Lately you all have seen my character sitting around in sandy, well partial its been an effort to finish getting my woodworking gear/enhancements, but also i've taken this time to start crunching some hard data to determine a few things about FFXI crafting system.

Background: I've been playing FFXIfor nearly 2 years now, however when everybody else has been out lvling jobs, i've been lvling crafting. So not to toot my own horn i'm quite knowledgeable about this system.

Note: this is not a direct guide, and i'm not sure of its implications on harvesting, gardening, fishing, or mining. (Frankly cooking too, i've gotten 40 lvls in cooking in less than a week, so its not what i would consider a core craft)

OK HERE's THE DATA:

To simplify i've always found the ideal skillups can be obtained from crafts that cap no high than 4 lvls above your current skill. (I.e i'm lvl 30, the best recipe is between 31-34) Ok so this is the basic concept in crafting, not anything to terribly important so far. We all understood that if we craft on days associated with the primary crystal we use we lose less items on a failure... Not true, it actual boosts your HQ synth pool by 10%, single element boosts it by 3% and double boosts it by 8%. Elemental staffs contain a hidden effect which i still am not sure on the exact value of this but they Boost your skill lvl by 3-5, so you could at lvl 30 skill up on recipes between 34-39 about as regularly as if it had been 3-5 lvls lower, (Note: i think this is effected by the moon phase to a degree, its the only explanation i can come up with on why i can't find an accurate average) House energy boosts lvls by about one per type, and advanced synth support is = +1 lvl. Please also get into the habit of taking tests at X8 (where x is any digit between 0-9) this decreases the loss of materials. One more thing to note keep subs capped for your main, it'll prevent the loss of costly materials. If i come across any other information i'll update this post.