Escutcheon Final Phase - My Experience

Hey everyone! I recently completed my escutcheon and wanted to share my experience, as I didn't find much specific information out there when I started and I figure this could help some aspiring crafters. I can't say my process was the fastest or most efficient, but it was consistent, which made it easy for me to project out both gil- and time-wise. Maybe some of you can take this and continue to optimize it for the community.


Acquiring materials
I was able to find a supplier on Cerberus who sold me spheres in bulk at a discount. For the true masochists out there, you can farm cards or other drops to desynth, but I believe it's more worth your time to earn gil through faster methods and then just buy the spheres from the AH or a supplier (if you can find one).

For crystals, farming elementals in Ru'Aun Gardens worked well for me.


Synth chains
Here's the majority of what I did:

3-step (light, 21 spirit)

Step	Crystal	Catalyst	Sphere
1	Ice	MC-I-SR01	Induration
2	Water	MC-I-SR01	Reverberation
3	Fire	MC-I-SR02	Fusion

3-step (light, 21 spirit)

Step	Crystal	Catalyst	Sphere
1	Fire	MC-I-SR01	Liquefaction
2	Lightning	MC-I-SR01	Impaction
3	Wind	MC-I-SR02	Fragmentation

4-step (darkness, 26 spirit)

Step	Crystal	Catalyst	Sphere
1	Fire	MC-I-SR01	Liquefaction
2	Lightning	MC-I-SR01	Impaction
3	Earth	MC-I-SR02	Gravitation
4	Water	MC-I-SR02	Distortion

4-step (darkness, 26 spirit)

Step	Crystal	Catalyst	Sphere
1	Ice	MC-I-SR01	Induration
2	Water	MC-I-SR01	Reverberation
3	Water	MC-I-SR02	Distortion
4	Earth	MC-I-SR02	Gravitation

I didn't incorporate many tier 3 spheres (for double light/dark) as my early calculations of adding them increased the effort by ~500M gil. I did do ~300 though as I had once accidentally purchased 255 MC-I-SR03, so take care when buying catalysts so you don't purchase the wrong ones.


Process
When I had spheres to burn at the ready, I would grind 3,000 spirit/day, which allowed me to complete the shield in about a month. I calculated it to be ~45 seconds to do a 3-step chain and just under a minute to do 4-step, which meant a little over two hours to get to 3,000 spirit (pulling this from memory so may not be completely accurate, but it's close enough).

As for HQs and breaks, I felt HQs occurred more often than breaks, and during each day's spirit grind, I would always net positive on my expected return in spirit. You can even retry an attempt if it breaks (up to the third chain) to keep the chain going as long as you're quick about it, which saves a bit of time in the long run. And as long as you're resetting the chain after hitting light or dark, you won't have to worry about the Synthesis Focuser II blowing up.

I'll say, it's an awful grind; I don't think I've ever been more bored working towards an ultimate item. The good thing is it's pretty mindless, so you can watch TV or something while muscle memory takes over in pressing the keys/buttons for the chains (assuming you do it manually).


End Result
At the end of the day -- having purchased 99% of the spheres -- I invested 784,622,500 gil to complete the shield, with 59,901,500 of that spent towards catalysts. There's also the investment of time, which was roughly 75 hours of monotonous key clicking (this doesn't including the preceding phases).

In using the shield, the most significant change I've noticed is the reduction in loss of materials, which essentially means more attempts at HQ, as most of the time you're only losing 1-2 mats and occasionally only the crystal.

I hope this helps any of you considering making an escutcheon or who have just started the final phase. For those who have also completed an escutcheon, what was your experience like? What suggestions would you make that I didn't mention above?

Feel free to PM me with any questions, otherwise good luck and have fun!

congrats on your shield :)

i myself am farming all the cards need to turn into spheres lol
Its a hell of a long way to go still. Wish i had the gill you had to just buy em lol

For my sc i have 4 difrent ones that I use. Total they cover all the spheres you can get get. Dont know if its the fastest way like that or not. Hope i can join the escu ranks when i finish near 2021 lol

You seem to have a good grasp and willingness to track results.

I would be very interested in how long it takes you to break even with that 840m price tag (it's a wood shield right?)

Not, how long it takes you to make a new 840m, but how long it takes you to make 840m profit, after materials cost (even if farmed, the value of the material cannot be zero)

IE: it costs 5m to make 6m and takes a week to sell to make 1m, how many (years) does it take to make money. (as a "normal" crafter)

Completely agree. I've been wondering for almost a year if its even still possible to earn back what one invests to make a shield, in particular if you buy your spheres.

I think a better understanding on the true cost vs recovery analysis goes deeper than that.

How much money do you make over what you would have made if you never crafted the shield in the first place?

