HQ Rate Is Seriously Messed Up

Ok, so I started doing synergy about 1 month ago, and now I'm thorougly confused.

In my first 12 synths, I went 6/12 with HQs, all on high end recipes. I made some Mekira stuff, some Fazhuelo gear, and some Avant items. I was stoked. I was working on making a +1 Avant set for a friend, and was rocking it, until I came to feet.

I've now gone 0/10 trying to HQ the Avant feet, along with 3 NQs on Mekira head in the mean time. That's quite the stark difference from the ~50% rate I was seeing before. Is that just the worst string of bad luck, or am I missing something?

Only thing I've thought of is around the same time I stopped getting HQs, I filled up on cinder. So tonight I'm going to clean out all my cinder, maybe somehow maxing that out at the 10k limit prevents HQ? I don't know what's going on, but to go from 50% HQ to 0% seems like more than just luck.

Nearly all of my synths have been at perfect alignment, one ore two of them have had one element off by 1 (of which at least one was an HQ), so I don't think it's that. I've tried all the other rumors like thwacking and halting explosions and everything else, but I really feel like something has changed to out right prevent HQs from happening. Ideas????

It's not a very big sample, so probably just luck on the first ones.

Tanaka works in mysterious ways.

It's all luck with synergy.

I agree that it's probably coincidence, but my average yield on wool grease has dropped from ~9.5 to ~8 in the past month.

Amirite?

Perhaps it's not all luck!

On my hunch, I emptied out cinder to 7000, instead of the cap of 10k, that I'd been at since about the same time my HQs completely halted. And wouldn't you know it, very next synth is an HQ. Could be luck, but perhaps not. However, it should be reasonable to test, so I'm going to see if I can arrange that.

If this is really the case, it sure would explain an awful lot!!

I'd say that's very very unlikely, but feel free to test it.

Very sure that falls under:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation

I experienced the same thing as you. A bit of HQ in the beginning and nothing later on. Just keep crunching out the synths and you'll eventually HQ again. Anything else is just to make yourself feel better about what happened, and doesn't really make a difference in the long run.

HQ rates are mostly agreed on to be percentage based. If your respective HQ rate is 30%, you can theoretically go 0/10,000 on it. Even if it was 99.9999% you could still have the same results -- it's all based on what the overall sample size is and pure luck.

Just remember, when something is a percentage based random possibility, its "possibility" resets each try. i.e. if it's a 1 in 10 chance, each try is 1 in 10 and it doesn't go 1 in 10 > 2 in 10 > until eventually 10 in 10.

Indeed - and a couple of dozen synths certainly isn't really big enough to do a proper stats analysis on. Sure was a hell of a coincidence, though. At least it's easy to test!!

However, everything I've read has said that the HQ rate on Synergy is nothing like normal crafting (normal crafting would have me at a 1% HQ rate). That seems to mean HQ rates on synergy are following a different paradigm than the long establish tiers of 11/31/51+ on normal crafts.

Unfortunately, all the 80+ synths that I can do solo are far too expensive to do a large trial on. I'm going to have to pick something lower, at least to start on, to test out my cinder theory. Depending on what happens there, I can find a cook to let me try out Cloudy Wheat Broth.

Oh, also related question - have you HQ'd while your cinder was maxed out? Have you done it after the last crafting update (whenever that was, 2-3 weeks ago?)

Cause ya know, SE never messes things up. Maybe I was getting too many HQ, and they needed Balance(tm) ....

If you couldn't HQ while cinder was full, we'd have found this out not too long after synergy came out.

Perhaps your HQ rate is being affected by not finishing with perfect elemental alignments?

No I'm quite sure on the alignment. At least, on the elements that I know to matter (the non 0 ones). The other elements I'm using rarely (if ever?) end at 0.

It could just be a hell of a bad luck streak, but 13 in a row on a process that's supposed to be 50% is a hell of a streak of bad luck. The fact that they just did a major overhaul of crafting tells my programmer side that anything is possible.

I'm Curious as to why you think HQ on Avant, Mekira, Fazuelo synths are "supposed to be" 50%?

Yes I have. I capped out cinder many, many months ago and have not once cleared it or anything. I also mananged to HQ avant body/hands/legs all within 2-3 synths a week after it was released. Now when I went back and tried to get avant hands +1 again I'm just plagued with NQ left and right...

Bad luck is bad man :/

Well not those specifically ... but the research (lol) I've done says that the HQ rate on all synergy recipes is a lot higher than the 1% it's supposed to be, given the recipe level is the same as my skill level (80). I've read everything from 25% to 50%.

What kind of HQ rates have you seen?

Ah, well that's good to know. I can live with bad luck, just thought it was worth a double check. I guess that just leaves open the question of HQ rate overall, and if there are any other factors besides element alignment.

I can verify that you can HQ while cinders are capped. I almost always HQ1 wool grease (even with alignments partially off).

Can you define "almost always"? 50%? 25%? I'm going to try to do as many synergies as I can over the next few days to get some data.

Without actual numbers it's just

I usually NQ 1-2 out of 12 attemps, so roughly 80-90% HQ rate. Wool grease is a fairly low level synth.

I'm actually getting interested in this, so I'm going to start keeping track of my HQ rates and element balances next time I craft.

Neat! Yeah, I'm surprised that I really can't come across any large studies for synergy HQ.