Escutcheon Final Phase - My Experience

Hey everyone! I recently completed my escutcheon and wanted to share my experience, as I didn't find much specific information out there when I started and I figure this could help some aspiring crafters. I can't say my process was the fastest or most efficient, but it was consistent, which made it easy for me to project out both gil- and time-wise. Maybe some of you can take this and continue to optimize it for the community.


Acquiring materials
I was able to find a supplier on Cerberus who sold me spheres in bulk at a discount. For the true masochists out there, you can farm cards or other drops to desynth, but I believe it's more worth your time to earn gil through faster methods and then just buy the spheres from the AH or a supplier (if you can find one).

For crystals, farming elementals in Ru'Aun Gardens worked well for me.


Synth chains
Here's the majority of what I did:

3-step (light, 21 spirit)

Step	Crystal	Catalyst	Sphere
1	Ice	MC-I-SR01	Induration
2	Water	MC-I-SR01	Reverberation
3	Fire	MC-I-SR02	Fusion

3-step (light, 21 spirit)

Step	Crystal	Catalyst	Sphere
1	Fire	MC-I-SR01	Liquefaction
2	Lightning	MC-I-SR01	Impaction
3	Wind	MC-I-SR02	Fragmentation

4-step (darkness, 26 spirit)

Step	Crystal	Catalyst	Sphere
1	Fire	MC-I-SR01	Liquefaction
2	Lightning	MC-I-SR01	Impaction
3	Earth	MC-I-SR02	Gravitation
4	Water	MC-I-SR02	Distortion

4-step (darkness, 26 spirit)

Step	Crystal	Catalyst	Sphere
1	Ice	MC-I-SR01	Induration
2	Water	MC-I-SR01	Reverberation
3	Water	MC-I-SR02	Distortion
4	Earth	MC-I-SR02	Gravitation

I didn't incorporate many tier 3 spheres (for double light/dark) as my early calculations of adding them increased the effort by ~500M gil. I did do ~300 though as I had once accidentally purchased 255 MC-I-SR03, so take care when buying catalysts so you don't purchase the wrong ones.


Process
When I had spheres to burn at the ready, I would grind 3,000 spirit/day, which allowed me to complete the shield in about a month. I calculated it to be ~45 seconds to do a 3-step chain and just under a minute to do 4-step, which meant a little over two hours to get to 3,000 spirit (pulling this from memory so may not be completely accurate, but it's close enough).

As for HQs and breaks, I felt HQs occurred more often than breaks, and during each day's spirit grind, I would always net positive on my expected return in spirit. You can even retry an attempt if it breaks (up to the third chain) to keep the chain going as long as you're quick about it, which saves a bit of time in the long run. And as long as you're resetting the chain after hitting light or dark, you won't have to worry about the Synthesis Focuser II blowing up.

I'll say, it's an awful grind; I don't think I've ever been more bored working towards an ultimate item. The good thing is it's pretty mindless, so you can watch TV or something while muscle memory takes over in pressing the keys/buttons for the chains (assuming you do it manually).


End Result
At the end of the day -- having purchased 99% of the spheres -- I invested 784,622,500 gil to complete the shield, with 59,901,500 of that spent towards catalysts. There's also the investment of time, which was roughly 75 hours of monotonous key clicking (this doesn't including the preceding phases).

In using the shield, the most significant change I've noticed is the reduction in loss of materials, which essentially means more attempts at HQ, as most of the time you're only losing 1-2 mats and occasionally only the crystal.

I hope this helps any of you considering making an escutcheon or who have just started the final phase. For those who have also completed an escutcheon, what was your experience like? What suggestions would you make that I didn't mention above?

Feel free to PM me with any questions, otherwise good luck and have fun!