I.E if you made a 6 mil piece of gear for 5 mil, but the benefit of crafting that shield (averaged over time) only increases your profit by 100k per month (as an example), how long would it take for you to recoup the real cost of crafting the shield?

Its what I would've asked for but there's just too much luck. Yes you could guess it takes on average number of attempts and average loss of NQ average loss of break average loss on a +1 vs a +2

It doesn't really work in practice though, because you would craft less without the shield than you would with it, so just the fact that you have it already skews the result. (willing to try one stack without a shield vs two stacks with a shield etc)

Wanted to be reasonable. You can do both at the same time.

i see the shield as an achievement lol. And a small hope cooking will start making more money in het future if it gets more synths for finished shield. But thats wishfull thinking :)

Pre Altana's Repast, I think it was actually impossible to even recoup the cost of the cooking shield.

You just couldn't possibly move enough product and the margins were slivers.

Now, assuming you can find a buyer, you make a couple mil per sale on a NQ repast (no reason to force HQ with enchantment) It may actually have the now fastest recouped cost.

I see it for an achievement also, on my last stage, just buying my spheres though, don’t have time to waste spending months crafting them lol

First, I gotta say this was definitely a trophy piece, but I do keep close track of what I spend/make on crafting, and below is a comparison of my before and after attempts at a voodoo togi to illustrate the impact of an escutcheon. It's only been five or six weeks since I finished, so I don't have a large post-escutcheon sample size, but if this stays true then the benefits are significant.

Pre-escutcheon

Synth	Success	Percent
Hara-ate	936	N/A
Cursed Togi -1	65	6.94%
Voodoo Togi	7	10.77%

Post-escutcheon

Synth	Success	Percent
Hara-ate	82	N/A
Cursed Togi -1	25	30.49%
Voodoo Togi	8	32.00%

I included the hara-ate synth to show how much gil and time is saved in prep, which means more in your pocket. And the huge jump in success rate post-escutcheon isn't because I ascended to the next tier in crafting, but because with it you can save so much on breaks that you get dozens more attempts with the same materials.

As for making my gil back, again it's only been a handful of weeks, but here's what I've been able to HQ in that time:

• 8x voodoo togi

• 6x voodoo kote

• 1x abyssal beads +2

If all of those were to sell for the going price on Cerberus, I'd gross out at 316M. Total cost for all of this was ~69,500,000 (and I still have enough mats for a few more attempts at a +2 neck), so my net gain would be ~245,500,000. And I'm maybe spending a few hours a week of actual crafting.

The challenge of course is being on a smaller server, as while mats are cheaper, they aren't as readily available, and of course everything sells super slow. I reckon a more ambitious crafter on a busier server could make their gil back rather quickly.

why would people spend millions on food items? i've seen a couple of repasts in bazaars back when sparks were not nerfed yet and they stayed there for a while, they were far from a fast selling item.

sure you'll find a glitcher/botter who needs to win that parse every few weeks or months but even those will sooner than later realise that its a waste of gil, especially post sparks nerf.

even on asura it barely sells 3.5 times a day with plenty of competition, 0.9 times on odin and 0.5 times on bahamut. i'd like to give you the draylo approval but i'm affraid it's not worth it.

People do silly ***. 5m for a food just is what it is. 25 for an HQ

All things considered people pay 100m for STR+1, why wouldn't they pay 5m for food. Going to make it back in 30 seconds conduit mercing.

can't compare gear with food. a gear investment stays beneficial till they introduce stronger gear in a future update, food just lasts a couple of hours or till you die.

It's not like you use the foods nonstop. If you're a casual who still struggles with dyna or master trials, 5m to give a whole party a solid boost isn't a bad deal.

BTW, not just there are just a handful items from cooking that can cover up shield costs, but even altana repast can be received from gobbiebox...

as far as i know altana repast is the only new recipe you receive from final cooking shield. marine stewpot can already be made once you finish the one befor final stage.

you pay same price as all the other shields, you receive 1 new recipe opposed to several on other escutcheons, you compete not just with other shield holders but also with repasts from gobbiebox and its a group food effect which means even less sales. yep, has profit written all over.

I had 1 mules to most crafts starting shield at some point, just skiping the woodworking one.

When i started the Crafter points farming from cooking, i just decided to toss the shield and restart that char from zero to woodworking.

I like the concept of cooking, but those many troublesome recipes were so bothersome that i was sure i wouldnt stand running around with 8 different stacks just to make one recipe.

yeah, its pretty bad. on other crafts like smithing or gold smithing you often can purchase the requested guild point item from sparks npc and you earn a lot more guild points.
the juice isn't worth the squeeze.

I'm having a problem with card drops. I barely get any get drops. Do Ionis Bonuses from coalitions help more with card drops?? I don't mind the farm as long as I get a decent drop rate.

I dont think so.

Drop rate is pretty bad already. It just becomes competitive with old ***items because it somehow has a lower chance to lose materials.

