The Painful World of Expert Crafting - Getting Every Achievement in FFXIV #20 

You can't escape fishing forever

Cider: This can't be normal! Big Fishers: First time?

That first crafting attempt was an act of violence.

That first craft was not a statistical anomaly, but the statistic inevitability. Thank you for your sacrifice to mathematics.

The absolute commitment to the "TREMBLE!" bit will never get old, and is in fact one of the key lynch pins insuring that I watch every single one of these on release instead of setting it on the backlog that I watch a week later.

Ohhh so thats why all of my materia IMMEDIATELY was bought. Thanks for funding my house bid

I don't need a girlfriend because crafting in FFXIV fucks me everyday.

Yoshi P Every Single Time Cider Hits The Rapid Synthesis Button: TREMBLE

"After grinding for weeks in Zadnor, I thought we'd take it easy with a little bit of crafting." ... I may have cackled.

Cider Spider: This RNG can't be normal! It's statistically improbable! Me: It can be normal, and it's called Dancer

Welcome to the painful world of crafting! You're here to stay so get a comfortable place in any settlement for those DoH. And this is before getting the Ishgardian Restoration *Expert* Recipes

The condition being ‘Angry’ is just the perpetual state of expert crafting.

Expert Crafting is literally Ultimate for crafters. - you need to grind scrip to buy those mats - you need to always pop food buff and potions just like raiding - you need to pentameld on all piece of gears (huge gil sink because crafter materia are more expensive and has to do it again every 2-3 patches) - you need to look on succeed player's crafting/macro on internet for reference. just like studying raid strat - you need to adjust what you've learned to suit your current crafting stats. only copy-paste then go macro not always work - you need good decision (to choose/execute craft action) and tremendous amount of luck to deal with RNG condition - you need to plan ahead to manage and fully optimize your remaining buffs - you need a lot of time (complete just one tool to max tier could take hours) best advice I could gives is that take it with Ultimate reward mindset but worse. its purely glam ! on a job that no one cares about !! don't torture yourself !!! RIP if you're completionist who try to collect them all, just like me xD

The only percentage that matters in crafting is 100, anything less is 50/50

Has Byregot blessed you lately?

I would say to anyone wanting to try expert crafting to go check out the teamcraft guides. It's explained very well and even has some cheeky macros to use if you want to.

The Athena "TREMBLE!" when overmelding is an absolute mood.

Fun fact, I fought my first S rank by accident XD I opened up a new area in Sea of Clouds, I finished some side quests and I saw a new enemy spawn ahead of me and I was like "New enemy, Cool." So I ran up to attack it, and after I attacked it this HUGE Group of about 20+ people rushed in and started to attack the enemy as well and I'm like "WTF is going on?" one of my friends was in that hunt party and told me I tried to solo an S rank enemy XD

I'd like to note, that the "advance meld in bulk" was not always an option. I believe that was introduced at the start of this expac. Meaning not only was overmelding a great way to watch gil burn, you had to do it one by one with an animation between each attempt. So you were not just burning gil, you were painfully throwing it away one materia at a time.

Boy as a crafter I'm so glad there are websites to optimize expert crafts for me hahaha To be honest I don't use the % chance skills because I don't like leaving my fate to RNG unless I have to

As someone who has pentamelded their crafting gear, I can absolutely corroborate the remark about materia being the best way to watch your money burn...

Cider spider truly experiencing Square Enix's definition of "Percentages" When working on Gathering, I've once experienced 6 failures on a 95% success rate, in a row. ON TWO SEPERATE OCCASIONS..

"What am I being punished for? Why?! What did I do wrong?!" Hubris. You're trying to just slam through on Rapid Synthesis, gambling for those 500% hit-or-miss chances instead of getting stable(r) progress. :P

24:00 - you don't have to gamba rapid synth here, 53 points + 20 durability remaining means you can use prudent synth into two careful synths (1901 more progress needed, each prudent + careful is 739 under veneration)

Waiting for that Big fisher video.

