A (very) Small Complaint, I Wonder If Its Normal?

I am a cook. I am quite pleased to say that for the most part, my skill up items are if not profitable at least a very small loss. People being as they are, and myself being a people, I find that I do have something to complain about.

So... Many.... Synths....

I'm beginning to wonder if this is normal. In June I hit 81 Cooking off of Cream Puffs and I decided to move on to Yellow Curry 'til 85. Not a terrible synth, and I quickly found a nice place to farm the meat. Wonderfully profitable. Its almost october and I'm 84 cooking. This is not due to slacking off.

If you look at my mule Ifrit.Aavahan, until very recently (some people jacked the price a bit while I was on break and now no one seems to be buying) I sold religously every day two, exactly two, yellow curry. Since June. I also give away a couple out of each batch and keep a few to use on DRG as well.

Now, synthing yellow curry has just become a part of life for me. I don't really think about it anymore, just when I get to under a half dozen on the mule I go farm up the meat and onions and go to work. Ussually 2/3 stacks at a time. I just started thinking recently about exactly how many synths I've done for the last 3.5 levels of Cooking.

Assuming that I started at the end of June (we're at the end of Sept) and I failed and repeated the synthesis an average of 5% of the time (very conservative I think), selling 2x a day and keeping an average of 5 out of each batch I'm looking at aproximately 236 yellow curry synths. Give or take a few. Even if my math is off by 50% (believe me its not) its still a three digit number.

Is it entirely normal for someone to go through hundreds of synths 80+ for each point? I had thought so, until I stumbled upon a link to a clothcrafter's blog (I'm sorry I forget who!) where they expected to go 99-100 in 48 very expensive synths. I was flabberghasted. Is this just a cooking thing? Am I simply having horrible luck? Any cooks have any insight?

And to anyone who leveled something else; Neener neener neener, I'm skilling with profit =P

Skill ups get slower the higher you get. My leathercraft is 83, and I am currently skilling up off of Coeurl Mantle for ~1k loss per synth. With this craft, I am getting about a 25% skill up rate when the moon is right on Firesday. Long story short, expect less and less skill ups per synth the higher you get up.

I'd like more input too, especially from cooks. I'm currently level 83 cooking. It seems very slow to me, but I think it's relatively normal, I'm not sure though. I am currently leveling off of Marron Glace and I made around 20 or so and only got .4 skill ups.

I originally started to level off Marron Glace at 81 but I was not getting any skill ups. Previously I would synth items with a gap of +/- 5, but when I reached 80 it did seem so much slower. I took a new approach and decided to try items that were +/- 2 levels. So I switched from Marron Glace to Sole Sushi and I level that fairly quickly. After that I attempted to skip Marron Glace to Rolanberry Pie (Yeah, 83 making level 90). With support and on certain days I hardly failed, but I wasn't getting skill ups. So I switched back to Marron glaces. lol

I actually made this outline last night. I dont know if it will help you or not? But I tried to look for recipes that were +/- 2 levels apart. I figured since they were close in level, I don't have to worry about support, and I won't flood the market. Plus, most items sell relatively fast. And the Sautee and Salad will be used in other synths.

84: Sole Sushi
86: Marron Glace
88: Coeural Sautee (Use for Coeural Subs later)
90: Rolanberry Pie
92: Tavnazian Salad (use it for Tavnazian Tacos and sell)
93: Coeural Sub (Use up all the sautee. If I don't hit 92 with the subs, I will attempt to hit 92 with Tavnazian Salad)
95: Rice Dumpling
99: Sweet Rice Cake
100: Red Curry (then make to Red Curry Buns)

No idea how this will work.. lol

TL;DR: I want to hear input too. :]

Well I doubt its just a cooking thing. I suspect your not using right amount of day/direction and possible synth support. I just did 0-100 bone on a mule in a month in a half mostly cause I hated putting the money into coral and had to wait on gp item. As long as I crafted with in good skillup zones I tended to get 1 lvl every 15-30 synths or so. Well that was higher obviously lower lvl I got much higher rate

The above listing of things to make is fairly solid, and almost the same as what I did.
Marron Glace sell fast on the AH. Put the sautee on a mule and save for subs. Rolanberry pies sell fast. NPC the salads for a very small loss (persikos au lait also work well to 91). Subs to the AH, Dumplings too. If you're in a hurry, dump the Rice Cakes to NPCs for a few hundred less gil than AH price. For 99-100 though, you will need to submit to the necessary evil of cursed soup. Dragon meat isn't very commonly up, and it is snapped away very quickly. Unless you're content with crawling like a snail, you'll need to farm jelly. Get a THF friend to help and take care of the bees at the start of CN. If you kill fast enough you can cycle in the mushrooms too for truffles. You can make some nice (althought relatively small) profit during the stage.

