[Avarghaladion]

Introduction

When you think of crafting, try to think of this:



No not Bob Barker... despite how much of a pimp he is.... Plinko!!



You're the nervous looking Asian dude, the round disc thingy (its really a Plinko chip) is your synth, and the board itself with its annoying little prongs is the random environment. You get to drop that synth wherever you want to and the environment does the rest. If that sounds too easy its because it is. This is just a gross oversimplification of the factors at play.

To get a better grasp of how the system works, imagine that instead of the same, flat, boring Plinko board, you're at the center of a Plinko board that consists of several wheels of different sizes, rotating around you at varying speeds. I like to think of it as a sort of Indiana Jones style death trap thingy. In this analogy, you, the crafter, are Indy. You can either win:



or you can lose...



Lose too often and you'll end up like this, waiting for your one-handed, incestuous space-wizard pal to save you from an obese slug-man after you've been imprisoned in frozen carbonite^TM(ie. You gonna be broke sucka):


(Yes... like Bob Barker... Harrison Ford is also a pimp.)

The board can bounce your chip into a sexy sexy +1 bin.... or it can slide it down into the nasty bin o' failure. Essentially, you still get to decide how you want to synth, but you can't as easily predict the outcome. Or can you? Let's start at the beginning.

The Elements

Contrary to popular belief, every crystal (with the exception of Dark crystals) have -two- (not one) HQ elements.


Yarly Cookie Monster... Yarly...

If you didn't know this though, don't beat yourself up about it. You'd have to have searched practically every crafting related post from every FF site to have found this (and probably know a little Japanese). Here's how it works. Each crystal is "weak" to the element that the crystal's element is weak to, and to the element of the preceding day of the week. Therefore:

(FEW WILL D)IE

Fire's HQ elements are Water and Darkness
Earth's HQ elements are Wind and Fire
Water's HQ elements are Lightning and Earth
Wind's HQ elements are Ice and Water
Ice's HQ elements are Fire and Wind
Lightning's HQ elements are Earth and Ice
Light's HQ elements are Darkness and Lightning
Darkness (like the cheese) stands alone, with only one HQ element (Light of course).

In addition to this there are, of course, other factors such as the probability to obtain skill ups, the probability to achieve a successful synth, the probability to crit fail, etc. All of these factors are effected by the elements. Darkness, for example, generates a high probability of losing materials on a failed synth. A crystal's own element tends to promote a successful synth. The crystal's opposing element tends to result in skill ups. Et. Essentailly, every element acts upon every other element in one of these categories to a different degree. The beauty of the two HQ elements is that they are equally effective at generating HQ synths. I'll explain why further on.

Now, before you go off half-cocked and try to test this and post stuff like "omgz0rz I tried to craft on Firesday with an Earth crystal and I had the same HQ rate u r liar l o l" don't bother yet, because you don't have enough information. This is just the first part of the puzzle that's needed to understand the rest.

Also, right now most of you probably don't realize that its not only possible to craft with more than one element acting on your crystal, but its actually -impossible- to craft WITHOUT multiple elements acting on your crystal. Read on to understand why (and because the knowledge of the elements alone is useless).

The Moon, Time, and the Seasons



The crafting system's design is diabolical in that, despite its inherent simplicity, its extremely difficult for different crafters to compare different results. This is because different synths and different crystals yielf entirely different results based on the environment. This in turn leads to people swearing that "omg full moon is the tits for HQ baby gotta try full moon" while other people are then like "no fuckin way dude I just blew all my syntyh mats and got all of two things... Jack and shit." Flame wars ensue, no one learns everything and even the most basic information gets garbled. Speaking of which

ITS 1/16 GODDAMNIT! NOT 1/10... 1 OUT OF 16 FOR A TIER 1 SYNTH! JEEEEBUS! SRSLY! WTF! YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS. @_@

Sorry... had to get that outta my system. Ok. In order to understand the pertinence of the two HQ elements for crystal. You must also understand that every moon phase has a distinct element This is why a lot of people have a great deal of difficulty when it comes to crafting. Most people realize pretty early on though that the hype about full moon/new moon etc i bullshit and that there's more at play.


