I pretty much bumbled my way through it entirely on the Japanese servers and I can't even figure out how to do what I did on it.

General questions are:

1. How do you upgrade/enhance your weapons? The thing I primarily used crafting for when I played on the JP Server is for upgrading my Rosa Crane to get it close to my Rod (which even at max +, it would never get close otherwise) as it was my favorite Tailis, but I can't find any option to do that here.

2. How to unlock higher levels for Technique/Photon Art customizing? I only have 1 or 2 for a lot and no matter how much I've crafted, I can't seem to unlock 3 or other options. Is there a particular order I need to do? I just don't want to waste a bunch of my disc fragments if I'm screwing everything up.

1. Weapon Crafting isn't available. Since we don't have OT weapons, the only weapon crafting would be NT crafting, and the stats on those crafts are very high and might mess with current balance; remember, NT crafting wasn't introduced until we already had 15* weapons.

2. For Photon Arts, they are all unlocked from the start, and leveling your Photon Art crafting level just increases your chances of getting better Type 1 and Type 2 modifiers. For Techniques, you need to just keep crafting; your Crafting Achievements will tell you what you need to do to get the different recipes, and in many cases is it just to craft multiple times with specific recipes.

My biggest question is about recipes. For instance today's daily crafting orders:

I can see I don't have these recipes. What I can't see is how to sensibly find out what unlocks them!

The achievements list tells you which recipes each achievement unlocks. But it doesn't seem any of the over 850 achievements unlock these and I'm not particularly inclined to go through them one by one a second time around.

I did find achievements that unlocked Lv 8 and Lv 10 equivalents. But I can see from starting with the likes of Back Melee Defense Lv 8 while needing to unlock Back Melee Defense Lv 3 that recipes for specific levels do not grant previous levels. So that doesn't help.

I'm hearing recipes like Back Melee DEF [HP] Lv 3 might require achievements for weapon extension that is not available to us yet. Nobody really seems to be sure though.

But is there really no way to look at a recipe you don't have and just be told the achievement that gives it? That seems crazy to me.

@Miraglyth Those are actually unlocked by Craft Level rather than through specific recipe chains; the Lv3 recipes of those unlock once you hit lv20 in your Equipment Extension. Basically, they unlock once you get any 36 Equipment Extension achievements.

Even if that's true it's still super confusing because there is an achievement for hitting level 20 and that only says it gives the Lv 8 version rather than the Lv 3 version:

Edit: Oh, hold on. That's saying you need to hit level 20 to make this achievement available to be completed.

Which brings us back to my earlier point really. You get the Lv 3 version directly from hitting crafting level 20 without there being an achievement for it? Great. Where in the game does it tell you that?

Literally all I can see from these menus is "You need this recipe. You don't have it. I'm not telling you how to get it." Is it really this badly designed?

@AndrlCh said in Crafting Tips?:

1. Weapon Crafting isn't available. Since we don't have OT weapons, the only weapon crafting would be NT crafting, and the stats on those crafts are very high and might mess with current balance; remember, NT crafting wasn't introduced until we already had 15* weapons.

2. For Photon Arts, they are all unlocked from the start, and leveling your Photon Art crafting level just increases your chances of getting better Type 1 and Type 2 modifiers. For Techniques, you need to just keep crafting; your Crafting Achievements will tell you what you need to do to get the different recipes, and in many cases is it just to craft multiple times with specific recipes.

Thank you! At least I'm not crazy and missing it then.

I'll be honest, I'm really struggling with the achievement menu so if you know anywhere that just has a list of what to do to unlock achievements, that would be awesome I think I need to do some stuff at a lower level, maybe? It just feels really overwhelming to me.

@Miraglyth said in Crafting Tips?:

Literally all I can see from these menus is "You need this recipe. You don't have it. I'm not telling you how to get it." Is it really this badly designed?

It does kind of feel that way x-x

@Princesse-Jen I can't seem to find any English resource that has everything laid out in a simple to view fashion by Achievements.

I thought the old Cirnopedia site did, but it looks like ti only has it for the OT weapon extensions.

The JPN-server version of the ARKS-Visiphone site (it does not seem like they have moved that info over to the NA/Global version yet) does list the unlock requirements for each Custom Tech recipe on their Technique Customs List page, but ti does use the fan-translated terms, so that might present a bit of an issue in terms of, well, terminology. Also, the info for Units and Timed Abilities is lacking there.

It is layed out in a more linear fashion by Achievement on the JPN swiki, but it is in Japanese and running it through Google Translate can leave it a bit confusing: https://pso2.swiki.jp/index.php?クラフト

I appreciate the resources at least and will do my best!

Honestly, though, just looking at it, I kind of hate that this is how it's done. I have little interest in doing so much crafting grinding