Craftaholics Anonymous/Guide/Advanced Crafting

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Facing: Let's Face It
Facing - the next topic. An elemental chart within the game places the elements in very specific directions. Logically it could be said if you face the direction of a crystal's element then something is bound to happen. The debate that arises is which is the correct elemental direction? Is it in accordance with the Elemental Chart or with the Constellation Chart. Neither uniformly agree about directions for elements. The Elemental Chart specifies dominance, while the Constelation Chart specifies direction.

Confused yet? I Tried searching through game forums for sensible answers but found only further arguements and bickering.

To further complicate elements, dominance, directions and facing, consider the annoying fact that guilds each have a weekday holiday for which they are closed. Is that the element/day the guild is weakest or strongest? I have seen it even suggested that facing is related to the entire guild and its element, rather than the element used in the recipe itself.

If you aren't bleeding out the ears yet, then try to read on.

As you will discover, regardless of which direction you face, synthesis happens and synthesis fails. Facing is theoretically one way of boosting your odds of success. There are a number of ways to theoretically boost your odds and I will go into those later, but to further beat a dead horse:

The basic theory of facing has three parts– 1: face in the direction of the crystal's element for success. 2: face in the direction that the crystal's element dominates for HQ. 3: face in the direction that the crystal's element is dominated by for skill up.

Like I said this is not a crucial thing. What is Notable is that if the recipe you are working on is within three levels of your current craft skill, then success is more likely: it is not gonna matter what direction you face. I feel facing matters when you are trying to level and synth recipes greater than three levels above your craft skill. That is a confidence I developed as I skilled my cooking and woodworking. Plainly, some players disagree. Though, this confidence I have is accompanied in knowing that facing doesn’t guarantee squat, but I feel it makes a difference.

If you use facing, weekday, moon cycle, synth support, and mogenhancement then you can do some serious skill advancement in a short period of time with minimal loss. This is why I call myself a craftaholic – I actually give a flying turd about these subtleties and as I learn more I will share what I learn.

Because I didn’t like the available graphics for the elemental chart: I made one of my own - ya gotta love photoshop.

This Elemental Dominance chart points out the basics you find in the chart from the game, which notably is a pain in the butt because you cannot screen capture it. I will make some other graphics as I go on, but this one lets you see the element, its color approximation and the arrow shows what direction it dominates to.

As you will find out, there is a predominant view that facing and elemental dominance - in relation to crafting - is related to the [[Media:Stellar_map.png|Constellation Chart]] which is a chart related to skillchain, Avatars and being a Summoner. So far, I only see opinions and no certain facts when I search the net on this topic. Even those folks with numerous high level crafting jobs argue about facing and its efficacy. Given that in the game you are introduced to the elemental dominance chart to work with crafting I am going to leave the above and below  personal opinion  as it is until I can find out how the Constellation chart is superior to the elemental dominance chart for crafting.

Sadly, as I hear it, Square Enix and it's developers appear to not want to give a definitive answer about facing or crafting or elemental direction. Instead they encourage facing and believing as one will. Not very helpful.

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Skill-Up: Accelerated Crafting
For the beginning crafter it is important to know that you can synth recipes within about three levels of your current craft skill. Your success rate is gonna be real high. As you try recipes beyond three levels your fail rate increases significantly. Skilling up your craft depends on a number of factors. You will skill up more frequently with recipes beyond 3 levels of your craft skill, which means you are gonna fail more often. So the increased skill-up potential is countered with increased loss. You can address your loss by using furniture. The right furniture will give you mogenhancement for that particular element. That mogenhacement means you will lose your ingredients less often when you fail. To increase your success you can get synth support from a guild member. Your ability to skill stays the same while your success rate increases. Advanced support – the support that costs -gives you +3 and plain support – the supports that is free - gives you +1.
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Guarenteed Gil: NPC Sales
Everyone who crafts or farms dreams of making the big sale on AH. This venture could itself been seen as a game within the game. Determining the items and prices, catching the market as demand increases and supply goes down. Without crafting this can be a challenge. With crafting it can be your own personal hell. Especially starting out when you a relegated to making low level products that sell on AH for barely what it cost you to make them. At some point you have to suck it up and take the loss in order to level your crat skill. Everyone once in a awhile in each craft you will find an item that you can make where you can eaither buy the ingredients super cheap, there is some ridiculously generous mob drop rate or an NPC sells them affordably. Many of these type of recipes produces a large number: x4 x6 x8 x12 x33 ... and so on. The best case scenario is some npc will buy it from you and you will make a profit. Selling to a NPC has the wonderful benifit that there is now waiting for something to sell. Instant pay back. I hope, in the consequent pages to this guide point to some of the more obvious items that can be made affordably and sold at a profit. One I might mention would be Bug Broth. This item is my gil salvation. It can turn 1000 gil into 3000 gil, if all work in my favor - namely those favors begin that I farmed out the water crystals, AH sells stacks of shell bug for 1k or less (prefering 400gil) and the lugworm comes from some npc at about 14g a piece. Depending on your fame this sale price can be around 105 for a bug broth. The Math: shellbug(41gil) + Lugworm(14gil) + Water Crystal(free) = 4 bug broth  so each costs approximately 13.75 gil each - which in turn sells to NPC for 105 gil. No algebra needed to see that is one heck of a profit. Even if you pay for water crystals you are making money. This recipe and others like are guarenteed gil, albeit they do require the time of getting ingredients and making them and selling them. I have a mule in sandy that I usually send gil to and buy the shell bugs there. My cook taru in windy stays in waters, picking up deliveries and heading over to the general merchant npc in waters that sells lugworm. I can stand in the shop making bug broth for hours. Turning gil into larger and larger piles. It isn't gratification like selling a big item on AH, but it is guarenteed income so you can buy other ingredients to feed your craftaholicism.

I can't do what? Guilding restrictions
Though it may be a far way off – I
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