Material melding item levels

Forgive me, if this has been posted before, but I've finally gotten to the point of adding materia to my crafting gear. Problem is, when I try to add my level IV materias to my Alchemist gear, it keeps saying the item level is too low, so I would end up lose 2 points from the materia. Am I just not looking at things correctly? O do I need different gear?

The gears have stat caps. Are you wearing AF gear? Google Final Fantasy Gear Calculator, and mess around with the options. Click Deciple of the Hand, Click on the gear your using, and then click on the materia slots and a window will pop up allowing you to set the gear in different slots.

Different servers have different prices for Materia, usually, Tier 3 is cheaper than tier two and so you should use tier 3 instead.

The error it's giving you, indicates that you aren't using the Militia gear. Once you reach 50 the first step is to get all of the best in slot gear. Then work on materia melding it.

The "item level is too low" warning is very misleading, and doesn't really hint at what the real problem is. As Squand mentioned, every piece of gear has a limit on how many points you can put into a given stat. As an example, the ilvl 55 crafter body piece comes with 3 CP, 92 Craftsmanship, and 31 Control naturally. Beyond that, you can meld up to 16 additional Craftsmanship, 5 additional Control, and 0 additional CP.

If you attempt to meld a materia that will take you beyond those limits, you will get the warning message, and that materia will be capped in effectiveness to stay within those limits. It really doesn't have anything to do with the item level being too low, since there's (currently) no crafter body piece with a higher item level.

If you see that message, simply use a lower grade materia instead of the one you're trying to meld. (If there is one, at least - HQ crafter feet and legs are an odd case, in that they can only hold 1 additional Craftsmanship, even though the lowest-level Craftsmanship materia still has 3 on it. There's no way to fully utilize a Craftsmanship materia on feet or legs.) There's no advantage to plugging in a high-grade materia if it's not going to be fully utilized.

I was attempting to meld a craftsmanship +6 materia, to my Alchemists head piece, which didn't currently have any materia. But was being told i'd only get +4 from it.

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Originally Posted by Mimiru_S

I was attempting to meld a craftsmanship +6 materia, to my Alchemists head piece, which didn't currently have any materia. But was being told i'd only get +4 from it.

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Yep. The HQ head pieces have caps (for additional stats from materia) of 4 Craftsmanship, 5 Control, and 0 CP. See here.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mimiru_S

I was attempting to meld a craftsmanship +6 materia, to my Alchemists head piece, which didn't currently have any materia. But was being told i'd only get +4 from it.

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There are caps on how much you can increase each stat. This is true of all gear. http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/Alchemist That has every known stat cap just click on the materia section for the gear you want to meld. It will also figure out materia caps as well.