Blue Mage level 1 huh. *stares in Achievement Points* You cannot escape your T-Posing Diamondback Destiny, Sir Cider Spider.

Byregot demanding you "TREMBLE" with every failed synth is too accurate.

LMAO thank you for the laughter, I still can't get over the "Yoshi P. Must be stopped" comment. You are my new favorite RU-vidr, keep it up!

nooooooo, that was so painful 😢 forget rapid synthesis when you have the stats to use safer routes, it isn't worth it! edit: just to clarify, I completely get the urge to use rapid synthesis, I've been there too many times lol it is gambling on it's purest form 🤣

Byregot is my drinking buddy whenever I decide to craft. The hours fly by then.

I've always wondered why people do progress first. I say if it's not HQ it's not worth making, so I've always done quality first. And yeah, back three expansions ago when I was leveling crafting the first time I used a crafting macro maker to do all the math for me. It is SO much easier now.

I'm suprised you didn't start with the splendorous relics since they increase the bonus to the good modifier to 1.75.

NGL I love crafting in this game but Expert Recipes scare the heck out of me, I usually stay away from them x.x You have me deepest respect and condolecenses

Since last week's video, I have completed the FF16 crossover event (10 points), obtained my final relic weapon for PLD in Endwalker (10 points) and crafted my 5000th high quality item on ALC (10 points). I have obtained a rather meager 30 points throughout the week and now have at 20,505 points (19,390 using the Lalachievements scoring system). I stand at rank #50 on my server Adamantoise, down one rank since last week. Turns out that crafting 10,000 HQ items is a LOT of work. That was my primary focus throughout the week, and I went from around 4000 to 8487 HQ items on ALC in just a few days. And to think, I'll have to do this with every job. Kill me now... Anyway, I should have that done on ALC next week, so there's that. Grind on, achievement hunters!

"Let me introduce you to Overmelding..." ...oh my god I think I had PTSD flashbacks

FFXIV uses the XCOM percents. 97% chance to hit. You miss 12 shots of 15. Enemy. 34% chance to hit. One shots 3 of your team. Seems about the same.

Watching you overmeld materia brought back my nightmares of when I lost 178 Control IX materia in a single overmeld attempt and materia was far more expensive back then so it was just agony.

Ahhhh Expert crafting, your almost at Castle in the sky madness.

ive been achievement hunting for about 2 years now and this is genuinely so wonderful to watch, im at 20k points now! good luck on your achievement hunting process - im rooting for you!

at 20:38 korean mmos were mentioned, and as a (now former) black desert online player, you couldnt be more right, ive had gear upgrades that were about .2% chance (i hit it on my second try and that will forever be my proudest gaming moment)

Watching you craft is more nail-bitingly exciting than any ultimate raiding content.

Been playing since 2.0, I have 60% of the Achievements, you are much more motivated than I, good luck.

I noticed that the RNG in FF14 when I played it was very streaky. I failed an 89% chance 13 times in a row while mining one time, while I once hit a 9% chance 6 times in a row as well. Plenty of other outliers but those the ones that really stuck out to me.

My favorite part of the week is when I sit down on a friday after work, I click on a Cider Spider video and he calls me an idiot. Cracks me up every time.

remember if it not 100% it always 50/50

ugh, I bow down to your patience, I'm actively avoiding going back to Firmament expert crafting.. That stuff nearly sucked out my soul

"Condition" exists in regular crafts, but it's not nearly as extensive. Lets you proc abilities that can't be used otherwise. ...but at the end of the day, it still doesn't really do anything because most people use macros for those and the last thing you want is leaving your macro to chance.

