[Caspian]

Ok, looked around for a bit and couldn't find anything like this, so hopefully this will be used and maybe helpful.
There are a lot of theories regarding what makes a HQ synthesis happen. The problem is a lot of them are mutually exclusive. I like to test things for myself and see what I can figure out. I'm going to try some different things with crafting and see what gives the best result. Any personal info would be much appreciated and hopefully we can either disprove or prove some theories running around out there and see what we're left with. I like to see the data behind the theories and come to my own conclusion.

I'm starting off with what day is best for HQ'ing materials. I know its largely considered bunk, but I had heard from a few people that lightsday is good for HQ'ing. So here's what I found today.
Lightsday; Waxing Gibbous 62%
Woodworking lvl 67 and some change, crafting Arrowwood lumber: a lvl 1 craft with windy crystals. Using key item Lumberjack for a recipe of:
Wind crystal
3x Arrowwood logs
Bundling twine
Total of 40 synths
Breaks: 0
NQ's: 27
HQ1: 10
HQ2: 2
HQ3: 1

Common belief is that I'm passed tier 3 and should be crafting HQ's at roughly 50%.
I NQ'd 67.5%
HQ1'd 25%
HQ2'd 5%
HQ1'd 2.5%
67.5%:32.5%

So, instead of getting 50% HQ's, I only got 32.5%. Conclusion? Lightsday is crap for HQ'ing.
My plan is to check Darksday, Windsday, Earthday, Iceday, and Watersday for their ratios as well, since they all have considered relevance to crafting (whether it be a day the crystal is strong or weak to, as well is where it falls in the Vana'diel week).
I may switch to doing Ash lumber instead of Arrowwood since the Woodworking guild is only open for limited arrows and it prevents me from crafting more. I can easily hit 50 synths in a day if I can start at 00:00. Also going to try and keep the moon phase w/in 10-15% of half moon since its widely considered to be of less consequence and effects not as noticable. Once I've found which day/s seem to be best I'll check moon phases.

Again, I'd like to get as much info as possible with which to make reasonable conclusions and due to working 40+ hours and trying to see the sky every once in a while my playtime can be consctricted at times. Please feel free to post your own data and conclusion here. Hopefully we can slowly separate truth from myth.
Thanks again for your help and hope to see some posts here soon.

[Jei]

the tier 2 is 30%HQ I think. You need to hit tier 3 for 40-50% HQ.
tier 1 - 11 above cap.
tier 2 - 31 above cap.
tier 3 - 51 above cap

[Caspian]

Ah, thanks Jei. Forgot the 30% tier. I'll edit the original for accuracy.

[Taskmage]

I got some interesting results tonight on Tsurara.

I'm level 60 Alchemy.

Tsurara is Alchemy (6 - Amateur)
Crystal: Ice
Ingredients: Rock Salt, Distilled Water x2
Result: Tsurara x10
HQ #1: Tsurara x20
HQ #2: Tsurara x50
HQ #3: Tsurara x99

I don't have any baseline data because I don't usually record my results (before now), but in the process of making 12 Toolbag(Tsura) I get about 50% HQ, almost entirely HQ1 with 2-3 HQ2 and HQ3 combined thrown in to round out the stack. Next time the day/moon conditions are similar I'm going to verify and record this.

Tonight I thought I'd try something for the hell of it and kept Barblizzard up while I was crafting, giving me 76 resist against ice. Other conditions for the test were Watersday, Waning Crescent (33%), facing north. Nothing you would expect to have much influence. These were my results out of 60 synths:

[CODE]Fail: 3 5.0%
N Q : 25 41.6%
HQ1 : 17 28.3%
HQ2 : 14 23.3%
HQ3 : 1 1.6%[/CODE]Total HQ rate was 53.3%, nothing statistically out of the ordinary, but the relative number of HQ2 is huge.

Definately have to look into this some more.

[Caspian]

Very cool Taskmage, thanks for the info. LS mate last night seemed to be getting a lot of hq's on mercury during earthday, using lightning crystals. So maybe day strong to your crystal helps with hq. If it does then maybe darksday also helps with hq, and same day as crystal hurts hq like lightsday.
After all that, may screw around with trying different bar- spells. Same as crystal, weak to crystal and strong to crystal. Lastly, may try equips that reduce resistance to certain elements. So much to do, so little time to experiment.

[Caspian]

Ok, did a little more today.
Woodworking 67, arrowwood lumber lvl 1.
Wind crystal
3x arrowwood log
bundling twince
Key Item Lumberjack
Earthday
Waning Crescent 17%
33 synths (was competing with another person for the logs in the guild)
Breaks: 1
NQ's: 19
HQ1's: 11
HQ2's: 2
HQ3's: 0

Breaks: 3.03%
NQ: 57.57%
HQ1: 33.3% exactly 1/3
HQ2: 6.06%
HQ3: 0%

HQ's total: just over 39%
Not quite as large of a sample group as I'd have liked, but enought to tell that its roughly the same as Lightsday, maybe a little better.
Wind>Earth, so right now I'm thinking Iceday and Darksday would give best results.
More to come as the time to synth presents itself.

[Taskmage]

Repeated my test run just now. Watersday, Waxing Crecent (24%), facing north. The last 10 synths were in the following Windsday because I started too late, but ...

Results:[CODE]Fail: 0 0.0%
N Q : 30 50.0%
HQ1 : 23 38.3%
HQ2 : 4 6.6%
HQ3 : 3 5.0%[/CODE]This is about what I'm used to. The HQ2 rate from the other day was certainly out of the ordinary.

I tried to apply the hypothesis to a stack of meatkabobs and cast Barfire before starting. No difference. 7 NQ, 5 HQ1, 0 HQ+. Very small sample, though.

*goes to collect more data*

[Caspian]

Thanks taskmage.

Also, meant to ask any of the more experienced crafters: What are some of the more prominent beliefs about crafting that I could look into testing? I'm sure many of them are correct, but you know how it can be. Something is believed long enough w/o being looked into and get taken as fact w/o anything to back it up. Let me know and I'll be more than happy to do what I can to test the myths, something of a FFXI Mythbuster if you will.

[lionx]

One of the most prominent beliefs is the crafting compass, where the direction of where you face when you begin synthing, will deterimine the HQ/NQ/skill up of that item.

http://s7.invisionfree.com/TheCraft/...&#entry7626124

You can try it out yourself too. I tried randomly switching directions a few times, and i get failures alot facing one way, but when i randomly switch to another i HQ every time. I dont know if its true or if its pure luck.