I figured I would make a post about synergy, and in particular the ebon gear, now that I finally have 2 completed pieces.
I think there's a lot of flaws in the system that can be easily corrected, and should hopefully be fixed in the next update.
A lot of these steps can be done simultaneously, kind of like upgrading salvage gear. You can get the 15/25/35 and materials in any order, but need them all together to upgrade the piece.
The first thing you need to do to upgrade a piece is to obtain the base piece via the AH or having someone craft for you. They are rather expensive; my Ebon Frock cost me 1.4M and my Ebon Beret 500k.
Once you've done that you need to collect your aptant to upgrade your base piece into a specialized form. For example: Aptant: Secan will convert any of the Ebon Frock pieces to an Ebon Coat piece. Aptant: Geoc will convert any of the Ebon Frock pieces to an Ebon Talar piece. You can find the particular aptant you need on wiki.
Each aptant has 5 NMs that can drop it. Most of them are timed spawns, but several are lottery as well. Each "aptant NM" has 2 aptants they can drop. Which means that you can get the wrong aptant to wrong.
The good news about this is that you have tons of choices as far as what to kill/farm for your aptant, the bad news is that the drop rate is HORRIBLE. I went 0/31 on trying to get my Aptant: Secan, and then got 2 in a row, so 2/33. I was unlucky in that I had the NM drop the incorrect aptant 3 times, but regardless 2/33 is horrible. I couldn't imagine if there was actual competition for these NMs. I was basically killing the NM > afking for 2hours> killing the NM> afking for 2hours. SE definitely needs to up the drop rate a bit on these.
Some of my kills:
Bunch of no drops!
Wrong aptant #1!
Wrong aptant #2!
Drop!
I would also recommend collecting Scylds (used to get evoliths) while killing your aptant NMs. Several of the NMs are good scyld builders, so you might as well take advantage of the fact that you'll need to kill them a billion times.
You will also need an Ebur pigment, which thankfully is a 100% drop off of Oupire, Zirnitra, and Scylla.
Already posted about Zirnitra, but I recently tried Scylla too as RDM BRD SMN.
Scylla is harder than Zirnitra, so I really wouldn't bother really. Basically you need to DD it without feeding TP at all, which means your only DD options are COR and SMN. Between the 2, SMN is obviously a much stronger choice. No bio, and it's immune to poison. No nukes either obviously. Slow works though.
Once you have your pigment, aptant, and base item you'll need to find a crafter.
Trade your aptant+ base item to get the upgraded Ebon version. Then the Ebon piece+pigment to get your ebur piece.
Now starts another annoying part, etching. Each ebon piece has 3 slots, the first 2 are "VS family", which are useless honestly... The 3rd slot is the important one where you can actually add a somewhat useful stat. I don't know exactly how synergy works, but when you "etch" you can HQ or NQ like normal crafting. On the Ebur coat for example, the max size you can etch into a slot is size 8, but during the synergy part if you NQ it, you'll get a slot of size 1-3, or so. If you HQ it, you'll get a slot of size 5-8. My #s may be a little off, because I don't know exactly how it works, but that's the gist.
The frustrating part is that you can't just redo a particular slot if you're unhappy with it. You need to START all over, and re etch slot1 , slot2, and then slot3 again, until you get your desired result. This can get annoying quickly. Getting the max size slot3 will probably take a few tries at least, which means redoing slot1 and slot2 over and over. This would be even worse if slot1/slot2 were actually useful instead of just vs family, since getting HQ on all 3 is difficult.
Getting a 6/8 and 1/8 forcing us to redo the etching process from the beginning.
HQing slot 2!
Finally HQing slot 3!
This could be easily solved if SE would let you constantly retry a particular slot over and over, without erasing what you've done previously.
One nice thing is though if you fail the synth you have no danger of losing anything.
Once you're content with your etching, you need to actually get the evoliths to put on them. Most of the NMs with useful evoliths for the 3rd slot actually need scylds in order for you get the hunt. Hopefully you've collected some scylds from your aptant hunting, if not you will need to do lower tiered hunts in order to builds Scylds.
Find the specific evolith you want, grab the hunt for that NM, and head out. Each completion of the hunt will give you a random size evolith, so more than likely you'll have to do your NM/hunt a few times to get your desired sizes. I chose Sarcopsylla to get Lightning Magic critical hit rate, since for some unknown reason there is no elemental magic accuracy/attack bonus evoliths. I personally went 2/5 on getting the max sizes I needed for hat and body.
Once you have your evoliths, you need to attach them to your upgraded piece. This step is thankfully really simple, and you don't need to worry about HQ/NQs.
Finished products:
I am leaving the first 2 slots blank (VS family) because I'm too lazy, and they're useless. Plus when people /check you it looks funny with first 2 slots blank!
The gear isn't that bad, but could definitely be better given the amount of work involved. There are a few stand out pieces though. Ebur Talar (RDM/BRD/BLU) is a Fast Cast body, which is really nice for example. I think if they can fix the etching/aptant drop rates, as well as add a few useful evoliths (hello elemental magic attack bonus?) the system would be greatly improved.
Plus now I'm super cute!