Every day Cider is uploading a video is a good day. 💪

Oh... Oooohhh... Just watching those Rapid Synths was extremely painful. Never change, Cider, never change. :)

I will often take the Good proc to raise progress on my opener over rapid synth. It's a noticeable step down, but sometimes a 100% on 4x efficiency is better than 50% on 5x, especially if Veneration/Muscle Memory is about to fall off. If I'm using one of my specialists for it I can wait and risk it, then use a crafter delineation to force Good condition

Tremble!

That first craft was so insane I had to show it to my statistician mother as a perfect example of breaking probability.

Your expert crafting brought me back to when got Gen 1 Saint of the Firmament on Aether's formerly dedicated compeitive crafting server: Adamantoise. I made so much frigging wallpaper for the Iahgardians.

The "tremble" collection is growing 😂

Probably should have used Groundwork over Rapid Synth.

Loving the Trembles this week

"yup, looks screwed" xD Also, i screamed OMG with you at a point. Im so sorry about that craft, that was painful to watch

glad to have a new video to show prospective crafters to make them reconsider their choices

Just last week, I challenged myself to make the components for the Aetherial Arbor in Island Sanctuary. This is currently the most difficult Expert Recipe in the game (and really has no incentive to do it besides getting a particular landmark which kinda sucks would've at least liked to get an achievement for it, but at least the landmark is pretty) and watching you get that absolutely cursed attempt at the start was a bit cathartic. Sorry that happened to you. Also yes, share in my suffering!

I hear the voice of our crafting god, blessed Byregot! nice touch!

I like watching these regardless of how much progress you make towards achievements! If you ever need to take it a bit easy one week and have less eventful footage I think most of us would be fine with it.

Does it double in size when it's on your back or does it shrink by half in hand

I kind of love and hate expert recipes. On the one hand they’re a pain, but on the other hand at least it’s an interesting challenge rather than just pressing the same macro over and over.

Hehe remember when we had to attempt every single overmeld materia individually? I was by that MB grinding through 10mill gil worth of meld attempts one by one while random passers-by commiserated.

It's really funny to have Mr.Spider explain expert crafting to me as I'm 7/8ths of the way through Ishgardian DoH Resto

Im sorry for your suffering, but it's a little comforting to see someone else suffer with my usual rng lmao. Love your video, as usual :)

I still, to this day, remember the one time I was standing next to the marketboard and saw someone lose over 200 materia while trying to pentameld one of their crafting gear pieces. That particular attempt didn't succeed.

Nothing has ever broken me more than when I lost 100 command X's on a single overmeld

Few things about the math: First, with sturdy, important to remember it's probably not an addative boost meaning incrsssing 50% +25%. Its a percent of a percent. Meaning its going to increase by 12.5%, so increase to 62.5% In addition, the statistics of 50/50 are weird. You think that using rapid synthesis would give you 1 and another. In reality, the spread js more random, doing basically H,H,H,T,T,H,T,T,T,T,T, etc. While eventually the percent will come out 50% out of a large enough sample size, the chances of success or failure reduce by every time. (Ex. 1/2 x 1/2 x 1/2 x1/2= 1/16th chance of getting 4 successes or fails in a row)

I am finally not a day late for a video

"In a rum induced frenzy..." Is how all good stories start.

Ah expert crafting. The one line of crafting that luck can truly truly screw you over no matter what. I love crafting in ffxiv but I really don't fully like expert crafting. Though, yeah I know xD, they aren't as bad now with good gear due to well macros XD :). But EW ones are still slightly annoying even with best gear and macros. And this isn't even counting the luck to pentameld, that we don't mention as sometimes it's a painful painful thing. Blowing 100+(or even 200+) materia on trying to get 1 slot melded on 1 item. The biggest thing that is painful was when they added "batch melding" and it saying "how many lost" as now you can see your horrible luck when it all fails and says like "lost 99 materia trying to meld" XD.

Patiently waiting for Blue Mage content.

