by X’Genesis Qhulut by X’Genesis Qhulut
16th August 2021
First we press N to bring up the crafting log.
You can use the search box to search for a particular thing, or just browse recipes.
In this case I’m looking to make Goatskin Duckbills. On the right you can see we need two main items (apart from Earth and Wind shards which I always seem to have a lot of).
I now need to find Aldgoat Leather. I RH-click on it and do “Search for item”.
I might find some in my chocobo saddlebag, or in my retainers’ inventory. Assuming I don’t I can try to craft one myself. So, I search for it by Crafting Method.
It turns out I can make plenty of those because I have a lot of Aldgoat Skin and Alumen which are the ingredients for Aldgoat Leather.
If I didn’t have the skin or alumen I would have to go into the field and kill some goats for their skin, and mine some nodes for the alumen … or go to the Market Board and buy them. You may want to use the Database to find where the mobs are that drop things like skin.
The yellow buttons under the NQ and HQ columns in the crafting log are for juggling the amount of NQ or HQ items you wish to use to make this item. If you click one its quantity goes up and the corresponding quantity on the other side goes down.
For example, clicking on the HQ column where it previously had zero:
We now click the Synthesize button and see this dialog:
Our primary objective here is to get the progress to 100% before the durability hits 0%. Effectively the progress is “how far we through making it” and the durability is “how much our tools are wearing out”.
Our secondary objective might be to have a higher chance of getting a HQ item — in this case it is 1%. We could have improved that by using HQ ingredients rather than NQ ones.
In this case I will just click “Basic Synthesis” which (because it is an easy recipe) advances the progress to 100%, and that item is succesfully crafted.
Going back to the Goatskin Duckbills recipe I now have enough materials to make this one (my original objective).
In this case, after clicking Synthesize and clicking Basic Synthesis once, I am only partly done.
You can click on Calculations to see what sort of figures are involved. As predicted, one click of Basic Synthesis increased my progress by 50 (out of 85 in this case) and my durability has gone down by 10. Most actions reduce durability by 10.
In this case I clicked on Basic Synthesis again and the item was completed.
There are other actions you learn, some increase progress, some increase quality, and there is a “Mend” actual which increases durability. Most of these cost Crafting Points (CP) of which you only have a fixed number.
Once you have crafted something once you can click on Quick Synthesis to make more of them without having to click through each of the crafting stages. This is useful if you just want a lot of something (like leather). The preliminary dialog box asks you how many you want made, so you can choose from one item to the maximum you have materials for.
Your primary stats here are Craftsmanship and Control. Also useful is to have more CP (crafting points).
A vendor for that is the Alehouse Wench in South Shroud at x=18 y=20.
There is also Merchant & Mender in Western Thanalan (12,13), Shopkeep in Eastern Thanalan (13,24) and Grege in The Gold Saucer (5,6).
A handy feature of the Crafting Log is the ability to view the recipe tree (RH-click on the item that you wish to make). For example, if I wanted to make a Woolen Turban, the recipe tree tells me the primary ingredients (on the left) and then to the right the ingredients of the ingredients, and so on. It also shows next to each one how many I have in my inventory (top count) and how many my retainers hold (bottom count). That way I can work out what primary ingredients I either need to find in the field, or buy at the Market Board.
In this case the “base” ingredients are Fleece, Aldgoat Skin, and Alumen.
I can also ask for the raw ingredients, which list the actual ingredients needed:
You might be wondering why we only need 6 × Fleece rather than 12 × Fleece, since it takes 2 × Fleece to make Woolen Yarn. However if you look closely at the Woolen Yarn recipe, it takes 2 × Fleece to make 2 × Woolen Yarn. In other words, every Fleece turns into one Yarn.
And by checking “Display only materials with insufficient stock” I can work out exactly what needs to be gathered, mined, or purchased:
There is an extremely comprehensive guide here which is 399 pages long. Refer to that for more details about crafting.
Constructive comments, corrections and suggestions for improvements can be emailed to me at: 
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