‘Twas the week before Alpha, when all through the Discord, all the crafters prepared, anything they’d afford; The FC chest was full, with materia to spare, In hopes that their group, would win the affair.
The crafters had hustled, their melds had endured, The nine sets of armor would soon be ensured. Their specialists were set, if not but momentary; They have crafter souls, but not for culinary.
To the rift the raid entered, this test they’d lay claim; They’ve now past past God Kefka, Team Alpha’s their name. “Now Cid! Now Biggs! Now Wedge, and Nero! From Alpha, to Omega! Through Chaos, our Hero!”
‘Shida sprang from his chair, to his team gave the whistle;
The patch’d be live, please God no missiles.
We heard him exclaim, once the patch was alight, “Happy Alphascape to all, and to all a good fight!”
Okay, maybe Yoshi-P didn’t actually say that, but he’s certainly expressed being excited about the world progression race, so why not pretend? Our crafting team has officially had our last major meeting before Alphascape. There’s some small, consistent discussion about some details, but nothing else major will change unless some more information is revealed, such as pictures of the crafted gear going up on the Lodestone. I’d personally like to see the Dun Scaith 24-man raid, but oh well. My final designation for specialists are Armorer, Goldsmith, and Alchemist; but with extra Soul of the Crafters just in case. Previously for Team Wheelchair Emoji, I was Armorer, Carpenter, and Alchemist, so I’m happy to do almost the same type of work. The process of Tuesday morning is pretty straightforward, but first, let’s discuss what these final preparations are.
The final preparations
I do not intend to get too much into a guide on crafting here, but a single basic will help: capping CP. The more Crafting Points you have, the easier crafting becomes.
I get giddy just looking at it, as the maximum CP that you can pump into your gear right now is 493. We’ll be maximizing CP with our food, making Matcha the obvious choice. All in all, I’m sitting at 1744 Craftsmanship, 1759 Control, and 493 CP before food, tea, and FC buffs, which… is expected to be more than enough. I feel my craftsmanship is a bit high, that’s partially on the safe side.
Square Enix has (luckily) been consistently lenient with showing us what to expect, and the requirements of DoW and DoM gear increases are reachable with the current gear. Though as a worst case scenario, I’m expecting a maximum of 34k quality. Something more reasonable would be about 29-31k, which would put it on par with the Onishi gear. Following a similar pattern, progress around 4300-4400 is expected, and we’re preparing just a few different macros to flex progress with quality following inversely. With Piece by Piece being a 33% hit each time, craftsmanship becomes a little less important in making sure it fits; so it all depends on the last few hits.
The plan
This week, we’re putting all of our characters into the same FC just as we did last tier. It’s a side FC where the crafters are the only members. We’ve been a rag-tag group of crafters since the time we huddled together for Sigmascape, and this time is no different. We come from many different FCs and have planned out the usage of each tab in the company chest.
Final checklist for ending the week, just to be sure:
Preparing every M’naago and Kurenai is tedious, but if it saves the time from crafting 12 items morning of, it’s worth it. Sunday night, we log out in front of a market board, Monday I play Monster Hunter World, and Tuesday morning I’ll be setting an alarm for about 2:30am Eastern. Props to anyone staying up. Europeans, you’re lucky.
Here’s my checklist:
… and the datamining commences. Information to look for: official numbers of difficulty and quality for crafts, name of items, new Crafting and Gathering books, the materials to make it, and the new gathering nodes. Comparing this to all the materials we’ve pre-prepared, we’ll figure out what to purchase immediately.
There’s a general disorder of events as the servers go live. A madhouse of running around, purchasing whatever might have been missed, harvesting all of the new gathering nodes as soon as they’re up, getting any new crafting and gathering books with scrips, snatch up what new Mendacity materials we’ll need, and then we’re off!
The most important crafts to complete first are the weapons. They will forever be #1, as the damage and vitality are too good to not have as early as possible. Since there will be almost no use for Blacksmith after that, those who specialize it in will shift to a different specialization. If there’s a new Reisui, Alchemists will be crafting constantly, almost nonstop to make sure we are never waiting for secondary materials. As friends wake up, we’ll bring in more Mendacity and keep pushing to craft chest and legs, then the rest of the left side.
We’ll receive irregular updates from the raid team with the first few floors. If the first two floors are cleared before finishing, we’ll see who has received what gear and attempt to match it to what we haven’t crafted yet, crossing it off the list.
Repeat the process of materials, pre-crafts, and final crafts until the first full 8 sets are done. By the time we’re working on the right side, generally our Carpenters and Goldsmiths are left doing the final bits of crafting; and the sound of explosions can be heard as everyone is trying to stuff as much materia into each piece as possible. Assuming no huge missteps and curve balls, they should be looking to have all of their gear pentamelded before entering the final floor of Alphascape, leaving the rest into the raid team’s hands. Some members will stick around, crafting food and pots for later, but most will run off and begin crafting for their own raid team.
Heading into next week is very exciting for all of us. Thank you everyone who’s followed and messaged me about The Pit Crew’s series so far. Good luck to the raiders, the crafters, and everyone who’s looking to have fun in Patch 4.4; Prelude in Violet! Stay tuned for the next post, where I look at the day-of in review, giving a final receipt of the damage done!