Mate, I'm doing expert crafting AND fishing right now. Good luck with fishing, its a testament to pain. BTW, you think SHB experts are bad? Well they are, but for the EW ones, its 7k synth and 16k quality. so basically the same but needs more synth. A tip, use Muscle Memory, Manipulation, Waste not 2, veneration, then Ground Work 3-4 times, using Final Appraisal when your getting near the top.

Crafter and Gatherer relics used to be tied to unique craft/gather achievements. HW and SB gave you "Blessed" tools which were basically glams like Ultimate weapons. For whatever reason, they decided to mix it up in ShB and make the Crafter glam tools this horrible process. Mind you, the Resplendent Gatherer tools were STILL tied to unique gather achievements. Those glam achievements always came out at the very end of the expansion, so that's why these Resplendent tools are significantly worse than the Skybuilder tools. Endwalker no longer awarded any glam tools from any process (other than the actual Lodestar relic,) but instead awarded titles for unique gathers. This makes EVEN LESS sense, because hardcore Fishers already use the Big Fishing titles at the end of the expansion. I really hope they don't scrap it entirely come Dawntrail. :(

i know i personally wouldn't mind if you made more scatterbrained videos, so you can do grinds like this in the background. I would watch these videos regardless of if each video stuck to a topic.

I've been working on the crafting achievements too while I wait for ocean fishing boats but I'm going through the list 1 crafter at a time. Pretty handy to pair it with the unique levequests since while you're going down the crafting log you're making all the turn ins. Hoping to be completely done with carpenter next week. Not too many left to go.

Great video, CIder!

Now you know how I feel playing xcom!

The "usb stick" on the end of the alembic looks like a cute little robot face. :D Also, I dislike how certain tools go on my back and inexplicably increases in size - it's the same for the ARR gold achievement tools.

These tools were bis, lower item level means nothing if the stats are higher. Also no, you do not want to fill prog bar first, that will make you waste conditions. Also higher tier materia have lower overmelding change.

I really want to know why anyone thought the existence of resplendent tools was a good idea

Someone should invite this child to an FC

After I got rapid synthesis III, it just never worked, again. I almost took it off my bar, but I'm far too lazy. It's just a button I never hit, now. This video was a good reminder as to why I quit doing expert crafts. Also, crafting used to be an easy way to make gil, but with the undercut bots constantly lowering their price every 10 minutes, it's actually really hard to get stuff to sell.

My sympathies. You have RNG about the same as mine. If it isn't 100%, it's 50%. If it's 50%, it's 1%.

And here I thought the sky builders relics were a pain 😅

I just did the lodestone tools for my alchemist and culinary this past weekend. Expert crafts are a very challenging battle.

was wondering if your outro song is Spasibo from Kizumonogatari?

I'm sick in bed watching this on my phone lmao'ing! Thank you for making me feel better!

This is the peak content I'm here for. Crafting is a delightful RNG savage experience

Resplendent tools are like collector's edition toys, they're not made to be used, they're made to be put on a shelf or glam'd and admired.

My PTSD from the 149 destroyed materia at 20k a pop solely on my last overmeld of the expansion...my heart still hurts. I don't know why but whenever I overmeld I always end up needed 100-200 more materias for a full set than the 50/50.

Cider :"This might be salvageable" Me: "Nah you fucked"

finally started to play ff14 online, cause of cider >:)

I miss your MSQ recap, Emet-Selch really need his Shin Privilege back

Normal crafting is fun and I routinely fall into crafting holes but god expert crafts are such a miserable experience, hate it.

Damn, 20 episodes already. Feels like just yesterday it started.

Tremble before the might of my RNG manipulation! You shall fall all of your Rapid Syntheses!

You don't need to stress yourself out over making these videos man. Even if you don't get any it'd still be entertaining to see the progress :P

Something that will make you feel both better and worse is, these are not the stats that were on the "relics" originally. They were rebalanced to STILL BE A CHALLENGE to endwalker gear. So without the perfect endgame endwalker gear, it'll actually be harder to get now, then it was, then.