In direct response to the OP's questions; you seem to be very unlucky. Curry, Glace and sautee were all slow SU items for me, but they were never that bad. Stick with it though, and you'll (eventually) be happy that you did.

i praise god for every skill up i get nowdays

That looks like a pretty solid skill list there, except maybe swap the red curry for cursed soup. You may find the tav salad to be a bit pricey if you can't fish the fish.

I also skilled on Sole sushi a bit as I use it a lot on DRG. if I make it in a big enough batch I can get it for free by selling the extras, and free (quality) food is always nice. Despite all the people who tell you otherwise, its really not a great profit synth unless you've got a lu or the sushi is 30kish imo.

I'm finding that no matter the gap, I'm skilling very very slowly. I have noticed though that if I'm within one point of a cap it crawls. I'd think I was capped right now if I hadn't gotten 0.1 out of my last two stacks of meat (got none outta the batch before that). That being said, perhaps its time for me to move on to another skill synth... I'll certainly take your rolanberry pies under recommendation while I browse the 90ish stuff.



You're getting a really good skill rate compared to mine, but then I guess you're actually planning for them and I am very much not. There's just so much running around to do and so much space taken up by the materials that I pretty much do it as soon as I can get it over with. I do at least pay attention to the elemental compass and ussually day, but I almost completely ignore moon phase.

I think that maybe cooking just has a stupidly low skill rate at higher levels in order to make up for the lack of necessary investment. Well, that and the travel time.

Thanks for the feedback.

Wow, new replies while I flapped my gums... er... fingers... Bless you, sir/madam for that reassurance. Being supremely unlucky I can deal with and even laugh at. =D

I find better luck spamming a bunch of synths in a row, whether it be for skill up or HQ

236 synths in 3 months is less than 3 synths a day, try synthing something more readily available?

"2/3 stacks at a time" = 36 or less synths each sitting? Prolly bad luck or try a different synth.

BC n LC didnt require long streaks of /facepalm :P

PS: For some reason my browser showed no posts for this thread... til after I posted.

Rice cakes were the worst period for me while leveling cooking.



I went from marron glace straight to pies. I also didn't make sushi. I just recently got the key item for it. (hit 99 cooking about 3 years ago)

I'm not sure what I did between pies and sweet rice cakes. I know it wasn't either of the things you have listed. Since you're doing sautee and saving it, I think the subs are a good idea.

As far as skillups go, I've noticed my alchemist slowing down (66 alchemy on mule).

For my spreadsheets (I calculate beforehand how much I can expect to spend or need to craft) I use 18 synths / level. This has worked pretty well for 1-60.

My goldsmith was pretty much spot on up to 16. Same for GF's leathercraft (41). I also have clothcraft, bonecraft, woodworking, and smithing mules. Their levels range from 8-~40.

Short version: Yeah, the higher you go the more the skillups suck. Sometimes you're lucky, sometimes you're not.

It's been since January 26, 2006 since my mule hit 100 cooking. Mages used pies more and Marron Glace was what I liked to use on my WHM. I left my mule at 86 for a long time till my RL friend, BRD, wanted me to make him Flint Caviar for pt's and Tav Tacos for soloing. Afterwards being so close to 100 I just did the final push for the numbers but really wonder why I put it off so long when it's made me so much gil...

85-86 I alternated between Pumpkin Pies and Marron Glace
90 Rolenberry Pies
92 Flint Caviar, Fished my own Emperor fish started stock pile for this at 82
92 Tav Salad
95 Rice Dumpling, These sold well and would camp Lower Jeuno and make and sold in batches.
97 Tav Tacos, At the time I was able to skill up on these but now there are easier to make at 81.
99 Sweet Rice Cake, Try these to break the gap, never made myself...
100 Cursed Soup, was a pain since my mule was barely able to kill one bee alone but cheapest way to skill up.
100 Red Curry, Most expensive but quicker than fighting bees but meat was out of stock alot but curry sold for profit if AH was low. Suggest you start stocking up on this now to PL through later. Can always sell meat off for profit or turn to Curry Buns since they added those.

