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Craftaholics Anonymous/Guide/Advanced Crafting

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This is advanced crafting theory. These ideas go beyond the basics topics and delve into ideas that are often relative perspectives. What I hope to contribute to this is giving a broader scope to those perspectives, pointing to specific information so you can make up your own mind about things like facing, moon-cycles, day and night, weekday, guild strength and more. Please feel free to add your perspective or arguement to the discussion page.

Theory: Let's Face It

There is common accepted idea that you can face in a specific direction while crafting to enhance your crafting. There is a predominant theory and some other lesser theories. I will include them, providing the details as to how these theories are supported by details within the game itself. There are also external sites that will be pointed to.

Facing by the stars

The oldest system in use for crafting and facing is based on directions that are dictated according to the Stellar Map which is displayed by the Adventurer's Asistants: Adaunel, Kaela, and Lago-Charago. This chart shows constellations. Among these constellations are some of the Avatars and their related element. This does not include all the avatars.

Direction	Element	Avatar
NW	Fire	(Ifrit)
W	Water	(Leviathan)
SW	Lightning	(Ramuh)
S	Earth	(Titan)
SE	Wind	(Garuda)
E	Ice	(Shiva)
NE	Light	(Alexander)
N	Dark	(Odin)

In regards to the constellation chart, the Adveturer's Assistants who display it mention at least one avatar and its direction. They appear to have critical commentary about the chart, even its creator. I included excerpts for you.

Adaunel, an Elvaan male from San d'Oria, notes, in anger, "It's a pagan myth, you see. Look, lightning from the land of 'Ramuh' in the southwest spawns the 'Bomb' of fire! The angry gods call 'Leviathan' from the western sea to put it out, washing away civilization... " He refers to this as rubbish and is very set on debunking the so-called "astronomer" of Windurst, Professor Lago-Charago! Of course Elvaan are not the friendliest bunch.

Kaela, a female Hume, is also perplexed by the map as she tries to match real stars to ones on the map. She notes "See that constellation to the south? That's Bastok's guardian, Titan! But not many people know that now. It's been a long time since we've celebrated Titan's Eve. The yellow star at its center is Daemdalus, or 'Titan's left foot.'"

Lago-Charago, the male Tarutaru from Windurst, the astronomer himself, is in love with his map. He says "Climbing the northern sky is the famous Odin. The black point there is Odin's beloved steer, Sleipnir. And above that--although in the actual night sky it appears below Sleipnir--is the North Star, the prominently bright star that sailors guide their ships by." Which it is interesting to note that he does say this map is different from the night sky, in a way. Malfait, another wiki user, points out that this map works by holding it before you as you face south. If you lean back, holding the map above you at arms length, then everthing aligns. The east, the east and the west and even the discrpency of locations of Sleipnir and the North Star. Its really a stretch to imagine, but is imaginable.

Note that none of the NPCs attribute these elemental directions to crafting. As far as I can tell this correlation was developed by some of the early players and the system has become wildy debated. Important aspects to the facing theory is that facing may influence Skill Up or influence HQ. For the most part, it appears most high level crafters don't appear to put much creedence in facing being inlfuential on HQ, while some do believe facing does influence SKill Up.

I will definitely include more game based details as I come across them. Thanks to Techno for his contributions in the discussion section.

Facing by ascendancy

As you will discover, regardless of which direction you face, synthesis happens and synthesis fails. Facing is theoretically one way of boosting your odds of success. I created what I call Elemental Directional Chart, putting the corresponding directions based solely on the chart itself in relation to a compass. This is controversial because the ascendancy chart does not place elements to the east and west. My explanation of this is that the ascendancy chart includes how elements are influenced by day and night.

Villion says "Light and darkness occupy the center. They are in mutual opposition, for one cannot be both at once." I conjecture that to the east and west is the rising and setting of the sun, therefore no elements point there. The other elements are divided into day and night elements, giving them cardinal directions. So then I also speculate that the direction to face for the light crystal would be toward the sun and the direction to face for dark crystal would be the direction of the moon.

