Part 3: Disciples of the Hand - the Art of Crafting
Although there are quite a few DoH classes, they all follow the same procedure when it comes to actually making items. Just like with the DoL classes, you gain levels in each craft independently, and you have to have the right tool equipped in your main hand to synthesize items for that craft.
BEFORE you start your first synth, you should read through the mechanics to know what you're doing. You have a limited amount of time to select each action, and being put on a timer when I'm not entirely sure what's going on leaves me flustered.
As mentioned, the first thing to note is the timer bar; it starts at full, and rapidly empties. Once it begins ticking down, you have about 5 seconds to choose an action. If it empties out, you automatically perform the "Wait" action, BUT it has an increased durability cost. It is always preferable to select an action, even 'wait', over letting the bar run out.
Next, the synthesis status bar will show you three things: the completion/progress percentage, the durability of your materials, and the current quality score of your synth. The durability is like the HP of your synthesis; your goal is to get the progress bar to 100% before you run out of durability. Quality
does not matter at lower levels; just completing the synth is tough enough at rank 1. When you get better at crafting, a higher quality will get you a bonus reward on leve quests, and higher quality has a higher chance of producing a +1/+2/+3 item. (From Amiricle: Quality does NOT matter for mass produced synths; with them, having a higher durability at the end will get you better results.) Per Square-Enix, getting a HQ result with your main hand tool can produce a +1/+2 item, while getting HQ with an offhand tool is more likely to provide a higher yield.
There is also a fourth stat that does NOT have a numerical display: the stability of your synthesis. This is represented by the glow effect of your synth. All synths start with a white glow, which is completely stable. As you perform actions, the stability will change - a a solid colored glow indicates some instability, and if the glow is flashing multiple colours it is highly unstable. An unstable synth will reduce the success rates of your synthesis actions, and this has been confirmed by Square-Enix. Waiting can increase stability, and in some cases I've had critical successes help my stability as well. Finally, it is also possible to gain elemental instability - when an element in your synth becomes unstable durability costs are significantly increased, and there's a chance your synth can become chaotic and more or less explode. Elemental instability is represented by a coloured aura/ribbon around your glow.
The actual crafting commands (at the start) are Standard Synthesis, Rapid Synthesis, Bold Synthesis, and Wait. A successful Standard synthesis will add 10% - 20% progress, 10 - 20 quality, and cost 5 - 10 durability. A Rapid synthesis will give you more progress and less quality, while a Bold synthesis will give you less progress and significantly more quality, but it also costs a lot more durability. In all cases, failing a synthesis action
can still move the progress bar a small amount and possibly give a little quality, but it will cost a significant chunk of durability, and can frequently result in only lost durability and no progress. There are also critical successes, where you can gain quite a bit of quality and progress and loose very little/no durability. Waiting has no impact on progress or quality, and will cost 1 durability per successive wait. The first wait action will cost 1, the second 2, etc. Waiting more than three or four times will really eat into your durability, but it can be worth it if you manage to wait your synth back to White stability from flashing/elementally unstable.
Standard has the highest success rate. Rapid is second, and Bold is by far the hardest to use successfully, and Bold also costs more durability and causes more instability. In short, unless you
know what you're doing, stay away from using Bold.
When you complete a synth (reach 100% progress with more than 0 durability left) you will be able to Finish the synth and collect the finished item; sometimes you will also be able to "Touch Up" your work. When you are close to having an HQ item but don't make the roll, using Touch Up will give you another chance for it to be HQ (at the cost of durability). Be careful with it, since you
can wreck your synth (going to zero durability). (Touch Up info from Amiricle)
Using HQ mats (Copper Nugget +1, etc) will increase your starting durability and cause a huge boost in the starting quality, and according to Square-Enix they will
not increase the difficulty of a synthesis. However, quality gained throughout the synth process
does impact success rates, meaning a synth can get harder to finish if you shove the quality up too high at the start.
Finally, most guildleves give you enough materials that you can botch one attempt and still succeed at the leve. Therefore, if you're just starting, figuring it out, or are moving onto a new and tricky recipe, it could be worth it to alternate synthing attempts. For example, if there are two goldsmithing leves available, I'd do the first one and switch to the second if I botch a synthesis, so that I can have an extra attempt and gain more practice and class XP without failing the whole leve. Also, you can use a workshop (either at the main guild house or at a camp) to obtain synthesis support, and have a higher chance of succeeding. It DOES cost money, though.
SPECULATION
A few people have theorized that elemental resistances can help prevent elemental instability in a craft; if you notice one element that keeps going unstable, try raising your resistance to said element and see if it changes. Again, I haven't been able to properly test this yet. However, I have fairly uniform elemental resistances (I've been raising them equally after putting Wind ahead of the others by ~10 points) and have not had elemental instability happen once.
Statistics:
I'm fairly certain that the Control statistic affects durability and stability loss. Craftsmanship seems to impact success rates and possible quality gains, while Magic Craftmanship seems to be related to elemental stability. I'm not 100% certain on all of these, though.
I'm also not sure if stats have a uniform effect across all craft disciplines (IE, X points of Strength will increase Craftsmanship by X, X points of Dexterity give X Control) or if each craft is related to a primary stat (IE, Blacksmithing success rates go up by 1% for every X Strength). It HAS been confirmed that stats have an impact on crafting, and other crafters I've talked to have seen a definite correlation between increased Strength and increased success as a blacksmith. I haven't been able to test this yet - I have a big list of things to test.
Miners and botanists can equip their tool in their main hand; fishers need their rod, and you equip bait in your pouch slot.
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