Just finished 1 Cosmic Tool, and working on the 2nd one.
C and D missions are kind of silly... You can almost do whatever, and still plow through them with ease. B requires some basic knowledge. Only until reaching A missions that the crafting starts to get serious.
Honestly, I was quite entertained by those 20 durab and 25 durab items! They were quite challenging, and I did botch a few of them accidentally... They actually required me to pay a bit more attention, so that's actually a good thing!
Soul Crystal and the Specialist actions help a lot. I can see the Crafters' Delineations finally catching up on price after being on the market for 100 gil each.
Basic crafting concepts is important. E.g. everyone SHOULD know that for anything with 40 or less durability, Manipulation is a MUST, and it's to be used together with WN2. In fact, I use Manip sometimes even for 60 durab items, which is arguably not as good as using Immaculate Mend. Then of course, for anything 70 or 80 durab, it's better NOT to use Manip, but to switch to WN2 + Immaculate Mend entirely.
For timed missions, Rapid Syn is to be minimized. I do gamble it on the first time when Muscle Memory and Veneration are active. But beyond that, Rapid Syn failures will really delay your time, making it hard for you to complete the item before timer runs out. So Groundwork (GW) under Veneration and WN2 is the way to go for progress. There is, however, one A-1 mission that had crazy high progress (A-1: Key Facility Plating), and it does burn off your CP if you rely only on Vene+GW under WN2. For that, utilizing Intensive Syn to substitute some GW is quite essential.
Similarly, for quality, if the mission is timed, there's no time to slowly play with Hasty Touch > Daring Touch combos or Basic Touch > Refined Touch combos... They are supposed to be more CP-efficient than Prep Touches, but there's just not enough time. So Prep Touches under Innovation and WN2 is the way to go for quality.
Depending on the situation, some good combos after IQ10 include:
GS, Trained Perfection, Innov, Prep Touch, BasicT > StandardT > AdvancedT
GS, Innov, Observe, AdvancedT
etc.
Some of the 2-step crafts involves the 1st craft being very demanding on collectability. If you can't reach max qual on the 1st craft, it just botches! Yet, even if you reach max qual on the 1st craft, it does NOT turn into HQ item to benefit the 2nd craft! So they force you to start 2nd craft from zero qual. These missions are quite challenging, and contribute to the fun of this mini-game!
The new timed condition-changing button was pretty darn interesting too. It speeds up the pace, and makes you go faster and faster... To be frank, these timed missions and timed buttons have really turned a leisure brain teaser mini-puzzle game into more an adrenal one! My heartbeat was certainly faster than usual when a timer is active!
For timed mission, sometimes, it's important to GAMBLE. If you are out of time, you'd rather keep pushing and complete the item at lower collectability or lower chance of HQ. If the timer reaches zero, it's a 100% failure. So you really gotta keep an eye on the timer, and make crazy moves to cut short a craft if time is running out.
Reflect vs Muscle Mem: It's not a concern for B, C, D missions. But for A's, I'd start pay more attention to "high progress crafts" vs "high quality crafts". I'd always use Muscle Mem for high progress craft with over 20,000 progress, and I'd always use Reflect for high quality crafts with over 23,000 quality.
Let's be honest. The process of obtaining a Cosmic tool is long, but it isn't too difficult.
The fact that you can choose NOT to do A-3 at all, and probably avoided most A-2 and just focus on A-1... basically means people can just macro up most of the times. So please don't call this difficult. It is very tedious though! But if you CHOOSE to do the A-2 and A-3 missions, it can be quite difficult sometimes... which is FUN! They're here to make this less of a boring grind!
I did my entire 1st Cosmic tool with manual crafting. But I now understand that I should do macros whenever possible because of how long it is. So I'm on my quest of making all those different macros for different missions right now...
Continue reading...
C and D missions are kind of silly... You can almost do whatever, and still plow through them with ease. B requires some basic knowledge. Only until reaching A missions that the crafting starts to get serious.
Honestly, I was quite entertained by those 20 durab and 25 durab items! They were quite challenging, and I did botch a few of them accidentally... They actually required me to pay a bit more attention, so that's actually a good thing!
Soul Crystal and the Specialist actions help a lot. I can see the Crafters' Delineations finally catching up on price after being on the market for 100 gil each.
Basic crafting concepts is important. E.g. everyone SHOULD know that for anything with 40 or less durability, Manipulation is a MUST, and it's to be used together with WN2. In fact, I use Manip sometimes even for 60 durab items, which is arguably not as good as using Immaculate Mend. Then of course, for anything 70 or 80 durab, it's better NOT to use Manip, but to switch to WN2 + Immaculate Mend entirely.
For timed missions, Rapid Syn is to be minimized. I do gamble it on the first time when Muscle Memory and Veneration are active. But beyond that, Rapid Syn failures will really delay your time, making it hard for you to complete the item before timer runs out. So Groundwork (GW) under Veneration and WN2 is the way to go for progress. There is, however, one A-1 mission that had crazy high progress (A-1: Key Facility Plating), and it does burn off your CP if you rely only on Vene+GW under WN2. For that, utilizing Intensive Syn to substitute some GW is quite essential.
Similarly, for quality, if the mission is timed, there's no time to slowly play with Hasty Touch > Daring Touch combos or Basic Touch > Refined Touch combos... They are supposed to be more CP-efficient than Prep Touches, but there's just not enough time. So Prep Touches under Innovation and WN2 is the way to go for quality.
Depending on the situation, some good combos after IQ10 include:
GS, Trained Perfection, Innov, Prep Touch, BasicT > StandardT > AdvancedT
GS, Innov, Observe, AdvancedT
etc.
Some of the 2-step crafts involves the 1st craft being very demanding on collectability. If you can't reach max qual on the 1st craft, it just botches! Yet, even if you reach max qual on the 1st craft, it does NOT turn into HQ item to benefit the 2nd craft! So they force you to start 2nd craft from zero qual. These missions are quite challenging, and contribute to the fun of this mini-game!
The new timed condition-changing button was pretty darn interesting too. It speeds up the pace, and makes you go faster and faster... To be frank, these timed missions and timed buttons have really turned a leisure brain teaser mini-puzzle game into more an adrenal one! My heartbeat was certainly faster than usual when a timer is active!
For timed mission, sometimes, it's important to GAMBLE. If you are out of time, you'd rather keep pushing and complete the item at lower collectability or lower chance of HQ. If the timer reaches zero, it's a 100% failure. So you really gotta keep an eye on the timer, and make crazy moves to cut short a craft if time is running out.
Reflect vs Muscle Mem: It's not a concern for B, C, D missions. But for A's, I'd start pay more attention to "high progress crafts" vs "high quality crafts". I'd always use Muscle Mem for high progress craft with over 20,000 progress, and I'd always use Reflect for high quality crafts with over 23,000 quality.
Let's be honest. The process of obtaining a Cosmic tool is long, but it isn't too difficult.
The fact that you can choose NOT to do A-3 at all, and probably avoided most A-2 and just focus on A-1... basically means people can just macro up most of the times. So please don't call this difficult. It is very tedious though! But if you CHOOSE to do the A-2 and A-3 missions, it can be quite difficult sometimes... which is FUN! They're here to make this less of a boring grind!
I did my entire 1st Cosmic tool with manual crafting. But I now understand that I should do macros whenever possible because of how long it is. So I'm on my quest of making all those different macros for different missions right now...
Continue reading...