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How To: Craft High Quality Stuff

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I thought I’d document a couple of the ways you can leverage cross-class abilities to almost always craft High Quality stuff. So right off the bat, the bare minimum you need for this is a Level 15 Culinarian for Hasty Touch (50% Success, 100% Quality, 0 CP), Higher Level Crafter (any) for Master’s Mend II (Recover 60 Durability, 160cp), and Level 15 Alchemist for Tricks of the Trade (restore 20  CP, only during “Good” status, 0CP, doesn’t effect durability).

A couple other notes: This method can be used for non-50 crafting, and even non-AF gear, but for the higher level recipes, especially any of the 1 or 2 star stuff, you really want to have the best gear you can get first, High Quality AF gear and Jewelry. Melding isn’t necessary, but it can help remove some of the RNG involved.

So here’s how this works, and it relies on Inner Quiet, Hasty Touch, and Tricks of the Trade, follow these steps:

  1. Inner Quiet
  2. Tricks of the Trade, if “Good” (Trumps everything else unless you’re at 100% Quality, or get an Excellent in which case Advanced Touch)
  3. Steady Hands (II, if you have it)
  4. Hasty Touch x5 (or until Steady Hands runs out)
  5. At 10-20 Durability, use Master’s Mend

Now you’re at 70 or 80 Durability and have nearly half or more quality filled, you have a couple of options here: Repeat steps 3 and 4 until 20-30 durability (depends if you can finish the craft in 1 or 2 durability) and then finish the craft (hopefully you’ll have hit 100% quality). The other option is to do something like Great Strides -> Steady Hands I -> Innovation (if you have it) -> Advanced Touch. That SHOULD get you 800-1000+ quality unless your Hasty Touches failed too many times. At that point you can then finish off the craft.

This method can be applied to 40 durability recipes, but relies on Manipulation (Goldsmith, 15). Follow the steps above, but use Manipulation at 20 durability (unless you get an Excellent). Please note: Manipulation used at 10 durability WILL BREAK if you try to use a skill that lowers durability when you’re at 10 durability. However the lucky thing is that you don’t NEED HQ mats like Ingots to achieve 100% quality, so these 40 durability recipes don’t necessarily need to be HQ’d.

For the record, I do something like the following (Even macro’d) when trying to HQ lower level recipes or 40 durability stuff:

  1. Great Strides
  2. Steady Hands I
  3. Innovation
  4. Advanced Touch
  5. Great Strides
  6. Advanced Touch

Then, depending on quality, I’ll use a 3rd Touch, then finish it. If I use a 3rd touch, and it’s 80%~ quality, I’ll use a mend and see if I can get it to 100%, but the goal here I’ve discovered is to finish the craft asap. I almost never use this method when I’m crafting intermediate mats at level 50, sometimes I’ll even use quick synth. But for leveling purposes this can be useful for the 40 durability recipes, though you’re unlikely to guarantee a HQ craft. THe goal while leveling is just to increase the quality a few times — you get 100-200% more experience for increasing the quality even a little bit!

Other Thoughts

This is the way that I do things, it’s not necessarily the best way. There are some very good cross-crafter skills available from those I’ve not leveled yet, such are Byregot’s Blessing (makes it easier to increase progress), there’s another that increases progress by a third, and then there are the “Brands”, but I’ve not leveled those crafts yet. I may revisit this topic in the future if I discover that any of those abilities I don’t have turn out to be useful.

Oh, I don’t have it yet, but there is an ability (Rumination, Carpenter Level 15) that can “eat” Inner Quiet stacks and return CP based on how many you had — this IS useful (And I’m definitely going to pick it up next). This ability is very useful after you’ve hit 100% quality, because at that point Inner Quiet becomes useless, your only goal at that point is to fill the progress up all the way — which for 1 or 2 star crafts can actually take 30-40 durability. That restored CP can help you use a mend (for more durability), or to use Standard Synth multiple times (which costs 15 cp).

So, how do you HQ stuff? Am I doing it wrong? Let me know in a comment!

Level 50 Culinarian: Where Did My Inventory Space Go?!

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CulinarianAfter I finished leveling my Miner to 50 (yes it took awhile, the last level I did Leves in Mor Dhona) and spending some time on my Goldsmith making some gear to sell on the Market, I decided to start another crafter. Originally I wasn’t going to touch Culinarian, but then I learned about two very useful skills you can pickup a long the way: Hasty Touch which is very useful as part of the Inner Quiet > Hasty Touch/Tricks of the Trade > Mend cycle that can help you HQ most higher durability items and Steady Hands II, which buffs Hasty Touch taking it from a 50% chance, to an 80% chance (Steady Hands I only buffs it to 70%) which further helps when HQing something.