I relate the ascandancy chart to crafting based on the Adventurer's Assistant in Bastok, Julio, who refers to himself as an "unlicensed alchemist" - and he laughs afterward. None of the other adventurer's assistants refer to themselves as crafters.

Direction	Element
N	Fire
NE	Ice
SE	Wind
S	Earth
SW	Lightning
NW	Water
Toward Sun	Light
Toward Moon	Dark

The Square Enix designers have refused to just come out and say how any of the elements work in relation to crafting. When asked questions about it they give cryptic answers and encourage people to believe what feels appropriate and suggest that when folks figure it out they will reveal the truth. (They refer to this when questioned about latent effects and secrets in the Q&A called. Square Enix/May 2008 Interview)

Skill-Up: Accelerated Crafting

For the beginning crafter it is important to know that you can synth recipes within about three levels of your current craft skill. Your success rate is gonna be real high. As you try recipes beyond three levels your fail rate increases significantly. Skilling up your craft depends on a number of factors. You will skill up more frequently with recipes beyond 3 levels of your craft skill, which means you are gonna fail more often. So the increased skill-up potential is countered with increased loss. You can address your loss by using furniture. The right furniture will give you mogenhancement for that particular element. That mogenhacement means you will lose your ingredients less often when you fail. To increase your success you can get synth support from a guild member. Your ability to skill stays the same while your success rate increases. Advanced support – the support that costs -gives you +3 and plain support – the supports that is free - gives you +1.

Guaranteed Gil: NPC Sales

Everyone who crafts or farms dreams of making the big sale on AH. This venture could itself been seen as a game within the game. Determining the items and prices, catching the market as demand increases and supply goes down. Without crafting this can be a challenge. With crafting it can be your own personal hell. Especially starting out when you a relegated to making low level products that sell on AH for barely what it cost you to make them. At some point you have to suck it up and take the loss in order to level your craft skill. Everyone once in a while in each craft you will find an item that you can make where you can eaither buy the ingredients super cheap, there is some ridiculously generous mob drop rate or an NPC sells them affordably. Many of these type of recipes produces a large number: x4 x6 x8 x12 x33 ... and so on. The best case scenario is some npc will buy it from you and you will make a profit. Selling to a NPC has the wonderful benefit that there is now waiting for something to sell. Instant pay back. I hope, in the consequent pages to this guide point to some of the more obvious items that can be made affordably and sold at a profit. One I might mention would be Bug Broth. This item is my gil salvation. It can turn 1000 gil into 3000 gil, if all work in my favor - namely those favors begin that I farmed out the water crystals, AH sells stacks of Shell Bug for 1k or less (prefering 400gil) and the lugworm comes from some NPC at about 14g a piece. Depending on your fame this sale price can be around 105 for a bug broth. The Math: shellbug(41gil) + Lugworm(14gil) + Water Crystal(free) = 4 bug broth so each costs approximately 13.75 gil each - which in turn sells to NPC for 105 gil. No algebra needed to see that is one heck of a profit. Even if you pay for water crystals you are making money. This recipe and others like are guaranteed gil, albeit they do require the time of getting ingredients and making them and selling them. I have a mule in sandy that I usually send gil to and buy the shell bugs there. My cook taru in windy stays in waters, picking up deliveries and heading over to the general merchant NPC in waters that sells lugworm. I can stand in the shop making bug broth for hours. Turning gil into larger and larger piles. It isn't gratification like selling a big item on AH, but it is guaranteed income so you can buy other ingredients to feed your craftaholicism.

Another few tidbits come from fishing. Tiger Cods and Nosteau Herring are good skill up options for fishing from early 20's up to a cap of 39 on the Herring. The Tiger Cod, with a little cooking help, can turn one fish into 6 slices, each selling for ~60 gil. These fish are not hard to catch, and you can find an easy five or six stacks in your inventory by the time you hit your fatigue limit. With 60~70 fish, each fish making 6 slices, each slice selling for ~60 gil, you can see a return of 21.6k~25.2k for free. It's not mind blowing, but free.

Source entry: Craftaholics Anonymous/Guide/Advanced Crafting. Cached on this server on 5 November 2026.