why are my stuff keep breaking how do you synthesys correctlFollow

standard is your basic option. youll be using this most of the time. it gives you the potential for good progress (up to 20%), good quality increase (up to the low 20's) and low durability loss (anywhere between 0 and 15 or so on a success).

rapid trades quality and durability for progress. if you succeed with rapid, youll get as much as 30% progress, but very little (or no) quality gained and a lot of durability lost (usually above 15 on a success, even a critical success). try not to use rapid. at all.

bold synthesis gives you high quality gains at the (potential) cost of a lot of durability and very little progress (bold successes max out at 10% progress). bold is what you choose when you want to go for a lot of quality. critical bold successes, like standard, dont remove durability, and can give upwards of 60 quality.

now, ive used the term "critical success", so let me explain that real quick. there are, near as i can tell, about five different outcomes. they are, from worst to best, critical failure, normal failure, meh, normal success, and critical success.

failure and success are pretty obvious. if you get a normal failure youll lose some durability and gain a little bit of progress (youll lose more durability than you gain in progress however). if you get a normal success, youll gain some progress, possibly some quality, and lose 3-20 durability or so, depending on what type of synth process you used.

"meh" is my own description. its technically not a success or a failure (it wont say either in the chat log). youll gain about as much progress as you lose in durability, with maybe a few points of quality if youre lucky.

critical failures and successes are the big ones. theyre just like critical hits in fighting; bigger, and more awesome (or terrible). critical successes typically reward you with the max amount of progress for that synth type (10 for bold, 20 for standard, 30 for rapid) as well as little-to-no durability loss and good-to-great gains in quality. critical failures are the opposite, resulting in NO gain of progress, NO gain in quality, and a mid-to-high loss in durability (anywhere between 15 and 30 is what ive personally seen). critical failures even, under the right circumstances, have the chance of causing quality loss.

finally, there is wait, which is pretty self explanatory. you just wait a turn. each time you wait adds one to the durability lost, so if you wait three times, youll lose 1 + 2 + 3 durability, for six total. using an ability or doing a synthesis instead of waiting resets the wait loss back down to 1.

thats it for the commands. now, as for the colors:

White - this is your best overall color. highest chance for success, with moderate gains to quality and minimal durability loss.
Yellow - this is the middle of the road color. you have a lower chance of success, but if you succeed the payoff will be higher, meaning greater quality gain and less durability loss.
Red - this is the worst color in terms of success. synthesis done on red is the most likely to fail out of all the three colors, but with great risk comes great reward, as the quality gains from a successful red synthesis can be very large (highest ive personally seen is 68 on a single bold synthesis).
Flashing, all three colors - as far as anyone knows, this is just a wildcard. could be any of the three listed.

if you want to succeed in making a finished item, try to synth only on the yellows and whites. use wait on the reds and wait until it turns into a yellow, white, or a flashing. if youre really careful you can even wait on flashings, but dont wait too many times in a row or else the durability cost really stacks up.

and finally, there is element instability. sometimes, generally after a failure or three, certain elements used in the crafting process become unstable. unstable elements are typically a bad thing, as they tend to lower the chance of success for all the colors (red, white AND yellow) and increase the chance of failures and critical failures. sometimes waiting for a few turns can let the element stabilize, and sometimes succeeding on a synth can stabilize it, but a lot of it is just chance. the only thing anyone is really sure of is that if you fail while the element is unstable (or worse, chaotic) then it REALLY hurts. a friend once lost over 260 QUALITY from a critical failure during an unstable element. not durability....quality. the durability loss was pretty high too, over 70 points he said. so try to avoid synthing on unstable elements if at all possible.

and that, as they say, is that.

Solid post, just would like to chime in that when a synth is unstable there is a chance it goes Chaotic. This will end the instability, but you'll also lose 20-50 durability as well as HALF your quality. This is probably how your friend lost 260 quality. Its brutal. Very demoralizing when you are trying to get a high ranking for a levequest.

The OP was asking why he failed so often. One thing you didn't mention in your excellent description of the synthing process is the importance of rank and rank-appropriate gear. One can follow your instructions to the letter and still fail every synth because the recipe is too high for you. Even one or two levels can make a huge difference in your changes of success. Since you lose your synthing materials when you fail, trying to synth a too-high recipe can be very expensive.

There are a few things you can do to improve your chance at success:

• Use class-appropiate "facilities"
• Use level-appropriate tools
• Wear gear that boosts crafting stats
• Eat food that boosts crafting stats
• Use high-quality ingredients in your synth

Class-appropriate facilities

You can give yourself a boost when you craft in a "workshop" that is appropriate to your class. These workshops are not specific locations. Rather, they are temporary boosts to your crafting abilities that you pay for. You can gain access to a workshop at the guilds or at any of the camps.

At the guilds you can buy access to three levels of workshops: common, guild, and master. The more you are willing to pay, the more support you get for your crafting. I'm not sure whether the support is the equivalent of 1, 2, or 3 additional levels of rank or some other method of calculation. Each guild will offer support only to its specific craft. You will gain no benefit to having workshop support if you are crafting in a different craft.

At each of the camps you can also sign up to use camp facilities. These are all common (the lowest level) facilities. The facility you sign up for is based on your class when you sign up, so you need to be sure to switch to the class before you pay for the service.

One caveat: The support doesn't last long, only long enough for 4-5 synths, so plan accordingly.

Use level-appropriate tools

The higher the level of tool, the more crafting stats it will have, but the tool must be appropriate to your level. I'm not entirely sure what will happen if you use a tool that is above your level. Certainly, it will wear faster, but I wouldn't be surprised if you lost the benefit of those extra stats, too. The important thing, though, is to move away from the weathered tool you got at level 1 as you level and can find the tools in bazaars.

Wear clothing that supports crafting

The stats you are looking for are craftsmanship, magical craftsmanship, and control. You might want to have different gear for crafting than for fighting since gear that boosts crafting usually doesn't also boost attack and evasion. Again, the gear should be rank appropriate.

Eat food that supports crafting

Here are three good possibilities: Distilled water and orange juice boost mag. craftsmanship. Boiled eggs boost craftsmanship. Food lasts longer than guild support: 30 minutes I think.

Use HQ materials

HQ materials have higher starting durability and much higher starting quality than NQ materials. The higher the number, the bigger the bonus to durability and quality. Because of the higher durability, you can often succeed with a synth several levels earlier when you are using HQ materials. And because of the higher starting quality, you are much more likely to get HQ results. As an example, I gathered some +3 plums. Making prunes out of them is about 5 levels above my current rank, and I had never come close before, but I was able to succeed on all three synths, two of them for +1.

Edited, Oct 22nd 2010 4:28pm by LordTinyDragon