By slipispsycho 2010-02-20 20:01:06
Here's the easiest way to think about it...
Aside from fishing (and possibly synergy, since it's new, i dunno how it plays into things) you can only take any craft to level 60... Then in sort of merit fashion, you have an additional 40 points to work with to split up between the crafts however you like... You can choose to use those points so that your crafts are all balanced to how you see fit, you can choose to take one craft all the way to 100, or take 4 crafts to 70, 2 to 80 etc..
As for the HQ rates, those rates are based upon many many many many many synths... The more times you perform a synth, the closer it EDGES towards the commonly accepted HQ numbers (11-30 = 10%, 31-50 = 30%, etc)
Let's just assume you already have a craft to 100.. Now if you performed the same exact synth 1,000, even 10,000 times, you'd have a very good baseline for HQ rate.. Say you're 28 levels above the cap, statisticly speaking, over the course of 10,000 synths, you may notice that that you that you HQ about 300 of them... That doesn't mean just becuase you do 1,000 synths you will HQ 30 times.
I've taken so many crafts to 'mid-high levels' that I can't even tell you how many levels I've put into crafting over my FFXI career (this is NOT my first char), however I can tell you that crafting seems to have a mind of it's own.. It does what it wants, when it wants... I've went upwards of 0/30 HQ on a synth I'm 80 levels above, I've also HQ'd recipes a few times in a row of a synth that I'm using to skill up on.
If you're going to get into crafting, it's VERY important to realize, that even when you're of very high levels (90+) you still cannot rely on HQ-ing to make your gil (in otherwords, if you're currently doing a certain synth for money, make sure it's an item that sells well and at a profit for the NQ version, think of the HQ when it happens as a bonus)