Yeah that generally sums up most people's crafting experiences.

Have you ever noticed that the Vana d'Iel week lasts 8 days but the moon phases last 7 or 14 days? If you don't believe me you can use a good online FFXI timer (but be careful because some of them have the phases a little off, either as an error or so as to disguise the week:moon connection). I recommend this one: lokyst's FFXI Crafting Timer.

You may now ask what relevance this has. Another thing that most people don't realize is that the Japanese moon phases progression is slightly different. The moon phases have different names and they last for different periods. In the Japanese system, every moon phase last 7 days. When I first learned the relevance of the moon phases, I honestly felt a little cheated by this because its actually a lot easier to understand the elements of the moon phases if you already know that each phase is only 7 days. What does this mean though?

Imagine now that the 14 day moon phases (Waxing/Waning Gibbous/Crescent) are in actuality consisting of two distinct elemental periods of seven game days each. From now on, don't think of the moon phase by name without recognizing that it has an element. Also, don't pretend that each phase has a distinct element, the element changes slowly over time, based upon the days of the week. How? I'll explain.

Its rather evil because the hint is built right into the system. If the week lasts eight days, and the elemental moon phase lasts seven days, what can we infer? The answer is that one of the elements is excluded from the moon phase. Now, recall from earlier that I mentioned that it is indeed IMPOSSIBLE to synth with only one element acting on your crystal? That's because the moon's element is the same as the element of the day that is excluded from the 7day elemental moon phase.

Just a friendly heads up, this stuff is gonna be pretty hard to visualize so I highly recommend making a quick spreadsheet to keep track of this data. Once you understand the system, its very easy to eyeball it off of the FFXI timer but while learning and analyzing the factors at play a program like Excel is your best friend in the war against mmo poverty. Here's a quick example I whipped up in 5 minutes to illustrate how the days effect the moon:


You can see with the help of the lines I drew that each 7 day phase is "bracketed" by a specific day. That is the day that it shares an element with. Also, please take not that when it comes to the moon phases, the elemental cycle is reveresed: Dark -> Light -> Thunder -> Ice -> Wind -> Water -> Earth Fire. This factor helps contribute to a "random" appearance.

I recommend you generate a spreadsheet that encompasses two complete moon cycles. This is known as a Lunar Month. You will observe that every lunar month, the cycle repeats itself (much like the days of the week repeat themselves). Essentially, during the Lunar Month, each elemental phase will alternate between two elements. Have you ever had a kick-ass synth session during one moon phase than an asstastic one on the same moon phase at a later time? This is the likely culprit.

Time of day and the Vana d'Iel season also contribute to your HQ rate, but I'm not going to say how because these can be determined by expanding the day:moon model. Essentially, like I said before, there are different wheels going in different directions at different speeds and you want to line up the HQ factors for your crystal.

Day is easy enough to analyze because it happens every single hour and you can probably guess the impact that the different times of day have if you've spent ANY time crafting at all. Seasons I'll give you a little hint. There are 4 seasons (duh) and each season impacts different elements in different ways. What does this mean? It means that the overall crafting cycle takes A HELLA LONG TIME to run one complete cycle. Do in game years factor in? Possibly but you'll have to analyze the connections and determine this yourself. I estimate that the overall crafting system has undergone relatively few complete cycles since the servers first went online.

How to Apply This Knowledge

Are you serious? I just explained it all in detail >.> Ughhh fine.

Ok so say you wanna HQ an earth crystal synth. Basically you wanna synth -at the right times of the day- during Windsday/Firemoon, Firesday/Windmoon, etc. Just takes a little practice and study to find the right times. That's basically it. Knowing about the moon element is pretty much the biggest step you can take in understanding the system.

