Crafting in Final Fantasy XI: A few tips to achieving success pt. 2

The Stars / Directional Crafting — Some crafters debate that facing in certain directions actually has an impact on a crystal's powers. The hypothesis is that facing towards an element's primary direction, such as pointing south for Titan's constellation (Earth) while working with an earth crystal, will make the crafting easier. If you face towards a crystal's weak point, such as facing southeast toward's Garuda's constellation (Wind) while using an earth crystal, you decrease your success but increase your difficulty.

The Time / Days of the Week — Darksday is a horrible time for crafting if you're not working with dark crystals while Lightsday is a day that helps out all types of craft. Other days fall on the same elemental pattern as above — if you match the day to the crystal, your crafting with be easier. Pair your crystals against opposing days, your crafting will be harder but may be more rewarding.

The Weather — Another unconfirmed phenomenon, weather might have an elemental effect as well. Pair like crystals against like types of weather, you'll make crafting easier. Pair crystals against opposing types of weather, you'll make the crafting harder.

High Quality Materials — Also unconfirmed is the use of high quality materials being used in the synthesis. Some say that the use of the better materials leads to an increased chance of making a high quality product, but it's a dicey maneuver. If you screw up the crafting, you might just lose one of those high quality components, leaving you with wasted gil and a sad look on your face.

Confused? Don't worry, there's a app for this.

This stuff isn't easy, but thankfully there's a brilliant crafting timer created by lokyst that incorporates the basic theories of crafting into an easy to use tool. Not all of it is confirmed either, as nothing about crafting has been confirmed or denied by the developers, as they prefer to let the community figure it all out.

Some of the community holds the notion that the only thing involved in crafting is the difference between your crafting level and the recipe's level, while others swear by directional crafting, moon phases, and all possible permutations of the theories we just discussed here. If you ask us, doing some of these things can't hurt your crafting in the slightest — it can only lead to creating the outcome you wish for.

As one developer said during the 2006 FFXI fanfest when questioned about the validity of directional crafting, "Face whichever way your heart tells you and believe." A line both poetic, and very true — believe the crafting tips you want to believe, until someone statistically proves them.