I recorded tens of thousands of individual crafting results in the past, including at the time when you were notified every single time that your skill went up. (Instead of the way it is now, where the notification randomly appears about 10 percent of the time that your skill goes up)
Crafting at totem times did seem to increase the number of skill-up notifications.
But using good table combinations at off-totem times can be more profitable. When using the correct table options in gemming, you might tarnish more, succeed less, but you'll get more well crafted. (Of course, this also depends a lot on your skill levels, since there are points in some crafts where you can never tarnish when using the right materials)
However, in skills like weaving and smelting, where Fine cloth/metal isn't all that much better than regular, this isn't as big of a deal.
The one thing I never got around to testing as much as I wanted was when a player followed the wrong totem. Like, if a poet follows Chung ryong, would they craft better at HM time or CR time?
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I think your successes give you more crafting xp
Very true. That’s why it would make sense that if you're tarnishing/WC more but succeeding less, you might earn more money but skill up less.
However, when it comes to making rare items (Polearms, Magic net, or in your case a Diadem) I think it’s best to try during your totem time. These items were added after the initial crafting system was created, and I think the people adding them would have made them succeed more often at totem times, if any time at all.