Couple of crafting questions

[Mopy]

Greets,

Just back to say thank you for your advice, it all helped a lot. I re-arranged my stats, got rid of minerology, distributed my attribute points, bought a lot of new clothing to compensate my weak areas, added a toolbelt (now I see that button) and can now make better decisions about complications. I do still have the basic tools though, but I'm on the lookout for better ones. Batch WO's don't seem to like me all that much for gear, although I did get two magic orbs that I can use through the bout of successs earlier on.

I managed to make my first C grade stave too Terrible, I know, but it's a start.

The result is now success in nine out of ten difficult WO's at C grade, and I'm consistantly hitting B grades with moderate WO's with a good 150-250 points to spare (I know I didn't need to go that far, but it was a nice little indicator of how things improved)

I'm not sure what they did to complications today, as I have yet to try it, but your posts really helped me out, so thanks again for all the advice you've taken the time out to give. It's much appreciated.

Cheers,
Mopy

[Hitomi]

Originally Posted by Tuor falconeye

this has been a really helpful thread for us low levels that are struggling. i cant wait to get back and try some things out now. like stopping my minerology. i must have wasted so much trying to get that skill up to 44 at level 10. now i have just realised i probably wont need ti if i do carpentry.

thanks for all the informative posts.

If you plan on doing carpentry then you'll want to start thinking about your attributes.

The two main "quality" attributes for a carpenter are Reasoning for utility based quality and Finesse for tool based quality.

Personally, as a mid level carpenter, I prefer to put most of my points into Reasoning, followed by Finesse. The other two I rarely add points to. Here's why:

With Reasoning, the crafting stage that uses Reasoning based skills (Solvent stage) has a skill action called 'Dissolve Debris' which ONLY pushes quality and not progress. This is great because I do this step as the last step in the current section. This allows fine grain control over the quality of the product.

For instance, if the Solvent stage is in the last section of the craft, then in the first section I do all actions that only push progress, no quality. Then in the last section, I do all the actions that only push progress until there's none left except the Solvent stage. I then pump the progress meter as close to 100% done as possible (which would finish the craft) and then just start dumping on the 'Dissolve Debris' action, which pumps the quality. I get it as high as I can before getting to 200 action points left, then I finish the craft (usually bringing me to about 125 action points) and finish the craft with the 100 cost process. I can consistently bang out high B's/low A's on moderate WO's. With high Reasoning, you'll notice that using this technique will make your quality bar go through the roof when you use the Solvent stage. The only draw back is that you're going to go through a lot of crafting utilities (solvents, cleaners or varnishes) so keep plenty of these in stock.

A second method is much as the same, using Finesse. The only reason I don't like this method though is that there's no Finesse-based skill (that I know of) that doesn't push progress and quality together. So, if you're lucky you may get 25%-40% quality before hitting the end of the stage. The advantage is that you use very little crafting utilities.

Using the Reasoning method, you can go from 0% quality to 100% without ever moving the progress bar, allowing you to push the craft to very edge of being finished before adjusting the quality. Once you're at the edge you can decide if the remaining amount of action points you have is going to get you the quality you need, and getting to that point you can ignore quality affecting complications (since you have no quality yet anyways).

Sorry, that was long and complicated but there you have it. My quick and dirty guide to being a carpenter

[Shinto]

Just to add to what Hitomi said, I use a high tool, high Finesse and Problem solving build. The sixth action that you get for your main tool stage adds low progress and high quality, so I can usually get 50% quality from that. The fifth action for your utility stage adds high progress and low quality. By putting part of my AP into the quality-only action and part into either that one or the very high progress action, I can easily get another 40% on many of my recipes. This does have the disadvantage of making you guess at how much quality you will need to make A, but on Difficult WOs that you just want to make C, it is great.

The real advantage, however, comes when you reach tier 3 and have 2 tool action groups. You will get a tool progress penalty on 90% of the recipes that have these two groups together, and on more than half you will get two tool progress penalties. By using these penalties with my mixed progress/quality tool actions, I might get 100% without ever touching my utility quality actions. I'm not saying that this is the best way - it is risky. But if you can master it, this method works well.

As a last thought, don't neglect any skill or stat for too long. If you forget station for a while, you will find that the progress bar doesn't move fast enough to finish harder recipes. If you don't add tool and utility, you will have trouble during tiers 3 and 4, as they each add another action group (first tool, then utility).

[Hitomi]

Originally Posted by Shinto

Just to add to what Hitomi said, I use a high tool, high Finesse and Problem solving build. The sixth action that you get for your main tool stage adds low progress and high quality, so I can usually get 50% quality from that. The fifth action for your utility stage adds high progress and low quality. By putting part of my AP into the quality-only action and part into either that one or the very high progress action, I can easily get another 40% on many of my recipes. This does have the disadvantage of making you guess at how much quality you will need to make A, but on Difficult WOs that you just want to make C, it is great.

The real advantage, however, comes when you reach tier 3 and have 2 tool action groups. You will get a tool progress penalty on 90% of the recipes that have these two groups together, and on more than half you will get two tool progress penalties. By using these penalties with my mixed progress/quality tool actions, I might get 100% without ever touching my utility quality actions. I'm not saying that this is the best way - it is risky. But if you can master it, this method works well.

As a last thought, don't neglect any skill or stat for too long. If you forget station for a while, you will find that the progress bar doesn't move fast enough to finish harder recipes. If you don't add tool and utility, you will have trouble during tiers 3 and 4, as they each add another action group (first tool, then utility).

Thanks for the additional thoughts! Good for us to be able to refine our techniques into something even stronger

[Shinto]

Originally Posted by Hitomi

Thanks for the additional thoughts! Good for us to be able to refine our techniques into something even stronger

Heh...thanks for that. The last time I disagreed with someone about style, I got flamed in /tell o.o

[Hitomi]

Originally Posted by Shinto

Heh...thanks for that. The last time I disagreed with someone about style, I got flamed in /tell o.o

Well, aside from the fact that I'm mature enough to know that people have different ways and that it's a good thing, I also didn't see us as disagreeing. You gave your reasons for doing it your way (which also gave me some interesting points to think about) which allows both of us to see if we can incorporate the feedback from each other to make an even more efficient, and therefore stronger, method.