Personnage

Hiho hello,

It's been some time since I wrote one of these. I've been really busy irl and sadly had to take a large break right after 6.05 launched. The last lalablog I wrote was ill-timed and I ended up deleting it since the new crafting gear made it obsolete, and I couldn't play to test them :(

But I'm free! wahaha. Although locked into casual playtime now, I still want to approach crafting and such from minmax pov as it's what I really enjoy. So today I thought I would cover a few topics:
(1) Efficiency
(2) Gear setup & crafting stats
(3) Macro development

(1) Efficient crafting/gathering - do both! TGL on cd!
I want to play efficiently, but also not be too concerned about it.
I'd like to approach this from a broader pov than strictly "what is the best $/time in a vacuum" because being highly efficient doesn't hold up if it causes you to burn out and play less or not look forwards to playing. I'd just like to chat about multitasking & balance generally, disregarding specific markets as I can't possibly account for all factors.

In previous patches, the barrier to crafting was much higher and $/hr much higher, but now with easy catch-up mechanisms, simplified master crafting, and materia being much more prevalent (both collectables and lack of destructing gear) I feel like I should temper long-term expectations for $/hr from purely crafting. There's also been a large shift from profit favoring DoH, rebalancing towards DoL as a result, with the unfortunate addition of ppl using auto-undercut market bots and just general low-barrier competition.

So I've decided that (since I enjoy gathering) I'll try to gather most of my mats to reduce market reliance and risk, but if they're super cheap, I'll buy them off the marketboard. I've pointed my retainers at fate items I use regularly so I don't have to be locked into buying them (or spending time inefficiently grinding them). I prefer bulk crafting high-volume items since I don't have to undercut as frequently, and often I'll just leave them there if I get undercut by 1 or 2 ppl because it sells fast enough that it's not a big concern, and I don't want to always be babysitting the retainer (-enjoyment/profit).

I've always advocated for factoring in the crystal cost to the craft while gauging viability, but the new crystal buffs are really something. Even though the subcrafts like Perilla Oil and Palm Sugar burn an insane amount of them, the 3-min buff "The Giving Land" is really nice. Whether you sell the crystals directly, or use them to fuel bulk spiritbonding / collectable crafts, there's really good value in keeping the the 3-min buff on cd while gathering and it's so bountiful that given any multi-hour gathering session you'll find crystals capped out quite easily. Accounting for the crystal cost is still good practice but, I think, less important overall. Atm I've near-capped around 40k crystals of each type in my 2 retainers, invent, and fc chest, while using them regularly.

2 main gathering patterns (excluding collectables):
"I want crystals" -> 12's Bounty + Giving Land -> Solid Reason / WttW -> spend remainder gp on Bountiful Yield II for regular mats (e.g. Palm Syrup) -> do stuff
"I want both" -> 12 + GL -> spend remaining on BYII mat spam -> do stuff

Naldthal's Tidings is largely a trap outside of legendary nodes, given sufficient stats. BYII on lower level nodes gives +3/100gp, and Tidings gives +1 on hq (another +1 regardless), so the difference is +4/200gp for a regular 4-node, or +5 if +1 node. But in order to guarantee 5x hq on a +1 node (that lacks 100% hq conditions) additional gp is req'd so it loses viability. On the higher lvl nodes, BYII may grant (as stat req's raise) +2/100gp, so the break even point is lower at 4-nodes, saving a bit of time if using Tidings on a 100% 4-node. I think it's easier to just brainlessly mash BYII as gp permits.

Given a rotation between 3 sets of nodes, is it better to wait for the 5-node set to pop crystal buffs or just pop it immediately on a 4-node to start the cd again?

1 additional whack is (on average) about 19 crystals (1+3+15). A 4-node is ~76 crystals average base, for 350gp. This can also be seen as "180s cd = (15 * #whacks) additional crystals", so 60 or 75 bonus from TGL itself. 180/60 = 3s a crystal, so if the 5-node can be reached in under 45s, it's ok. Given that you'll have leftover gp (cordials should always be on cd) this begs the question, "Should I be spamming 12B outside of TGL?" or "Should I be using Solid Reason vs spamming more 12B?". Solid reason is +1 whack with 50% chance of another for 300gp, so equivalent to 200gp for 19 crystals (~10.5gp/xt). 12's Bounty is 12xt/150gp base, so 12.5gp/xt on a 4-node, 10gp/xt on a 5-node, etc. Given that you're more likely to delay buffs until reaching the 5-node, it's unlikely, tho sometimes possible that you'll encounter another +node afterwards. It'll be more efficient than a 4-node but overall I think, given the market price of crystals vs materials, it's still just better to throw the gp at BYII and grab some mats with it. Crystal gathering without TGL pales, so I prefer the bursty gp-dump playstyle which lets me just swap off to something else while the cd ticks.

