Quick synthesis is awful and unless you need low level materials shit for a higher recipe, you shouldn't be using it. Like say for one of the lvl 18 cotton armor recipe you need a hemp cloth thingie and I didn't have any so I used quick synth to make it faster(it wasn't much faster though since I only needed one), I made one manually to compare after and it was about the same xp, which was like 5xp. That's cause the hemp shit is lvl 1 and I was lvl 19. However when I unlocked quick synth I did a quick comparison, bolt of cotton, one of each, cotton is like lvl 13 so it was good xp at the time. When I quicksynthed, I got ~200xp for it. When I did it manually, by just spamming Basic Synthesis, I got iirc 350 xp or so. That's basically for the same duration(maybe a bit more cause you need 2 synth actions to complete it when you just unlocked it). However if you then use up all your ressources working up the quality %, you can easily get +200% xp. That means ~1k xp. Now that takes a lot longer, it's about 6 actions so about 20secs total, vs 4-5secs for a quick synth or even a manual quick synth. However time isn't much of a problem because of the lvl cap in beta and shit and I'd rather get big xp per item so I don't need to spend money/gather more.
As for how it works, you need to start unlocking the skills. Then what I did was, the skill that makes the next 5 skills 20% less likely to fail, then 3x basic touch to increase quality, the one that restores durability, 1-2more basic touch then finish the item with synthesis. The numbers vary depending on wether or not you're high lvl enough to have +CP jewelry and how many synth you need to finish the item, but the concept is simply to increase the quality as much as possible. Doesn't matter if it's still 8% chance to make a HQ, it'll increase the xp by 150-200%. And you still sometimes get HQ mats which are nice for later on. Macro is as I explained before, /ac "Skill 1" <me> /wait 3 /ac "Skill 2" <me> /wait 3 etc. Then you press the macro and go afk until it finishes and gives you 1k-1.5k xp for a shitty combine.
Also getting tradeskills to 15 is more important than getting a bunch of them to 10. At 15 you get a cross class ability for each tradeskills, which means it makes every other tradeskill easier to level, or at least easier to make good shit when you need to. Other cross class skills are at 37 and 50. Having both the Alchemy(can use a free ability that gives 20CP whenever the condition of the item is good) and the Weaver one(100% success progress ability but at 90% of the efficiency, great for finishing items when you're at 10 durability without taking any risk which happens often when you've managed to get a high HQ%) helped me a lot in making my lvl 20 HQ book for example.
I like that you can level gathering and crafting without a combat class though. I mean alchemy requires monster drops for a lot of stuff but that's fairly specific and you can level without those if you want. Gathering get stealth so your combat stats don't matter(you can't fight anyway while gathering) and as a result you can collect high lvl mats for your crafter. I guess some people will level crafting first so they can make lvl 50 items right as the first people get to 50 and make good money. Generally it's people who rush to 50 that get to do that since they then have access to lvl 50 materials and everyone else doesn't.
