Craftaholics Anonymous/Guide

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Crafting: The Addiction
Though crafting appears to be a way to make gil or needed gear it can be frustrating and tedious with the numerous recipes and guilds to keep track of. Knowing just the basics, you can begin synth’ing items right away. Where to start and what you can make are going to be the first questions you will ask.

The great thing about crafting is you can craft anywhere and anytime. Especially when you get frustrated with xp'ing. Then there are those of us who can become so addicted to crafting that we forego leveling. ( I have for about 4 months at a time.)

My advice to all you future craftaholics as you embark on a craft: pick one and stick to it. To make headway, don't pick too many crafts at once. Trying to do too many crafts at one time can lead you to spending the next few years getting your crafts up.

Synthesis and Desynthesis


All you need for synthesis of an item is a crystal and the appropriate ingredients. You don’t have to join a guild or get any support to synth. You will always be able to attempt synthesis on any recipe within about 9 levels of your current skill level. The likelihood of synth success is significantly reduced if you attempt recipes beyond three levels of your current craft skill. Recipes beyond around 9 levels will result in a message that the recipe is beyond your level. If you have the wrong ingredients you will get an error message.



Desynthesis is, essentially, tearing things apart. It always involves a lightning crystal, though not all recipes with them are deemed desynthesis. Desynthesis is another way of producing an item, but is frequently more difficult to produce items.

Craft Skill


Craft Skill determines which recipes you can synth. The city you begin in will play a large role in which craft you are going to skill. The monsters/mobs in the immediate areas outside your nation’s city will often drop items/ingredients for crafting related to the guilds in that city. You will want to get involved with guilds once you decide to intentionally begin skilling a craft.. See the main crafting page for basic descriptions of each guild.

Guilds
Each city may have a number of guilds. Each guild usually has a shop with a couple guild merchants and then a guild workroom with the NPCs: Guild Master, Union Representative and Recipe Givers. Recipe Givers sometimes also provide Synthesis Image Support, which can be either free or cost gil. The support which costs is more powerful, but both types of support are temporary and cannot be stacked – meaning you can get both at the same time. Support can boost your ability to successfully synth recipes beyond the range of your current skill level.
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Craftamentals


Becoming a craftaholic starts in learning the basics about elements. Within the Vana'diel there are three Adventurer’s Assistants: Villion, Julio, and Yuhito-Kubhito, who offer further information on the relationships of elements. Each assistant displays the [[Media:Elemental-relationships.jpg|Elemental Relationship Chart]]. They refer to "cyclical ascendancy" or the way these basic forms of energy relate to each other. This relating comes in the form of domination or, more commonly, weakness. Each element is weak to one of the other elements. One assistant says; "They are like six serpents in a circle, each biting the tail of the one before it." That describes six of the eight elements. In the [[Media:Elemental-relationships.jpg|Elemental Relationship Chart]], the two elements not in the ring rest in the middle of it, dividing the ring’s interior: top and bottom. I created what I call [[Media:Elemental_dominance_chart.gif|Elemental Dominance Chart]], putting what I consider to be the corresponding directions based solely on the chart itself in relation to a compass. The commonly accepted belief system is that the directions are dictated according to the Constellation Chart which is displayed by other Adventurer's Asistants: Adaunel, Kaela, and Lago-Charago. This chart shows contellations. Among these constellations are the Avatars, which each is related to an element and rest in a specific area of the heavens. The Adveturer's Assistants even go so far as to include directions.

I want to add that one of the reasons I relate the ascendency chart to crafting is that the Adventurer's Asistant in Bastok, Julio, refers to himself as an "unlicensed alchemist" - and he laughs afterwards. None of the other adventurer's asistants refer to themselves as crafters. The Square Enix designers have refused to just come out and say how any of the elements work in relation to crafting. When asked questions about it they give cryptic answers and encourage people to believe what feels appropriate and suggest that when folks figure it out, - refering to latent effects - they will reveal the truth.