Other Random Tidbits|

i) Just stop whining and face the stupid HQ direction. Like... srsly... wtf.... it takes literally less than half a second to turn your dumb toon to the bloody direction. Even if you though it didn't do anything does it hurt? No. Just do it. After seeing the week/moon connection you should now understand that practically -everything- factors in in some degree.

ii) Critical failure is a good thing. Now you're saying "WTF ARE YOU SMOKING?!" Well several years ago SE felt that too many people were beginnng to understand the crafting system. To remedy this, they modified the system such that as your HQ potential increases, so too does you potential for critical failure. What does this mean? 1) It means that it is 100% impossible to -guarantee- HQ no matter how well you understand the system. 2) If you get a critical failure, it probably means that you just hit a HQ window so synth again immediately and continue to synth until you stop breaking or you stop HQing (the HQ windows tend to bundle up next to each other, especially as the synth difficulty decreases).

iii) Use elemental resistance. In addition to the update I just mentioned regarding critical failure, SE made it possible for us crafters to protect ourselves against such failures. By stacking your resistance to the element that the crystal you are using is weak to, you help to protect against material loss in the event of a failed synth. Ie. if you are using an Earth crystal, use Baraera and wind resist gear. This does NOT guarantee you won't lose mats, it just increases your odds off saving materials in the event of a critical failure. There are different tiers of resistance you must reach in order to protect against different Crit Fails (ie. CF1, CF2, CF3 just like HQ1, HQ2, HQ3). I can't remember them because my toon's never not been able to reach the highest tier but I think it's sumthing like 30 -> 50 -> 70. Iunno I forget but the point is, protect yourself.

iv) The way you load materials into your crystal is important when it comes to what you lose on a break

v) When studying the crafting system, use synths that have multi-tiered HQs. HQing at a higher tier is an indication that you just hit a HQ window time slot that would yield an HQ for a higher lvl synth.

Questions to Ask Yourself and Where You Should Go From Here

i) Which elements respond to which seasons?
ii) What is the largest wheel on the Plinko board? Season? Year? How do they interact with the day/moon?
iii) What is the smallest tier on the Plinko board? In game minute? Every 10 minutes? Hour? How do they interact with the day?
iv) What effect does the time of day (dawn, dusk, etc.) have?
v) Why are there so many spelling errors in this? Did Avar even proof read it? A: No/Barely.
vi) Where are all the pictures? I was promised pictures and I haven't seen one for a while.


That's where the pictures have gone.... that's where... -.-

Anywho, the next steps to take in order to make use of this information are to create a pretty spreadsheet, make some models, theorize, hypothesize, figure out which models make the most sense, then test the models. It doesn't take long to figure the rest out. Once you do though, its much MUCH easier to get the synths you want. Keep in mind when studying the models that you should do bulk synths in order to locate HQ hotspots. This is true even once you have a pretty good idea where the hotspots are. Why? Because the tiers for HQ are as follows: 1/2, 1/4, 1/16, 1/64. This doesn't mean that every 16th window will yield a T1 HQ.

Allow me to illustrate. Say for example that there were 1440 different windows in a game day. This doesn't mean that the HQ windows within that spread would be evenly spaced. HQ windows clump together. Once you know where the hotspots are, you can easily achieve extremely high HQ rates. I'm talking 14/16 on T1 synths and I'm not exaggerating. I'm talkin reaaaalllly good T0 synth rates... For example:


1/4


1/6

Doing the mental work it takes to master the system pays off.

Why the HELL Would I Tell You All This?!

i) The game's in its twilight. Its got a lot of life left in it and I'll be playing it for a long time yet but I feel the economy has settled down a hell of a lot.
ii) Synergy. There are more ways to skin a cat now and its easier than ever to make money.
iii) I've got everything I want/need with gil to spare.
iv) I haven't given you all the answers, only the tools you need to learn the answers for yourselves and the very important hints/knowledge that is required to find them.
v) I really love crafting and its always made me sad that I've only ever had like... iunno... 2 or 3 people I could share crafting information with. I like the idea of more people being better at crafting. lol also this is the first time the idea of me sharing our knowledge was ok with my very good crafting friend partner dude.
vi) This takes a lot of work and requires dedication. Half the time I prefer sticking to lower level synths because they're good profit if you correctly analyze the economy and they don't require me to wake up at 3am so I can synth during the stupid HQ windows. Despite what you may think, this is the non-lazy way of synthing because it entails significant mental exercise.
vii) Bob Barker is a pimp.

There's obviously a lot of information here so if I realize I forgot anything I'll edit. Feel free to ask questions or to PM me. I understand that this can be a little confusing for some people as I've taught a few people about it before, just never en masse like this.