Now just working on soloing NIN on mule to 57 for Hocho and 100+6 skill, with support 100+9 but wish I could Dual Wield for a constant +9... Maybe SE will add a Frying Pan as a weapon plus Cooking skill one day...

Ah, flint caviar was what I did for 92. It's quite possible that I jumped straight to sweet rice cakes afterwards. I was powerleveling through the levels so I may have been impatient.

Now I dont know if this is correct or not, so take it for what it's worth.

But after many years of playing this game and hearing many crafters have this same concern (yet at the same time hearing others with unbelievable skillup results or HQ rates), I am nearly convinced that crafting is simply based on a /random number generator. You recieve the luck of the roll, nothing more.

This would basically mean all those theories concerning time, day, direction, weather, moon phase, etc. to all be utterly useless, and nothing more than placebo theory.

I believe this based on my own experience with crafting. As a level 98 Goldsmither with multiple crafts at 60 I've done my share of synthing, and have done thousands of synths both inside and outside of the commonly accepted crafting theories. My results never varied much between day, direction, or moon phase... for the most part they just always sucked. After reaching level 50, it was not uncommon to go 12, 15, even 20 synths without a skillup. Since nearing cap, I've never found the common criteria to have any effect on my HQ rate, either. HQ's have always been simply abysmal for me... whether it was attempted during the "correct" time or not. I've made my fair share of HQ cursed items, but the rate like I said is simply abysmal.

With the release of the latest gobbiebag expansion quests and the subsequent price hike in orichalcum, I realize now that I will most likely be unable (or maybe just unwilling) to reach 100 Goldsmithing due to what I've estimated the cost to be (somewhere in the ~10 million ballpark for two levels, probably more). To give an idea, I've so far spent about 3 million going from 98.0 to 98.4. *** SE for masterminding the Triton Ring. (In before 'use the GP ring!' I know, thank you. I dont have one, working on it, felt +3 was more important).

Well yeah, I wouldnt worry if you have shitty luck with skillups, HQs, or crafting in general. It seems to me like that's just how the system was created, and at some point you will just have to decide if the end result is worth the cost to roll the dice until you get there. If the answer is yes, accept your net losses and continue synthing until you get what you're looking for. If the answer is no, just stop before it gets too frustrating. Unfortunately, I was too stubborn to quit Goldsmithing before realizing I'd never get back out what I put into it... and thus I rarely craft anymore.

An update. I looked into Marron Glace for the first time in a very long while thanks to the posts here tonight and realized it was an excellent skill synth. I then went and did a quick batch of 12 and got 0.5, taking me up to 85 cooking! Hurray! I would just have to assume that curry makes an awful skill item and unless you take some perverse joy in stagnating in yummy soup advise against anyone doing it again ever.

A friend of mine has been bugging me to help her burn through some 150 shell bugs, so I may do vampire juice next (fishing the terrapin) or move onto the highly recommended rolanberry pies.

Thanks again, one and all, and may the random number generator smile upon you.

Grats on 85. Hope what's been said here helps you progress quicker.

Pro tip: Anyone can skillup w/ profit if they farm the materials.

Regarding your skillup question. I can't verify the rate for skillup in cooking, so I don't know if it's just you or if it's the craft itself, but at 96 leathercraft, I get skillups way more frequently than what you've indicated. If I'd done as many synths as you have, I'd be done 100 by now. I skillup much faster, and the only limiting factor is the availability of materials for 100+ level synths.

Good luck with all that, though.

Fishing for the Red Terrapin sucked. Maybe at the time my fishing was too low but if you can catch Emperor fish I'd PL with Emperpor Roe 82 then Flint Caviar 92. Making the Roe with have high yields that can just be made into Flint Caviar for skill ups. Save for Tav Salad 92 or Shogun Rice Ball 94 or check AH.

I agree. Right now I am trying to work on Fishing. Skill ups have been very slow lately, at least more so than usual. I am trying to be good about it though, so I keep at it.

Other than the Ferry, do you guys have any suggestions for Fishing_56?