New To Synergy ...

...and really confused.

I have the quest started, I haven't actually finished it yet because quite frankly, it freaks me out. I want to do synergy because I enjoy crafting and it seems to be the new crafting. Any pointers for a newb in synergy?

get yourself 4 mythril leaves, a flask of vitriol, and a lot of earth fewell. Then get on a job that can haste put the mats in spam "add earth fewell" until the synergy breaks all the way till 57 or 60 or so level on 1 set of materials since you dont lose anything but fewell when you break a synth in synergy after that i gave myself a few test synths like tele nashmau earring to get accustomed to the finer points of synergy i went level 0-alcides harness+1 in a day

Yea, what Anjisnu said. You only need 1 set a mats to skill up on. You never actually finish the recipe while skilling up. You run away from the furnace and let the synth fail to get your mats back.

I suggest spamming fewell until the furnace starts to blow, then Smack it for a chance at a skill up and to stop the explosion. Also don't forget to get training every 5 skill levels. You wanna cap Feed Fewell first to lvl5 then the rest is up to you after that.

Pretty much what they said is good. It will start slow if you use something that many skill levels apart because you'll have to thwack the furnace every 1-2 feeds though. I aimed for something within 12-13 levels of my current skill after my initial mordant75 bone knife recipe.

Good luck.