GL HF



Edit: Basic tips: Use /blockaid when you synth. Don't synth on the ferry/airship.

This post has been edited by Avarghaladion: 31 August 2010 - 12:28 PM

[foxtrot]

This is a really great post; along with all the data I can tell you put a lot time into this and the post itself- it was funny & informative. I, and I'm sure many others appreciate it. Really interesting about the moon phase + element stuff.

I was curious if you ever came across anything with desynthesis - would you say it follows a similar trend?

[pathwriter]

If this is all accurate, it makes me want to find the developer responsible and toss him into the ocean with a 6-ton abacus tied around his neck.

[Avarghaladion]

 foxtrot, on 31 August 2010 - 10:46 PM, said:

This is a really great post; along with all the data I can tell you put a lot time into this and the post itself- it was funny & informative. I, and I'm sure many others appreciate it. Really interesting about the moon phase + element stuff.

I was curious if you ever came across anything with desynthesis - would you say it follows a similar trend?

Yeah when I first learned about the moon element and saw how it created a reverse elemental cycle that fit perfectly with the in game it was kinda a /headdesk moment cuz its so simple yet so evil. Really the majority of the work went into brainstorming a crafting model that made sense (ie. I looked at the delay between synths and tried to assume that the smallest window size would be comparable or slightly smaller to randomize it by making people miss windows if they just spam, etc.) in the end, I generated a few Excel spreadsheets (one for each connection of wheels in the system). Imo the seasons or w/e the largest tier wheel is is the most annoying simply because the time it takes for it to come around makes it harder to test. Knowing the day/moon alone though tends to yield consistently high HQ rates.

I've never been huge into desynthesis so I didn't study it much but if memory serves there are elements that promote successful desynthesis like there are ones that promote HQ. I'll try to find the info for you. I just got back from a very long break so I'll have to re-hunt down the information. I think the combination is either lightning/ice or lightning/water but I never really desynthed enough or desynthed anything large enough to care about waiting for the moon to line up perfectly.

I can tell you though, which is obvious anyways, that desynthesis has always been representative of the HQ/CF relationship in that desynths have a greatly increased potentially for HQ combined with a high risk of losing the material. Applying the appropriate resistance stuff seemed to help save mats a fair bit but since resistance only increases your chance to maybe save materials its hard to say. It definitely follows a similar trend but, like synthing on Darksday, it harder to study because of the high CF rate. Since it already has such a high HQ rate I would suggest stacking elements that would combine to yield a successful synth (so Lightning, Light, Water imo).

Edit: I also found when studying the model that the hq windows tended to slowly rotate over a long period of time, which was annoying when it would leave what should have been prime HQ slot.

Another note, the Weaver's Signboard and associated furnishings augment your resistance, which is partially why most people think they suck (ie. because the Moglification alone isn't enough to protect you without further protecting your synth with the right resists).

 pathwriter, on 31 August 2010 - 11:15 PM, said:

If this is all accurate, it makes me want to find the developer responsible and toss him into the ocean with a 6-ton abacus tied around his neck.

It is pretty frustrating lol what annoyed me is how our moon phases are different so its harder to see the connection. Once I created what I thought to be an accurate model of the crafting system with its various windows I tested with Rasetsu Tekkos (since their a T1 synth with 2 T1 subcraft requirements). This wsa before I fully comprehended the grouping of HQ windows so I did 4 synths at very specific times and went 4/4 HQ. Later I realised that I could be missing a lot of windows clumped around the ones I was hitting and spammed Prism Capes with -extreme- success. Be warned though that even though stacking the right elements, the season as well as other factors can still pwn you (HQ potential will be overridden with successful synth potential or CF potential).

I really enjoyed studying the crafting system and there's been nothing so rewarding as signing my own stuff with such a high success rate. My only beef with it is that its a little hardcore cuz not everyone can get up at 3am for 50min to test synths, or to hit the perfect window before it goes by. I guess its sorta like how kings can either be in JP time or NA time but I've always hated kings, so I found this annoying and a slap in the face to people who can't play a ton.