So what's "do stuff"? If I want mats, that's continuing to fly in circles whacking nodes without gp. It'll build up over time and I watch youtube/netflix/etc PiP in the corner so I don't get bored. But gp-less gathering is quite slow so I like doing other stuff while I wait for the gp to come back. Whether it's tabbing out to chat with friends, write dumb posts, or scroll the internet for a bit, it's still comfy time where it doesn't really feel like I'm burning the entire day on the game. Otoh, if I wanna be productive, there's also crafting. It's about 60 quicksynths or 5-7 crafts (with sb buffs up) ish until my gp refills, so the time gets used well. If I'm crafting anything in bulk I feel like the time is better spent by crafting in between nodes, then using free/return teleports to mitigate the transport cost entirely. As my collectable macro is ~28s and Return cd is 15m, that means ~33 empty inv slots req'd to not run out of space before the cd is up, but in reality it's a bit lower because I'm gathering too and that burns some cd time.

Rather than trying to quantify something in absolute terms, I think it's better to compare methods relatively. As travel time can be factored into the cooldown, a gathering-focus'd rotation (always popping TGL on 5-node) then offers an avg of 19*6.5 crystals/ 3min at a cost of 650 gp, or ~123 crystals or ~2460/hr. A craft-focused rotation (popping buffs on the next node regardless to minmize time spent gathering) would yield 19*5.5 +19/6+ 4 or ~112/3m or 2233/hr at a maximum. In practice, I get sloppy with the cooldowns so it's a bit lower. There's also the occasional +yield buff that procs for shards/crystals.

The takeaway is that this is roughly 2k crystals/hr lazy generation just by crafting between nodes, rather than in town.

(2) Gear Setup & crafting stats (ctrl-focused)
I still really enjoy trying to find breakpoints where non-standard gear setups work, such as using food like Giant Haddock Dip or Calamari Ripieni, but in the current crafting meta, control really is quite strong and negates the need for HQ mats in many cases. So while non-standard setups exist, it's just hard to advocate for them even in niche cases where it may be useful as the cost of remelding whole pieces is purely a hobbyist thing. That said, even control and cp can be considered extra if it doesn't specifically enable an additional skill use or pass a breakpoint (such as going from 1 hq mat to 0).

I'm currently using: https://ffxiv.ariyala.com/1FTWJ
I kept my old set: https://ffxiv.ariyala.com/1FJDS
around to do collectables with (with new mh/ohs) since the ilvl gap will kill most spiritbond gain if using Pactmaker armors.

I melded per: "cap ctrl where possible", "slot in major CP", "comp if it fits".
One major pt to mention is not keeping all your materia on your character when using the advanced melding because of the potential fail states "destroy half the stack" and "destroy the full stack", so I'll take out 30-60 at a time for IXs, and 20-30 for Xs and keep the rest safe in my choco bag.

For gathering I'm just using mh/oh pactmaker, and the rest old gear for sb.
I've made my new set, and had planned to use: https://ffxiv.ariyala.com/1FU6U which hits gathering & pcp bps at the cost of 1 gp meld, but I've been holding off on actually melding it as I don't really do collectable gathering outside of spearfishing (so I don't need the perception) and I'd rather just wait & see I think.

Depending on how rushed I am to meld, I'll sometimes hold off on doing crafting gear as well until I can figure out the rotations I want to aim for.
I had originally melded my old set with the purpose of catering to Ishgard G4 macros, where the 3x1cp melds aren't as efficient but enabled the G4 rotation I had at the time. When gearing it inevitably means figuring out a base set, then popping over to the crafting simulator to see what adjustments are needed, and what melds allow for the most efficiency gains over multiple rotations. The base set is certainly good enough since many things can be crafted on min-req gear, but this is for the purpose of minmaxing either speed or quality (both if possible) over 1000s of crafts where it'll make a difference.

continued