Craftaholics Anonymous/Guide/Crafting Details

Synthesis
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
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.

High Quality (HQ)
As crafting skill develops synths may produce High Quality items, referred to as HQ - as opposed to what is sometiems referred to as Normal Quality or NQ. In the upcoming June 08 update there will be some adjustments made to the HQ system. As a beginning crafter HQ does not really come in to play very much. I am bringing it up to help understand how synthing produces different items. HQ comes in three levels. HQ1, HQ2, and HQ3. In most cases when sythning weapons or gear the HQ1 item has +1. Seldom seen in auction house, +2 or +3 items are a rarity, but sometiems seen in medicines. Don't expect to be making a +2 gear or weapons.

In your equipment view HQ items can be distinguished by a color border:


 * NQ has no border.
 * HQ1 has a White border.
 * HQ2 has a Blue border.
 * HQ3 has a Yellow border.

There are HQ items that have another name, rather than +1. Seen most often in food there are also a number of gear items, more commonly seen when making lvl 1 gear, such as Field Tunica Set, that HQs as level 15 Worker Tunica Set. In some food and ammo items, often those that stack, HQ occurs more frequently for the low level crafter and is seen as an increased output. An example of Woodworking would be arrows which NQ at x33 HQ1 at 66 and HQ2 at 99. An example with cooking would be Bug Broth which NQ at x4, HQ1 is Quadav Bug Broth x2, then x4 and x8.

The basic rule of HQ is that the higher above the skill of the recipe that your craft skill is: then the greater your chances of producing HQ. With the afore-mentioned food and ammo that rate is a little more e2ratic. The theory about HQ in other items, seach as gear or weaponry or jewelry, the chance of HQ is less than %50 when your skill is less than 50 levels higher than the recipe.

So, HQ in most regards is going to be something to look forward to and not something you will be doing regularly.