This post has been edited by Avarghaladion: 01 September 2010 - 03:02 PM

[Kussese]

I understand why you left blanks for us to fill in, but you mentioned that seasons have an impact. Can you tell us what constitutes a Vanadiel season? Are the set up to change at the beginning of a month (December 1, March 1, ect) or do the change on Earth's system of equinoxes and solstices (the 20-23 of those months)?

Also, you mentioned HQ tier rates in your post: 1/2, 1/4, 1/16, 1/64. Under what conditions are those rates accurate, since they're allegedly constantly changing? Are they an average of all times, or the average taken from the optimal day/moon to synth on?

Aaaand one more thing. For the time that you synth (clock time) is it the time that the synth ends or the time that the synth starts that counts?

I'd like to add that if this is true (and I can't imagine that you'd put this much work into telling us bullshit), it's really impressive that you figured it out. Kinda makes you wonder if something like this is tied to drop rates as well.

This post has been edited by Kussese: 05 September 2010 - 07:34 PM

[Avarghaladion]

 Kussese, on 05 September 2010 - 07:16 PM, said:

I understand why you left blanks for us to fill in, but you mentioned that seasons have an impact. Can you tell us what constitutes a Vanadiel season? Are the set up to change at the beginning of a month (December 1, March 1, ect) or do the change on Earth's system of equinoxes and solstices (the 20-23 of those months)?

Here's an exert from the FFXIclopedia topic "Time" which I think is good. Really the whole topic is worth looking at and it helped me figure some stuff out.

"Seasons

Vana'diel also experiences the four seasons which also follow exact calculations. While the seasons go by relatively without notice, they are part of the conditions and mechanics for some of the game's events; one of the most notable is the Noble Mold Notorious Monster in The Sanctuary of Zi'Tah. You'll also find it much easier to experience the weather you may need for whatever circumstance if you try to plan your event during a specific season.

Each of the seasons is three months long, similar to Earth seasons. The Winter season consists of the first three Vana'diel months followed by Spring, Summer, and Autumn. Each season takes exactly 3 Earth Days 14 Earth hours and 24 Earth minutes to run its course and is typically followed by specific weather patterns, especially in certain areas. You'll notice more heat spells during the Summer while in the desert and you'll notice more rain and thunderstorms in the tropical areas during the Spring.

It is worth noting that Vana'diel's sun rises and sets nearly exactly in the eastward and westward directions, with very little deflection to the north or south (unlike most of Earth); while this may not be intentional, it implies that Vana'diel's tilt on its axis is significantly less than that of Earth, though still large enough to create seasons. If it is indeed an intentional effect, it provides a neat explanation for why the variation between seasons in Vana'diel seems slight by Earth standards."

 Kussese, on 05 September 2010 - 07:16 PM, said:

Also, you mentioned HQ tier rates in your post: 1/2, 1/4, 1/16, 1/64. Under what conditions are those rates accurate, since they're allegedly constantly changing? Are they an average of all times, or the average taken from the optimal day/moon to synth on?

I'd like to say this is common knowledge but most people believe that T1 is 1/10 and T0 is 1/100. This is basically an average of all times (if you were to only synth at the really optimal times your HQ rate would be 90%+ as previously discussed. Basically though, it means that 1/16 of the crafting windows will yield a T1 HQ, 1/64 will yield a T0 HQ, etc. However, its VERY important to note that these are not evenly spaced, which is why understanding the system enables us to achieve such high HQ rates at given times and such abysmal rates at other times.

Furthermore, it bears noting that 2, 4, 16, and 64 are all factors/multiples of 8, and there are 8 elements which comprise the crafting windows for each of the wheels/cogs in the "Plinko system."

 Kussese, on 05 September 2010 - 07:16 PM, said:

Aaaand one more thing. For the time that you synth (clock time) is it the time that the synth ends or the time that the synth starts that counts?

I am of the opinion that the time you begin the synth is what's important (not the time you load the crystal, but the time you hit the ok button and start crafting animation). Its been a while since I've synthed since I've been ridiculously busy with relic magian trials but I believe it takes 12 in game minutes between consecutive synths. It would be wise to consider this duration as either comparable to the duration of the smallest HQ windows, or just slightly larger so as to randomize the system but causing blind synthers to miss a window here and there even if they since as fast as possible.