You can craft with success for a long time, never working with this [[Media:Elemental-relationships.jpg|the Elemental Relationship Chart]] nor understanding how the elements dominate one another. As a craftaholic you will want to memorize this ring of ascendancy and understand how it is an all-pervading system that is your ‘everything’ as a crafter in Vana'diel. It will propel your forward much faster knowing that not-knowing.

To remember ascendancy I use this anacronistic phrase: FI - WELWa Prounounced (FIGH-WELLWAH)

 Fire > Ice > Wind > Earth > Lightning > Water 
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Elements of Day and Night
Since I started working with crafts I have been perplexed by the fact the light and dark stand apart from the other elements in the chain of ascendancy chart. As I was reading the thoughts of long time crafters something became clear to me (I am sure some of you will go "Duh!", but it is exciting to me). Light and Dark represent Night and Day. That being said, in terms of patterns where elements are weaker or stronger relating to synthing, - and we are talking that superstition again - Light Cyrstals are stronger during the day and Dark Crystals are stronger at night. Looking at the chain of ascendancy chart, I noted that there are no elements in what I consider the E nor W positions. One theory I read was that the elements on top of th chart represent elements that are stronger during the day while the ones on the bottom are stronger at night. I made a graphic that represents how this theory plays out. Cross-comparing it to the weekly elemental chart I am encouraged becuase the days alternate dark and light dominance.

So, I suggest the following;

In Vana'diel the night starts at 18:00 and the day starts at 06:00. By that schedule it could be that Night elements grows strongest just before the change of day and Day elements grow strongest around mid-day. To specify:


 * Night Elements are dominant from 18:00 - 05:59 are Lightning, Earth, Wind, and Dark
 * -Strongest during first half of dead at night 20:00-23:59
 * -Weakest during dusk 16:00-18:00
 * Day Elements are dominant from 06:00 - 17:59 are Water, Fire, Ice, and Light
 * -Strongest during mid-day 11:00-13:00
 * -Weakest during last half of dead of night 00:00 - 04:00

This is obvioulsy a pattern of subtlty many are not even gonna care to consider. I would hazard to guess you may only see this as a benefit when crafting well above your skill level and further guess this day and night strength is gonna play into you succesfully making an item. Alone this may play little part in crafting, but if you combine it with direction, moon cycle, and mogenhacement you may find some tangible success. Experiment for yourself.
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Weekly Elements
The elements also make their appearance in the weekly calendar

>>>>>>>

A common acronym is FEW WILL Die but having used that I could never remember what W and L it was to come next



Try this instead:  FE-Wa-WI Ling-LiD (FEE-WA-WHY LING-LID)

These acornymistic phrases are supposed to be nonsensical enough that you remember cause they are strange.

The issue I find with these elements is because light and dark are taken out of the ring – in a very yin/yang way – the six elements are distributed oddly in terms of the cardinal directions. Here is where my guide will rub people the wrong way. According to the dominance chart – which is provided in each city – there is no elements for E and W. If you do some searching online and even here in wiki, you will find recommendations for synthing while facing E and W.  As we go along, I will give you my contrary opinion and why. But before we go there this brings us to the next topic:
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Non-Multi-Craft Recipes
As you migh notice people make all sorts of guides for individual crafting. This guide is unique in that it assumes everyone is dabbling in a few crafts. Sometimes guides are misleading because an individual already has multiple crats leveled and the recipes they are encourage being made a multicraft recipes. Which isn't gonna help those of us with only one or two crafts. So I am embarking on supporting us craftaholics by making up lists of single craft recipes so you know exactly what you can and can't do, hopefully before you sink gil into ingredients. I am trying to create the tables in color coding by crystal to give you an idea of what elements the crafts are heavy in. I have completed the first list

Simple Craft Recipes Levels 1 - 10

May this be of benefit and if, by chance you see I left some single craft, non key item recipe out holler so we can get it on the list.
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