I can't bear to see this posted another time. This theory is bullshit.
{This is in response to the same theory posted by Thoraxes} The game is not hand-holding you telling you which action you should use. There is no experimental evidence to suggest this theory has any weight whatsoever. Most of the beta board is foolishly superstitious.
You want the truth - here it is... and it's a very simple, logical system. This was posted on the beta boards long ago but most people glanced over it at the time.
White = stable
Yellow = less stable
Red = somewhat volatile
Flashing = volatile, about to destabilize.
Once your synthesis loses stability, the same heirarchy applies as you progress towards going chaotic and exploding.
The safety of synthesis commands follows this order:
Standard > Rapid > Bold.
That's it. That's all there is to it. All of the commands are safest when used on white, and most risky when flashing. If your skill is low for the recipe, and you use bold on flashing, you're likely going chaotic. No matter what the color, standard has the highest chance of success and is why that even on very difficult recipes, I resist the temptation to use Rapid until I'm guaranteed to fail otherwise.
Myths:
- using a specific command will allow you to stabilize
- bold has the highest success rate on [x] color
- sparks count failures
- Durability can increase
The only thing that will allow you to stabilize is delivering a successful command or going chaotic. Given that using bold while chaotic is downright asinine unless you're 10 levels above the cap for the recipe (usually is a sure fire path to chaotic), your best chance to stabilize is use standard.
Bold always has the lowest success rate, regardless of color. Chew through 200 low level synths and this is obvious.
Sparks don't count failures. You will never get sparks from using standard synthesis even if you fail every time. You will get sparks from using rapid too many times, and my belief is that rapid degrades your %chance of success for all commands. You will get sparks from using rapid, even if you don't fail a single command.
I have never seen or heard of anyone's durability ever increasing. By "critical success" what most people are probably referring to is the use of bold while flashing to get huge quality boosts, regardless of success or failure. This happens quite regularly and is fun to exploit when going for HQ synths.
Loaar wrote: said:
The wait command doesn't actually do anything to stabilise the element. You can wait 10 times in a row, but the stability wont change until you perform another action. Waits purpose is to allow you to not take an action in the hope that one of your craft skills becomes available in the menu. Essentially the wait command is useless prior to level 10 in a craft (see below).
Useless prior to level 10? Whaaaa?
The wait command's purpose is to allow your element to change color. For example, if your element is flashing, using wait *might* let it reach a more stable state (i.e. red, yellow, or white). I use wait routinely to avoid deliberately entering a command on flashing.
A side effect of wait is that a special command might pop up. But, this is not the main reason why people use wait.