 Kussese, on 05 September 2010 - 07:16 PM, said:

I'd like to add that if this is true (and I can't imagine that you'd put this much work into telling us bullshit), it's really impressive that you figured it out. Kinda makes you wonder if something like this is tied to drop rates as well.

Thanks for the compliment. It was really fun working on it. Personally, I do believe this system has an impact on many factors in the game, even skill up rates and drop rates. While I do prefer the scientific/methodical approach to solving this sort of thing, there are some superstitions I have because of other game elements, like the paintbrush of souls for example. I don't consider this sort of thing to be scientific enough to share as fact but its interesting to work with. The best thing about learning about crafting has been recognizing the immense depth to the game's mechanics.

I forgot to mention earlier that not only were my results with my model duplicated, they were replicated to a comparable degree by a fellow crafter and good friend who would craft at the same times under comparable conditions.

[Avarghaladion]

In partially answering one of the questions I posed for you, time of day is partially dependent on the type of crystal (ie. some crystals respond poorly during daytime hours but well at night). Because of this I like to consider day/night as being stricly light/dark affiliated (while the reality may be more complex, this serves our purposes in that its a close enough approximation to allow for 100% HQ if you get the rest of the elements aligned properly.

With regards to specific times of day, this is affected by the crystal as well (due to the nature of the smaller elemental wheels with shorter duration elemental windows and faster cycles). Example: Without looking at my spreadsheets I recall that 00:00, 00:30, mebbe 18:30 (can't remember exactly without spreadsheet but its about that) can yield perfect HQ rate under the appropriate conditions for an earth crystal). Please note that my use of the term "perfect" is facetious in that it is, in actuality, a 100% chance of either HQ or crit fail (with the actual chance of crit fail varying with the elemental contributions of the various components of the different wheels' windows in the system). Basically though these smallest windows (eg. the ones I just mentioned at 00:00, 00:30, etc) represent the tiny fire/wind windows. If all of the other factors are aligned, you will still achieve very good HQ results around these time (ie. so if you were to say, spam synths from 0:00 to 0:50 they would all have good shot of HQ). I'm sure there are effective means of achieving high daytime HQ rates with certain crystals as well but I found them much less intuitive so my work stuck on mastering the night synths (just made more sense to me).

[XyonBlade]

Amazing information! I wonder... you've pointed out element combo's that help with HQ, are skillups effected by different element combo's or do you think its more based on the time slot used? I don't suppose you've tried fishing have you? Think that fishing might be effected somehow? haha. so many things left unanswered, I wish SE would give a tell all about this stuff all ready!

[draugo]

Um have you considered crafting in the zones that the Prime avatars crystals are located? Always double weather there. I wonder if having a double weather effect would be more beneficial than crafting in MH with synth support?

[Avarghaladion]

Lemme know if my answers aren't detailed enuf I'm postin super quick since life's busy right now.

 XyonBlade, on 08 December 2010 - 07:26 PM, said:

Amazing information! I wonder... you've pointed out element combo's that help with HQ, are skillups effected by different element combo's or do you think its more based on the time slot used? I don't suppose you've tried fishing have you? Think that fishing might be effected somehow? haha. so many things left unanswered, I wish SE would give a tell all about this stuff all ready!

Firstly, in game time slot (time of day, week, month, season, possibly year) all determine what elements are in present at a given time. My original post was aimed primarily at helping people HQ but yes, different element combos have different effects on different crystals. You can optimize HQ rate, success rate, skill up rate, and even desynthesis. Max success should always be the light or whatever element your crystal is (eg. for a ice crystal max success would be from ice and light, even though ice is technically dark oriented).

If I remember correctly, skill ups are optimized with light and whatever element is opposite to your crystal's element. (I'll try to look more into that later). My personally philosophy regarding skillups though was always that time = money so I pretty much just spammed skill ups w/e. If I could hit a windsday, sweet. If not.. oh well. The only time I intentionally waited for a specific time to skill up was 99-100 spamming Blessed Briaults, due to the insane gil loss.

