Crafting (DoH) Skills Guide for FFXIV

While leveling all of your crafting classes, you will learn a wide range of skills to assist with crafting. These skills are the same between all classes, with simply their icons changing.

Skills have been grouped based on their purpose/use and sorted via leveling order. For a list of skills solely based on level, you can always refer to your 'Actions & Traits' tab in game to know what you will unlock soon.

These are skills that mainly focus on increasing your progress and finishing a craft.

• Basic Synthesis is your starting synthesis skill, and it is often used at times to save CP given it costs 0CP (for example, near the end of a craft).
• Rapid Synthesis is a very powerful skill, however, it is also very unreliable. During normal crafting, it is only useful if you make a mistake and will not otherwise finish the craft. It is very useful during expert crafting due to high progress requirements.
• Veneration is your skill that buffs progress. You often want to use as many progress skills as possible for the four steps this skill is available to be one skill away from finishing the craft.
• Final Appraisal simply stops your craft from finishing, which is useful for times when you want to use a progress skill but not finish a craft yet and focus on quality.
• Careful Synthesis is a great general use synthesis skill, being slightly more powerful than basic but costing 7CP. This skill often finds use in rotations.
• Focused Synthesis is a powerful skill, but it is not used as often due to the fact you need to also combo it with Observe, making it cost two steps and making you fit less of them within veneration.
• Groundwork tends to be your main progress skill once unlocked due to it being strong. You can use it under both the Muscle Memory and Veneration Buff and then even halve durability under Waste Not to finish progress within several steps.
• Delicate Synthesis is quite a niche skill due to it being very expensive, but it can be helpful to gain Inner Quiet stacks while gaining progress.
• Prudent Synthesis is a nice skill due to it saving lots of durability, but it does not currently see much use due to the cost and the fact that it makes rotations take significantly longer.

These are skills that mainly focus on your quality chance to build stacks of Inner Quiet and make crafting HQ much easier.

• Basic Touch is your starting touch skill, and it combos into Standard and Advanced Touch as you level up, meaning it stays useful as you level.
• Hasty Touch requires 0 CP but has a much lower success rate, making it unreliable. It only really has use during early leveling when you have fewer skills and CP.
• Standard Touch combos from Basic Touch to reduce the CP cost of the skill down to 18. You would not use this skill outside of the combo except in niche situations.
• Great Strides is your first buff for quality skills. While it is active for three steps, you only gain the effect on the first step you use a quality skill, and the buff will wear off after. This gives you room to use multiple buffs and stack them for an even bigger gain.
• Innovation is your next quality buff and can stack with Great Strides. You would often use Innovation throughout a craft given it lasts four steps, but you can also use it later in the craft when you have more Inner Quiet stacks.
• Byregot's Blessing is your best quality skill. It gives you quality based on how many stacks of Inner Quiet you have built up during the craft. Generally, you want to build stacks, then use Great Strides and Innovation to then unleash a buffed Byregot's, which will complete the majority of the quality bar.
• Prudent Touch is one of your strongest touch skills due to the fact it only costs 5 durability to use, making it very CP efficient even at an expensive 25CP cost. You will often combo this skill with Manipulation, making it cost 0 durability for those eight steps and very useful for building Inner Quiet stacks.
• Focused Touch is a powerful touch skill. It would not be used early in a craft but can be great later on when you have built Inner Quiet stacks and do not want to spend them on Byregot's yet. You also have to combo it with Observe.
• Preparatory Touch costs 20 durability but gains you two Inner Quiet stacks. This skill has several uses - it can help build stacks or be a powerful skill near the end of the craft when buffed. You can fit four of these under Innovation, but it is expensive. This skill will often be used in macros that aim to save steps, so you can finish a macro with one button for convenience.
• Trained Eye is a handy skill once you overlevel crafts due to it being possible to two button most crafts and make them HQ.
• Advanced Touch is the third step in the touch combo you have available. Like Standard Touch, you would rarely use this skill outside of the combo.
• Trained Finesse can only be used when you have ten stacks of Inner Quiet, but it can be very useful in the right situations near the end of the craft when you have CP to spare but not durability.

These skills tend to manipulate your durability by either increasing it or decreasing the rate at which it goes down.

• Master's Mend simply restores durability by 30. It does not have many uses later on but has some niche uses in 35/40 durability crafts.
• Waste Not halves durability loss via skills for four steps and pairs really well with the basic touch combo. Because it halves durability loss, it is very effective on skills that cost 20 durability to use.
• Waste Not II is the same as Waste Not I but lasts eight steps at the cost of more CP. This skill also pairs well with the basic touch combo because you can fit two combos inside of it. This skill is just as effective for skills that require 20 durability.
• Manipulation is by far one of your most important crafting skills. It can only be unlocked through your class quests but is by far one of the best skills for a crafter. You will see this skill used in almost every craft.

These two skills can only be used on the first step, so take advantage of them.

• Muscle Memory is your first skill that can only be used on the first step. This gives you a huge initial boost to progress and a buff that boosts your next progress skill. If you overlevel a craft, you can use Final Appraisal before using this skill to make sure it does not finish a craft on the first step.
• Reflect is the other first step skill that can be used. At a very cheap cost of 6CP, you start your craft with two stacks of Inner Quiet - one stack for using the skill and a second as its additional effect.

These are skills that can only be activated on good or excellent conditions during a craft.

• Observe does nothing for one step, meaning buffs go down due to a step happening. The skill is mostly used to try and get a new condition.
• Tricks of the Trade restores 20CP, which is very useful for manually crafting. Due to needing a condition, it would not be used in a macro/rotation for consistency.
• Precise Touch gives you two stacks of Inner Quiet, making it incredibly useful for building stacks.
• Intensive Synthesis gives a big boost to progress, but it is rarely used due to the other conditional skills being much more useful. You often gain more from the CP or Inner Quiet stacks than you would progress.

These are skills that can only be performed by a specialist crafter with their crafting soul. They both require an item called a Crafter's Delineation each time you use a skill.

• Careful Observation works exactly like Observe, but buffs do not go down, meaning you can use it to easily look for a condition you want without losing buffs. You can only use this three times per craft.
• Heart and Soul essentially allows you to use a conditional skill once during your craft. This is an incredibly useful skill and gives some reliability to what are otherwise unreliable skills. You either gain an extra stack of Inner Quiet or 20CP for free.

Listed below is a list of traits. Most of these are mastery traits that buffed a collection of progress skills to balance them out instead of adding new variants and creating more button bloat.

• Inner Quiet is a stack that gives you more quality as you build stacks, to then be used near the end of a craft on Byregot's Blessing.
• Practice Makes Perfect allows you to use Trial Synthesis.
• Basic Synthesis Mastery simply buffs Basic Synthesis.
• Quality Assurance increases your chances of gaining a good condition on your craft by a slight amount.
• Synthesis Mastery buffs Rapid Synthesis.
• Careful Synthesis Mastery buffs Careful Synthesis.
• Groundwork Mastery buffs Groundwork.