From my experience, even TH effect on this is kinda questionable. The best thing is really cleaving for those. If youre killing one by one, expect something like 1~2 cards every 10 mins. Which should equate a drop rate of kinda 1 card every 20 kills.

Also, do notice not every mob drops card. Its a given just gates 2 maps have mobs that drop those but even in gates 2, most zones have 2 or 3 families that dont drop anything at all.

For example, bees in Sih Gates dont drop cards. Jagils in woh gates also dont drop it.

It gives attack magic attack and haste, but not really worth the walk back to the camp unless your crafting them as they drop.

Unless youre fightning bats, then its worth just to get the crystal though.

Using cards is intensive crystal consuming. I work with expectation of 1,5 crystal per sphere created.

AFAIK, there is no mob that drops cards and lightning crystal.

Drop rate on cards for me is about 13/14% when I farm em most of the time.

Just finished my shield this evening and would also like to share how my last phase went. I started the shield back in July and by September I had hit the final phase. Prior to that I had been farming cards for weeks between phase 1 and phase 4, and had about 200 of each roughly. That's when I took a huge hit to the gut and learned just how bad the break and loss rate on these spheres were. At that point I decided to go elsewhere to get spheres.

I went to Pal. Mines to farm fetich pieces. I got lucky the first day and didn't have anyone there, but soon realized there was a crafter with two bots farming the top floor, making it hard for me really compete and build up a steady supply of spheres. From there I went to Pashow Marsh to farm fetich pieces just outside of Beadeux. I was disappointed to see how slow that went as well, but was getting at least better drops than the mines with the botter going.

To supplement the other spheres needed that matched with the fetich ones, I hit up Spiders and Tigers in Aht Urghan as well as Wights and Scorpions in Maze of Shak. Then I really started to synth....only to get about 4K spirits from 3 weeks of hard farming. Being on a server without many sphere sellers(and ah prices being so high for stacks), I looked at FFXIAH and saw how many were bazaared cheaply on Asura and realized my best plan would be to get them from there. At the start of October, I sent over 3 mules and 300m to pick up spheres. My goal was to focus on two synth paths: Liquefaction> Impaction> Fragmentation and Induration> Reverberation> Fusion. I also noticed Light spheres were a fraction of the cost there so I picked up 100m worth for reselling to make up the Gil I spent on Asura.

I came back with 200m in spheres to use and 100m on spheres to sell. That ended up giving me an additional 41k spirits roughly from that trip. The sales of the light spheres were profitable, giving me back around 240m. At that point I decided to go over 1 last time and at the start of November I sent over my mules again to pick up another 300m in spheres. This time I focused on saving costs and vowed to spend less than 100k per craft chain. After a few days I realized the inventory wasn't as great as it was the first time I went and had to change tactics. On top of the other spheres, I added 1,000 scission spheres(since they were selling at 3-6k a piece) to start the liquefaction chain off with and another 1000 light spheres to end both chains with. I calculated that would be enough to finish off 100,000 spirits with roughly 4K extra "points" worth of spheres left over in case of extreme bad luck.

Finishing tonight, I was left with about 85 stacks of different spheres to resell. All in all, I agree with the OP about farming the Gil vs farming sphere. Doing that has allowed me to finish the shield months quicker than farming would do for me. Thankfully I only spent about 360m in spheres after the original reselling of light sphere, and I'll be getting more back once I can sell my remaining inventory of spheres off. The only other costs were of course buying catalysts which was probably around 70m (I didn't track that unfortunately). I of course farmed all the crystals/donated some by LS members to save on costs and in the end it looks like I spent about 450m to make the shield from start to finish when factoring in making all those annoying kits for crafter points. It was a self rewarding project but not something I would want to do ever again. I also want to thank the OP because this thread and the chains he used were ones that I really ended up focusing my efforts on.

Please share if you increased your mastery rank after completing the escutcheon quest.

Good job. And nice write-up. I hope you're profitable and get lucky with your craft.

I never noticed mastery rank until last night when I checked my title after completing the quest. I am currently Mastery Rank: 4. I do not know if it was lower than that before I finished unfortunately, I'm sorry.

Just a question, has anyone had super bad spirit leaks? Last night I was at 76k spirit in and within 2 chains I lost about 400 spirit in the span of a half hour. My stability bar was filled and was doing the 4 step light synthchain. Was wondering if it was bad luck or if I did something wrong? Was the first time since starting that I leaked bad.

Only time i lost points when i was spamming t1's so i stopped doing that. Didnt see any losses when i did my normal spams.

It was just bad luck. I had a couple spirit leaks of anywhere between 100-500. It was random for me when it happened. I would go for 30 minutes+ without a single break synth/chain loss and then would randomly break a synth/chain and it would leak the spirit.