I've never been big on fighing myself but its my personal opinion that time and the elements directly affects almost all game mechanics. If a fisher has any anecdotal information in this regard I'd be interested but I've personally seen mob behaviour and drop rates affected by it. The problem is that this stuff is hard to track in real time. Like... you have to pretty much use your excel sheet to see when the next awesome time is to do what you want to do and wait for that time, so it isn't practical for many things in game outside of trying to HQ the shit outta some intense T0 or T1 synths. It gives you a pretty big moneymaking/epeen advantage but it doesn't break the game (unless maybe you could keep track of it all in real time in your head I guess).

 draugo, on 10 December 2010 - 02:30 PM, said:

Um have you considered crafting in the zones that the Prime avatars crystals are located? Always double weather there. I wonder if having a double weather effect would be more beneficial than crafting in MH with synth support?

I'm not sure if I mentioned it before or not but all weather does is give you hidden resistance (for crafting at least) to w/e element weather is in affect. I believe its 15 points per weather (so crafting in Cloister of Gales would give you a hidden +30 to your existing wind resist). This is nice because a) it means that weather won't ever mess your synths up or make them break where they wouldn't have broken before Since it doesn't help HQ or success rates you don't have to wait for hours in order to get the right weather c) +30 to your resist isn't that helpful, as its pretty easy to reach maximum crafting resistance with only basic gear and maybe a barspell (effectively saving us the super annoying trip to the protocrystals every time we wanna craft).

Hope all that was helpful. Once things get a little less busy I'll prolly post my original successful elemental/time spreadsheet.

This post has been edited by Avarghaladion: 14 December 2010 - 08:19 PM

[Avarghaladion]

Wow I can't believe there haven't been any crafting posts whatsoever in the time since I've been gone @_@

I've decided I don't want to remake my original spreadsheets (laaaaazy) so I'll just say that everything you need is definitely hear. If anyone cares the gameday/moonphase correlation spreadsheet I have in the OP is 100% accurate and it was the foundation I used to make the original spreadsheet. If you want to reconstruct it just logic out the size of each seasonal factor and add a wheel to the right of the moon phase. Every season lasts 3 months and benefits 2 elements. The times and elements can be found fairly easily and I remember that the elemental associations for each season tend to make sense in a real-world way. This is your best friend also when building your spreadsheet: http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Time

That's pretty much all you need really. I suspect that there's a wheel bigger than season (probably year like I said earlier) but I don't believe that knowledge holds nearly as much value as the rest and its far more of a pain in the ass to analyze. My final spreadsheet that I was evaluating with (and which enabled me to HQ my signed T0s with such ease) had a fresh "elemental window" every 8-10 (I forget which I used in the end) in game minutes, with the elements alternating in reverse order (like those of the moon phases).

Like I said before money's easier to make these days so I'd never recommend full use of this system for gil-making purposes. Its a -serious- pain in the ass, especially when testing and locking down how exactly the seasons work. When I was working on it there were a bunch of nights I had to wake up for an hour in the middle of the night so I could test key windows. If anyone wants to go diehard and rebuild the whole thing synths with multiple tiered hq like tools n such are good for finding the windows, as mentioned before.

In closing on the whole thing, knowledge of day + moon ELEMENT + season should be plenty in order to generate a consistent gil stream, especially when you focus on market analysis and lower level synths (these can be AMAAAAAZINGLY lucrative especially with multiple mules). If you're deadset on signing your own gear like I was then learning the system (or being uber stubborn lol) is the way to go. Given the lack of attention this part of the site seems to have seen I'm guessing that's not a big concern these days though lol Trying to consistently use advanced knowledge of the crafting system can be mentally annoying and, imo, does not give you a considerably unfair money-making advantage over someone without that knowledge due to the spacing and offset of the best windows. I had a lot of fun learning it all and seeing it through to fruition but I find it more relaxing and interesting to look for awesome, neglected t2-t3 synths and make them (because you literally cannot lose money doing that and you don't have to wake up at ungodly hours @_@)

Edit: I hope to be back in the game in a month or two and if there are any uber-hardcore crafters that want help with this feel free to post here or message me. As you can surely tell I'm not the least bit secretive about this stuff anymore lol

This post has been edited by Avarghaladion: 01 November 2011 - 11:11 PM