I'm with Rreeth on this one. Colors =/= actions.
However, I have a different take on things:
Gold - Highest chance of success. Has a chance to provide extra quality on success. Less failure damage.
White - Standard, normal, boring ol' humdrum yeah yeah etc.
Red - High chance of failure - however, successes grant a high bonus to progress. Failure, however, is devastating with this one as it not only hurts durability but also greatly increases instability (sometimes on SUCCESS, too).
Rapid colors - I never bother with this one. I prefer to play it safe.
Also, in my experience:
Standard is the best action all-around - unless you start failing frequently. The durability losses with this one are ginormous.
Rapid is incredibly risky - every failure has a high chance of causing instability. However, the durability loss is also the lowest. It's a trade-off; standard for high durability but low instability losses, rapid for high instability but low durability losses
Bold just sucks. In my experience it has an extremely high failure rate and even doesn't increase quality that much when it succeeds. Only do it if you're at 80%+ and still have a huge chunk of durability remaining.
However, I have a different take on things:
Gold - Highest chance of success. Has a chance to provide extra quality on success. Less failure damage.
White - Standard, normal, boring ol' humdrum yeah yeah etc.
Red - High chance of failure - however, successes grant a high bonus to progress. Failure, however, is devastating with this one as it not only hurts durability but also greatly increases instability (sometimes on SUCCESS, too).
Rapid colors - I never bother with this one. I prefer to play it safe.
Also, in my experience:
Standard is the best action all-around - unless you start failing frequently. The durability losses with this one are ginormous.
Rapid is incredibly risky - every failure has a high chance of causing instability. However, the durability loss is also the lowest. It's a trade-off; standard for high durability but low instability losses, rapid for high instability but low durability losses
Bold just sucks. In my experience it has an extremely high failure rate and even doesn't increase quality that much when it succeeds. Only do it if you're at 80%+ and still have a huge chunk of durability remaining.