A couple things to note about this DoH class: You will want to clear out at least 3 tabs of inventory, possibly more if you decide to go a different route than I did. Even when I tried to focus on items that took minimal mats to create, I would still end up almost maxing out my inventory. While  it’s a good rule of thumb to craft most stuff (at least below 30) at least once for the experience bonus, I would suggest avoiding that this time around, instead try to focus on 1-2 things and milk them for all you can.

I used Leves again and there were three, with the third one ending up making the last few levels go by really quickly. All leves are found in Limsa and are turned into an NPC near the Limsa Aetheryte Crystal.

"A Grape Idea" Grape Juicex1 HQ=18k
“A Grape Idea” Grape Juicex1 HQ=18k

This first leve is unlocked at level 20, it’s not that great but it’s useful for a few levels at least (or longer, depending on your access to mats). My goal with the leves was to hit the ones which required stuff with either the least number of mats, or stuff that was easier to HQ.

"True Grits" Cornmeal 6x HQx3 = 140k total
“True Grits” Cornmeal 6x HQx3 = 140k total

This second leve is unlocked at level 30, while you may not be able to jump on this one asap, I found that it wasn’t too difficult to HQ Cornmeal, but I had access to the Goldsmith cross class abilities, like Flawless Synthesis and Manipulation. This leve is very useful for a rather long time, however it does require a lot of crafting. This one IS a leve that allows you to “turn-in” 3 times, for a total of 140k~ experience (assuming everything is HQ). Not that if you do aim for this leve, you will be crafting a TON of cornmeal I ended up with something like 700 NQ cornmeal when I was finished with this leve.

"Made by Apple in Coerthas" Apple Juice x3, HQx3 = 270k total
“Made by Apple in Coerthas” Apple Juice x3, HQx3 = 270k total

The last leve I used is unlocked at 40, and I didn’t even notice it first, but on a whim I checked out the mats for Apple Juice (Juice tends to have 1-2 mats, which is what I was aiming at), and not only did it only have one mat (6x Mirror Apples), the Market had stacks and stacks of them both NQ and HQ. YMMV  though, and that did cost me a bit (I would estimate about 40k-50k spent on Mirror Apples). While it did take awhile to craft 9 HQ Apple Juices (this is a 3x turn-in leve!) the experience — and gil — was more than worth it. For reference, you get about 1000-1200 gil per turn in so over 3k for full HQ mats, which helps take the sting out a bit from the expensive HQ Mirror Apples.

Other Thoughts

So, like the title mentions, my inventory seemed incredibly small while leveling my culinary skills, there are very few items that take less then 5-6 different base items. The other issue was the number of stuff I had to run to the Market to acquire. I imagine this might be a bit alleviated for those who leveled a Botanist up, but personally my Miner is good enough for me. I can’t imagine leveling a second gatherer class, although I might take Botany to 20 for the wards.

Culinary Class quests were somewhat underwhelming, I loved the Goldsmith ones, but these ones just didn’t catch my attention. Though I didn’t originally plan to level a Culinarian, so that might be an extension of that. I do love the Culinary class gear, though I don’t currently have the gil to blow on it, heh.

Because I have access to a 50 Goldsmith and a large number of mats from leveling my mining, I was able to keep my Culinarian outfitted in HQ jewelry (and occasionally glasses) throughout the leveling process, this was extremely useful as you gain most of your CP off jewelry, I hit 250+ at a relatively low level and ended up at 310 at 49~50 which was very useful in HQing stuff. I’m actually quite happy that the crafter I chose first — goldsmith — has turned out to have amazing synergy with other crafters. From the skill “Flawless Synthesis” to “Manipulation”. My next crafter is likely going to be either a Weaver,  or possibly a Leatherworker — I’m aiming towards Weaver because I want to craft base sets of HQ crafting gear to make leveling future crafters easier. My end goal is to get one of every crafter to 50, because I’ve found them to oddly be fun.

DoW – I’ve discovered that, while I really enjoy the fighter classes, I absolutely cannot stand FATE grinding for very long, so it’s put a small damper on my plans to level up some casters — I really want to see what healing is like in this game, but FATE grinding is just so incredibly boring.