Crafting...broken...kind of, in a bad good way.Follow

Ok so this takes, well, 2 people, and requires you having a level 50 disciple of war/magic for it to work.

Levequests break crafting. I'll explain:

In order to get Leves you have to initially do a combat oriented leve, to be able to access the other leves, hence the requirement of a level 50 DoW/M (well maybe not 50 but you'll get the point...).

Each Leve, which range from level 1~45 ask for you to craft different items. However, it doesn't register completion by the act of crafting, rather it counts as long as you have the requested item in your inventory (and not bound iirc). Because of this you can have a 2nd person craft all of your levequest items. As a level 50 crafter can 100% HQ most items all the way to at least 30~ish level recipes, you might realize where this is going.

@nd person HQ's all your levequest items, trades them to you, and you turn them in. Since they are HQ, guess what you gex 3x the normal xp. For example, a level 15 levequest will net you 18k a piece, 10 hq cotton halfgloves and bam 180k xp in about 2 minutes, the time it takes to accept and turn in the quest 10 times.

The only thing that limits this no-effort crafting powerleveling method is the number of Leve allowances you have available.

As this is, in my personal opinion, a borderline exploit, I can't guaentee SE won't end up taking action against this. I do believe that they will most likely address it in some way, such as, requiring the action of crafting the item to trigger quest completion, however at that point it may still only need the motion of synthing an NQ item and swapping it with an HQ in your inventory. So...I don't know.

Comments? Opinions?

And here is the kicker. Levequest rewards don't fall off. You may not get xp for synthing the item but you can do level 30 levequests all the way to 50 because all you need is HQ items to get huge xp rewards. So if you have 100 allowances you can theoretically go from 1-50 in one day, as long as you have mats ready before hand.

......so they level quickly and this matters because? I'm pushing towards higher cap because the costs on the MW for the relic weapons are a little ridiculous right now.

Personally, I'm abusing the hell out of this because I'm way behind most 1.0 players (and I'm on a legacy server due to friends). I'm currently looking for triple-turnin leves around level 25 for blacksmithing (send me a PM or post here if you have a list somewhere if them I'd appreciate the feedback.

Secondly, this was kinda tested extensively in all beta phases and commented on (there were more than enough threads that's for sure). Considering how polished the game is (servers aside) and how much they actually *boosted* crafting EXP from phase 3 to phase 4/early access I seriously think they're fine with it.

Well considering that someone can go 1-50 without having a single 'completion' logged in their crafting log, would be a dead giveaway...

not to mention 1-50 by only having a weathered needle.... and no gear.

On the one hand, I get it. Yeah, you could technically plvl pretty hard that way.

But you still need to procure the ingredients, so there's a gate.
There is a cap of 6 leves per day once you burn through your reserve, so there's another gate.
And the more people that do this, the more demand there will be for mats, which helps to make a robust economy.

Sure, you can plvl a craft (emphasis on a, because this will really only allow for huge gains in one craft at a time after pooling leves), but that carries with it it's own problems. For instance, you become a MUCH better crafter by doing stuff on your own, not to mention gaining the extra XP from first-time crafting and any HQ progress you make.

In short, yeah, it sorta seems like an exploit, but it carries certain drawbacks and also has a limitation based on the leves you have available.

Not seeing it as an issue, really, and here's the big part: Why would someone willfully support the upbringing of competition?

Supplies and leves are finite. Hell, it's not like they're really cranking out endgame uber-items with but a sneeze, either. Non-legacy servers may have a few hardcore capped crafters at the moment, but on the other side of the coin, when I consider you've got a few dozen people at a specific range doing every item in the item log, are all of those items actually in demand at the market? My money is on no. Thus, prices crash, your stuff doesn't sell, and some things are simply more profitable to vendor at this point. It's basically the opposite end of non-participation, if you want to equate utilizing leves as such.

Right now I have a 26 GSM and 25 WVR on top of 26 BTN and 25 MIN. Were someone to offer me a means to PL, I might be tempted. I've certainly spent a fair deal of time manually grinding out repeat synths because SE neutered quick synth too severely. A lot of things in the log I simply don't care about HQing, but occasionally I will try, particularly things like accessories that'll help me craft better. Even now, I won't profess to be a master of the system simply because I don't have all the possible abilities at my disposal, but I'd this point I say I'd have the gist of it while the economy is still experiencing flooding of basic goods.

True, but as noted, you need someone with mastery of that craft (and the gear to support it) already established. So in essence, you need what amounts to a master of the craft to help raise someone else to master a craft. And they would need to wait about 19 days without doing a single leve in order to do master said craft.

Given that you can level multiple DoW/DoM jobs to 50 in the course of 19 days, I don't see this an issue. Moreso, you could level an entire craft to 50 in far less than 19 days just by actually crafting.

So yes, it is possible for one person to plvl someone else through a craft, but it requires some specific circumstances, a decently leveled DoL class/or a lot of startup cash, and more than half a months worth of saved leves. In other words, it's quite the undertaking in and of itself.

Edited, Sep 5th 2013 9:47pm by Quor

I still fail to see the issue. It sounds more and more like you're upset that other people can easily catch up to someone that's had crafts leveled from 1.0.

To be blunt, most people don't give a damn about crafting. I know that while the majority of my free company is leveling the craft required for their relic (since some prices are so expensive), they don't ever plan to really touch crafting again until needed. This is just like every other MMO in existence.

There exists a solid core of crafters that enjoy it, and the majority of the populace don't and would rather purchase the goods. There also exists a portion that simply thrives on maxing out the crafts just to see a line of 50 on that screen, and that's the only reason they do so.

You're seriously fretting over absolutely nothing. Like was mentioned before you're still gated and you can't bumrush all crafts in one day with this method (like you could if you uses sanctioned PLs in 1.0). Considering the big man himself's stated several times he wants people to get to the cap quickly to enjoy the game (which also makes crafting infinitely more enjoyable when you have more abilities) there's no doubt this wasn't intended.

That prompt shows up to specifically let you know you're going to get that bonus. It's been in for a few beta phases; it was put in deliberately. If someone wants to blow all their money to do this? Great, more power to them. If they have a friend willing to help out and craft the HQs for them? Great, more power to the both of them.

EDIT: Your point? RMT dealt in crafting in FFXI and they could power someone. They dealt in raw mats. They dealt in account hacking and stealing. They dealt in finding easily obtainable items they could sell to NPCs (which doesn't really exist here).

1.0 was built around trying to stamp out RMT at the players' expense........AND IT STILL DID NOT WORK. So RMT will level a few crafts a lot faster than their already fast methods. You can't stop them and trying to state it's bad specifically because of RMT is foolish naive.

If they want to get that craft up they're going to get that craft up *fast* and there's nothing you can do to stop it. You really think removing HQ rewards or lowering them is really going to stop them if they want to corner the market?

You're not thinking.

Edited, Sep 6th 2013 2:11am by Viertel

I haven't been able to unlock trade/fieldcraft leve's at all. I've done battlecraft and GC leve's already. What am i missing?

Crafter and harvesting materia are the most expensive. and I've noticed it takes longer for these pieces of gear to bind than my combat gear.

And time / difficulty rewards for battlecraft leves is equivalent to a drop in the bucket.

If it takes so long to level the normal way, why not just full up with spiritbind increase items (I know of 3 offhand), slap on some crafting gear, and go join a FATE train for a bit and see if that's faster. I know with 3 spiritbind increase items you're looking at a hefty reduction (each is 10% off of the remaining after the first calculation) and as of early access you could still grow crafting gear with normal killing EXP.