Escutcheon SynthChain Help

Can some of you crafters share what synth chains you used for your shield. This is my first one that im making and im looking to see if there is a 7 step ending with light. I currently use a 7 step ending in dark but i wanna compare to others experience.

Am curious what you are using for dark? I am at the same stage basically. I did one light sc, but did it wrong as I didn't know what I was doing and ended up just doing light to light to test.

Must admit the distance to the goal has me avoiding starting up my shield progress again haha. Hopefully can get motivated to get going on it again.

The size of skillchain isnt a measure of doing "right" or "wrong".

Its just different mode choose depending on resources.

The cheapest way would be doing T1 chains. The trade off eould be an incredibly long time synthing as well the amount of sphere needed.

Doing 6+ steps would be the fastest but then the price skyrocket due catalyat plua higher tier sphere.

Anything between would be a mix of cost and time.

Personally i think the sphere offers tend to be smaller on most servers so i do 4 steps till i ran out of T3 spheres, then 2 steps till i ran out of T2 then finally burn the leftover T1 spheres before grabbing more

About which recipe, its more related what camp you farm/how many are supplied.

Personally ive been getting more liquefaction and impaction. Add fragmentation and thats a 2 step to close with light.

Generally i think some spheres are way harder to get outside carda like transfixions and scission.

Matched pairs for chains, if farming one card make sure you farm the other as well:

Fire/lightning
Water/ice
Dark/wind
Earth/light

Make 3 step light/dark with t1 > t1 > t2

Sell all your t3 spheres and make gil to fund the rest of the shield or just save it to start crafting when your shield is done

Citation: finished gold shield in April of last year while making 350m profit doing it because of selling and not using t3 spheres, and up at least 2b since then

Anything over a 3 step (or 4 if using t3 spheres) is pointless and doesn't improve your efficiency at all

I just got to the sphere stage. Trying to understand this before I start dumping Gil on it. I collected a lot of spheres between mules during new year’s campaign. How would a 3 step light/dark look like?

I’m trying to find a guide for recipes to follow but I can’t find anything…

Liquefaction > Impaction > Fragmentation > Light
Induration > Reverberation > Fusion > Light
Detonation > Compression > Distortion > Darkness
Transfixion > Scission > Gravitation > Darkness

Granted I posted this in 2019, it should still be relevant

https://www.bluegartr.com/threads/130540-Escutcheon-Questions?p=7233586&viewfull=1#post7233586

Read further down for a few more posts I forgot I made about farming

The synthchains posted above are a very solid core and I wouldn't deviate from it too much TBH. You can do T1 chains but they're only worth a few points each so I wouldn't bother.

I would be very mindful of the cost and time investment of completing the thing before you start dumping spheres, catalysts, and time into this. You said you had a lot of spheres from the new years' campaign, what kind of volume? Even with maxed mules on your account, I don't think you'll be even 5% of the way done after using those, so consider what it will cost you overall.

I've made posts in the past with all my data for my shields which are available if you want the nitty gritty, but the short version is: you'll be spending between 40-50m in catalysts to the NPC and about 14,000 spheres. If you're farming the spheres you can consider those "free", if you're buying them you can estimate what you're willing to pay for each sphere and guess how much you're going to spend.

I would personally do these calculations and estimations before you start doing synthchains, because once you're invested you can't take that back, you want to make sure you're fully committed.

All of this and much like most remas with gil syncs once you're half done the rema you still don't have a usable product, difference here is about 6x. half done a mythic or empy is around 60m, half done a shield is around 360m(numbers pending cause I haven't checked prices since I made mine)

Yup, I get it. It will take time and effort. I’m sure the spheres I have is nothing compared to what I need. I’ll get it done eventually. ;) Ty for all the inputs!

Just to add on to what was said above: I think the estimates are also really lowball. I would say it's at minimum 900m for a shield in today's economy and the hours it takes to complete one manually are orders of magnitude higher than what it takes to make a REMA.

If you spend 50 hours/week farming spheres, I'd say you could reasonably finish one in about 4-6 months.

It's not realistic to be done except by botting, buying spheres off a high-population server, and/or having absolutely no life/respect for your own time.

It's not remotely comparable to any other grind in the game.

If you get 200k EP/hr (I'm not sure this is reasonable, IDK what EP grinding numbers really look like) then you'd have about 5 jobs from ML0 -> ML50 by the time you got the spheres for a single shield. Plus another job or so from ML 0->45 in the time it would take you to do the actual synthchains.

Not trying to discourage you, I don't know how much botting you do, how much gil you have, or how much free time you have, it might very well be possible for you and not a big deal, just wanted to make sure you understand the gravity of the situation, not thinking it was like Therion Ichor-levels of grinding or something.

It's simple math, as Pantafernando stated earlier. Doing 2-step T2 chains represents the cheapest path to 100k spirit but the longest time spent at the focuser. If you do 2 step T2 chains using 10k spheres and 100k stacks of clusters, it will cost you about 366.5M gil to complete the shield.

This route, however, will cost you 20x as much time spent at the focuser compared to 4-step light/dark. 4-step light/dark, on the other hand, using 10k/100k/100k prices (YMMV) costs close to 1B.

As for me, I don't shy away from 2-step T2 synths if they are cheap and plentiful. Math says that I should welcome them.

To be clear, I said I would avoid T1 chains, which are Scission, Liquefaction, Detonation, etc.

These are worth 2 points for NQ, 3 for HQ, and 6 for HQ2. I don't think these are worth doing.

I do think that T2 chains, Distortion, Fusion, etc. are worth doing, I do them all the time. Usually following them with a T3 is efficient because sure it costs 100k (or more IMO) but it gives almost 2.5x as much spirit and you're already doing the T2 anyway.

Obviously YMMV, depends how much time/gil/spheres you have.

I get it, I really do. I've played this game long enough, took a 7 year break, came back realizing I left with a shield at stage 4. So it's a project I'd like to finish, I'm not saying it's gonna get done tomorrow, it'll take time, I spent the last 2 weeks getting craftsmanship to 100% and crafting points trading kits (need 4k more points to get the final item). I have some spheres, not a lot. I'm sure it'll be a grind, given that this is a mule, I first have to level it, gear it, get missions completed to get the crafting ring from SoA, then farm spheres/buy them as they become available. It's a project which I know will require time and dedication. :)

I'm not in a rush, that's fo sho!

Finished! 2months 2 days. What a journey it was!

Use https://i.ibb.co/SsVFWN4/Capture.png
Not https://ibb.co/X2FcNXr

Couldn't figure it out, thanks!

Congrats. I think Eschutcheon is about the hardest most grindy accomplishment left in the game (assuming you don't just buy all your spheres). idk how long it took me, but I'm certain it was longer than 2 months.

I had a funny idea for my 3D printed Eschutcheon shield. I was going to include a small thinly printed Synthesis Focuser model for people to smash. I know that's the only thought running through my head when I look at that thing lol

I made a spreadsheet, I bought 45m worth on spheres, some were gifted to by me other crafters and I farmed the rest. Palba > Eldime > Maze. I stuck with these synth combos (very risky ones)

Detonation Scission Liquefaction Impaction Fragmentation Light

Induration Reverberation Distortion Gravitation Darkness

I was never able to farm Transfixion or Compression spheres so I just used the ones I mentioned. It was a grind for sure!

Oh and I tried it out today, 1/1 on Barfawc!