, Ul'dah – Steps of Thal, Jemime

Leatherworker – Light Armor
     +The Black Shroud, Old Gridania. Randall

Weaver – Caster Clothing
     -Thanalan, Ul'dah – Steps of Thal, Maronne

Alchemist – Potions
     +Thanalan, Ul'dah – Steps of Thal, Deitrich

Culinarian – Food...
     -La Noscea, Limsa Lominsa Upper Decks, Charlys

It's really jumping here in Ul'dah! Always welcome at the Weaver Guild!

Which Discipline of Land is Right For Me?

The current list of gatherers is as follows:

Miner – Ore
     +Thanalan, Ul'dah – Steps of Thal, Linette

Botanist – Wood, Cotton, Spices
     -The Black Shroud, Old Gridania, Leonceault 

Fisher – Fish?
     +La Noscea, Limsa Lominsa Lower Decks, unnamed

Pick up armor and blacksmithing at the same time here in Limsa's Upper Decks!

These are just the primary functions I have noticed from the disciplines and they probably not some other things they can craft that I'm unaware of at the moment. Disciplines are really easy to find as none are hidden; just pull up the map and you'll see where all the guilds are in town, but I decided to include links to them just in case.

When Can I start?!

Can't wait to start mining! There's gold in dem der hills!

 Although you can access crafting once you reach level 10 with your starting class and complete its respective quest, currently the ferry has been unavailable as of Phase 3 in the beta. Whether you will be able to freely move to the other starter cities at a very low level is yet to be seen. There is a land path between Gridania and Ul'dah, but Limsa Lominsa requires the ferry or an airship pass to access; the latter of which becomes available after completing the level ~15 main storyline quest. Remember that you can pick up all the disciplines and aren't limited to picking one!

Understanding the UI

Here we see the crystal tab of the inventory box.

What a High Quality craft looks like when in your items.

 As with the other battle classes, crafting is also locked to something you wield, so remember to keep a spot in your gear list if you plan to switch to your craft often! Your important (default) keys are as follows:

"C" – Character sheet and Gear Set List

"N" – Brings up your profession log

"I" – Brings up inventory and displays your crystal count

What Does Clothing Even Do?

Initially clothing isn't necessary... and nobody mourned over that.

 Though crafting and gathering clothes can be shared, most of them are more suited to one or the other, so it is a good idea to have separate sets for each role. The bonuses provided by gear is:

Control – Lowers the chance of failing an action

Craftsmanship – Raises the value of successful actions

Typically, your main hand item seems to give larger bonuses to your profession.

Gathering – Lows the chance of failing a gather

Perception – Raises the chance of procuring high quality materials

Sporting some Miner apparel. Your character sheet also displays total bonuses.

Showing some of the early hybrid bonus gear. Fair enough for early levels.

These are the initial bonuses given by equipment, but perhaps later down the road there will be even more specialized bonuses given to respective disciplines? I'm fairly certain these are what the values do, but I'm sure with time we'll fully explore their properties!

Creating Our First Item!

The game does a fair enough job of easing the player into crafting and the first quest is usually a matter of equipping your newly given tool, buying the materials from a vendor inside the guild, and making an item. While it tells you to access the crafting menu through the personal logs section, I found it easier to learn the hotkey for it and use it often because if you intend to craft, you're going to be seeing that menu -- all the time.

One of the very first Carpenter quests. Measure twice, cut once!

There's Only One Button?

If there was a word to describe crafting in this game it would be 'accessible'. All the disciplines start off with an extraordinarily simple quest and explicit dialogue on how to finish it, and you only start with a single action: make. Still, let's tackle this as though everything was skipped and we've become lost.

Learn to love it. Going to see this menu in your dreams (Hotkey: N)

Bring up our profession log (Hotkey: N) will show our current class' list of items that can be made; clicking on each item reveals the difficulty, durability, crystals required and components required. What is important to note on the first craft is the components required: these will be purchased at the respective guild's supplier NPC – who tends to stand inside the guild, often next to the receptionist.

The very first action that all crafts share.

Once the materials are acquired, it is time to make the item! Bring up the log, select the item, and choose 'synthesis' in the bottom corner. This brings up the actual creation process: in this case it will be an item with 40 durability, which means that there will be four chances to complete the item – each action will take 10 durability off the item and when it reaches zero durability the item fails. For the first craft, our basic synthesis has an incredibly high success rate, so failure is unlikely.

Here we see 10 points on a 9 point item; instant success on our first item!

Now that the item is complete we can turn it in to our guildmaster and finish the quest!

While finishing a crafting log isn't necessary, it does give that warm, fuzzy feeling inside.

Attacking Nature!!

If crafting is accessible, then gathering is even more so! I found that it took longer to level but it was likely designed to be more recreational – even though we know we're just going to blitz the profession and try leveling it as quickly as possible. I found that gathering became interesting only in the later levels when there were more aggressive monsters in the field that would prevent you from trying to harvest, but that is for a different post. For now, let's start from the very beginning in a distant land called Eorzea.

While Ascy loves nature, today nature fears Ascy! Make like a tree and scram!

Our first quest is to deliver a small quantity of items and like the crafting professions, the dialogue will explain where they can be gathered from – as a side note, I believe the gathering log in the menus will also tell you where you have previously gathered, or where you can find, an item once harvested. So let's head on out to our first area!

The gold icons show gathering points on the mini-map, but not on the regular map.

You will notice that, once again, there is only one action we can perform: an ability that shows us harvest locations. The mini-map shows these gathering locations and usually if you harvest a group of 2~3, you'll find that they will have refreshed around the time you get the last one; so if you so desired, you could perform this loop to level – however boring that might be. If you are in the right area, you should find the item you need once you have interacted with the harvest point and all you have to do is click the item you want harvested.

Chaining might not seem like very much EXP, but it adds up over time.

Later on we acquire abilities that raise our gathering rate, making it easier to chain our gather and get more EXP, which is useful if you plan on grinding. They work exceptionally well on unknown gather points -- these appear starting at level 10 harvests, but once you successfully harvest them, they become like any other item in your list and have a higher chance of being gathered.

Quite frustrating the first time when you miss an unknown gather 8 times in a row.

Our buff is applied and one gather has become 100% !

Closing Thoughts

 

What I really wanted to see was how fishing would work! Such a disappointing thing to start in Limsa with no Arcanist or Fishing ready! I really wanted to know how it was going to fit in on crafting; whether it would provide fish for culinarian, crystals for any craft in general, maybe find some rusted boots to synthesize into new items – who knows?!

Won't you tell me your name at least, Miss Mi'qote?

I will say that the initial start of crafting is fairly boring because of how simplistic it is – which, don't get me wrong, is probably a good thing for many people who are afraid to jump into crafting, and it is probably the desire of the Square team to make it so friendly in the beginning. Later on, however, I noticed that there were a lot more options and it became more fun and interesting; especially gathering since level 15 and below rarely ran into aggressive monsters.

It should be a lot of fun picking which professions to use my leves on, what crafts to start first, and which I should finish later, but for now I'm pleasantly surprised with XIV's crafting – since XI seemed like a nightmare in my memories.

Let's get fired up for crafting!! YARgghghghGHGHGH!

I hope you all check out the crafting! Thanks for reading!