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!