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OK, for starters, lets assume that you have spent some time “down in the hole” crafting and that you have reached the lofty perch of lvl 10 or so. You have acquired scads of recipes, tried a some of them out, made a bunch of things and maybe even managed to end up with a few pristine items!

So how can you improve your pristine rate?, (I hear you cry) With a solid buffing strategy, my friend... and that is what we are here for today!

For the sake of this demonstration, lets say you are going to be tailoring. The principles will all translate to any other skill... only the names of the buffs will change.

Starting Out

The first thing you will need to do is prepare a new hotbar - just for crafting. So, open up a new one, (right click on an existing hotbar & choose “open new hotbar”), and adjust it to be 6 squares long and 2 high. Now open up your knowledge book (letter “K”), and choose the tradeskill tab. There you will find several pages of spell icons that can only be used while crafting. At level 10 you will have 2 sets of 3 buffs for each of the three subclasses in the class you picked just before lvl 10. These subclasses, (and their classes), are:

Craftsman - woodworker / carpenter / culinary
Outfitter - armorer / weaponsmith / tailor
Scholar - sage / alchemist / jeweler

So if you had chosen Outfitter, you would now have 6 available buffs each for making armor, weapons & leather goods.

Buffs

Each set of buffs has a different effect. The set you got at level 2 buffs progress to push you through the combine faster while the set you got at lvl 10 buffs durability and helps you maintain pristine quality throughout the combine. (You will also receive new sets at lvl 30, lvl 40 and so on - these additional sets will also alternate between buffing progress and buffing durability.)

For tailoring, you are going to go to your knowledge book and find the level 10 buffs which are “binding” “embroider” and “dexterous”, and also the level 2 buffs which are “knots” “stitching” and “nimble”.
(Newbie’s tip: to figure out which of these icons are “yours”, first look at one of your recipes and see what the skill is called, for example woodworking is considered “fletching”. Now you can examine the various icons looking for the ones that affect fletching.).

When you examine the icons, you will also notice that one icon from each set costs power to cast while the other two are “free”. In tailoring, the ones that will cost you are “binding” & “knots”.

Place these 2 in your new buff bar with “binding” in the #1 slot and ‘knots” in the #4 slot. Then place the other two +durability buffs in the #2 & 3 slots and the other two +progress buffs in the #5 & 6 slots.

The Combine

Now before we trip the switch and start crafting lets examine what happens during the combine.

As a combine begins, you will notice that there is a definite rhythm to the process. It can be broken down into rounds with each cycle or “pulse” lasting 4 seconds. You will know you’ve reached the end of a pulse when you see green and/or red numbers float up past the name of the machine you are working on. These are your score for the pulse. The left hand number is your progress and the right hand number is your durability for the round. (Or is it the other way round!) Anyway, green numbers mean you gained while red mean you lost ground.

Time to Make Stuff!

All right, lets get to crafting! Once you have your raw materials or sub combines, your fuel and any additional “store bought” components you need, you’re ready to go. Step up to the machine, right click and choose create. And finally, choose your recipe and click create again.

As you click “begin”, the process starts and the window changes to show you the combine screen with 4 completed green durability bars and 4 empty, (blue), progress bars.

Wait a “beat” and then click the #2 & #3 icons from your new hotbar. This will assist the combine by casting the 2 durability buffs that do not cost you power. If an event appears before you begin to buff, choose the matching icon first to “counter” the event and then add one additional icon for a total of 2 buffs. Now wait a couple seconds for the round to end and a score to appear.

You can use the #1 buff if you choose to but it will cost you power each time. This might not be a problem except for an interesting wrinkle SOE has programed in. The wrinkle is that crafting buffs cost you a percentage of your power pool instead of a fixed amount of power. It tends to be between 5 & 10% per use so there is no way you are ever going to get through an entire combine if you try to use the power consuming buff every pulse! For this reason, I tend to “save” the power consuming buffs for countering events and sprinting to the end of the combine.

Events During Crafting

The reason you wait for a moment or two at the beginning of each pulse is to give an event time to pop. Events are random in that there is no recognizable pattern to which pulses they appear in but they always appear at the beginning of a pulse. There are a few reasons you want to counter the events whenever they appear. First, left un-countered or incorrectly countered, some events will actually hurt you - hitting you for a loss of both health and/or power. Also, a successful counter will guarantee a positive score for that round and it’s always nice to gain a little ground. Beyond that, there are three rare events sprinkled into the available mix and these are really worth catching!

Listed by SOE as rare, very rare and ultra rare, these events have three different results. The rare event, called “<skill> insight”, (tailor’s insight or provisioner’s insight for example) will, when countered, reward you with an eight minute buff that improves your crafting skill.

The very rare event, called “flawless <skill>” will reward you with an instant pristine completion of the combine.

And the ultra rare event, called “favor of innovation” will reward you with an instant pristine completion, the return of all the components used as well as the final item and a rare harvest item based on the skill you were using to craft the original item. (The first time I hit this one I was crafting a rare tier 2 desk. The combine was just starting so I got a free ride on the finished bone desk, my original rare and another rare in the bargain. WOOT!)

Not Done Yet

When the combine has reached or passed the half way point, you can shift from durability to progress buffing. By now you should have banked a good amount of durability and can afford to spend some!

Here’s how that works; You can never fall below 0% progress but you can get above 100% durability. So if you begin the combine by buffing durability, each pulse that ends in a green durability score “banks” the extra. When you get to the half way point, you can switch to buffing progress which will speed up the combine, (since you will be getting bigger green progress scores each pulse), while it bleeds off some of that banked durability, (since the progress buffs cost you some durability each time you use them.

While you’re in this 2nd half of the combine, if you see the green durability bar fall below 100% you can always return to buffing durability for a few pulses to bring it back up.

Once you pass the third bar of progress you can even shift to buffing all three progress buffs each pulse and sprint for the finish line!

Using this basic strategy, you should be able to achieve a 99.9% pristine rate. In fact, I never get a less than pristine outcome unless I want it to be lower quality... but that’s another article!

At your level, you should have a total of 9 metal shaping buttons. Pick the most recent 6. Anything less than level 10 is no good to you.