Critical Break: "Insert Craft Name Here" Ring

Critical Break is our crafting and economics column written by Qtipus. Q is an experienced crafter and also well versed in using the Auction House to turn a decent profit. Enough so that he was able to fund his own relic, Gungnir. Every Tuesday you will find Q's rants, raves and good crafting practices here. Qtipus looks at those crafting rings this week. Are they really that special? Do you really want one?

When SE released this ring, a lot of people looked at it and asked..."WTF is that good for?" or "80k GP for a 1% increase in success?" These are statements that are made by people who don't do a lot of crafting.

While I've never understood the concept behind "This is too good to use in that synth", it is what it is. In making a lot of items, HQ'ing one of the ingredients means you've just lost a lot of gil. More often times than not, the HQ ingredient is a generally useless piece of armor that will never sell. This would get frustrating to no end on a money synth like an RR item where the Merman's Gorget or Merman's Hairpin couldn't be used for anything other than a desynth attempt to get part of your materials back.

The crafting ring itself gives you the ability to force NQ items. This was a godsend by SE and a great example of SE listening to their player base sometimes. It also isn't too pricey from a GP standpoint. You could easily make the argument that these rings are the most valuable GP item you can get for most crafts.

Many cursed item synths, for example, require armor pieces. If they're HQ'd they're useless and you just spent a bunch of gil for nothing. A Darksteel Cap+1 can't be used in the Cursed Cap synth and who the hell really wears a Darksteel Cap anyway? There are various bits of Dragon Armor used in the W.Gear synths and even in that Dragon Armor synth itself, there's leather gear that you can't use if it's HQ'd.

(Yes I know...you can buy NQ leather gear from NPC for far cheaper than you can synth it...it's just an example.)

Another great example is that it can help you force NQ desynths. An empty reraise hairpin has the following table:

NQ: Coral Fragment
HQ1: Coral Fragment
HQ2: Pearl
HQ3: Black Pearl

With the Bonecrafter's ring, not only do I increase my chance of successfully desynthing this pin, but I also force the most valuable part of it out. I haven't looked at a lot of the other crafts, but I would imagine this sort of scenario applies to a number of other synths as well.

On top of all that, 1% increase in success rate adds up.

Bottom line is, there is no excuse for not getting this ring unless your craft just simply doesn't have any synths that absolutely require NQ ingredients. If you don't have it yet, get it. If you're asking a crafter to make something for you and you don't care about HQ, ask if they have this ring, especially for the expensive stuff. There's always going to be a chance of a critical break, but at least this way, you have a slightly better chance of avoiding it.

Just don't forget to take it off when you're actually trying to HQ things...