Can we at least spiritbond them and turn them into materia (V if possible)
So the only new useful items are those white ilvl 185 with no materia slots that are little better than unmelded ilvl 180? Also they give much more crafting materials for ooids/tokens now... So basically, everyone who spent the time until 3.1 crafting his own crafter/gatherer stuff to be ready for 3.1 just wasted his time?
i spiritbonded 3 pirate craft stuff : 2 of them turn in IV materia, ther Other one was a V materia.
So yes you can use the pirates stuff to get V materia.
It's soon to say the drop rate^^.
the spiritbond is slow, 1 Diademe instance to got 90% for NQ pirate stuff and spiritbond potion, 1 diademe to get HQ pirate stuff 100% spiritbonded.
New dungeon give 10% spiritbond with spiritbond potion.
Din't try in Void Arch
The question is do we get T5 crafting/gathering gear :<
Will this save crafting? Yes. It is now alive and not dead. How good a life it is can be debated, but this definitely brings crafting back to life. There are already more i185 items on the MB currently than there were i180 that sold over the entire time they were available (which basically was zero). The biggest mistake SE made in 3.05 was making the mats too hard to get.
There is plenty of market for "good enough to get you into 24-man raids" gear. I made my fortune primarily selling i90 for many months, even after i110 had been released, all the way up until Heavensward dropped. The two key things needed are good enough ilvl to do content and affordability. It is a little early to say how much the mats will cost, but my gut feeling is it won't be too horrible.
It's not affordable yet, but nothing is in the first week. We can see that the materials are actually obtainable, which is a key ingredient we have not had since 3.05. Give it a few weeks or a month or two and I think we might see some reasonable prices. It's kind of hard to make a good guess at this point.
So you're saying we should wait till close to the patch that make this gear even more irrelevant for it to be more affordable? This is not saving crafting at all if we have to wait till right before the next patch for this stuff to be affordable. That's is a epic failure. Plus the demand is getting shafted for the facts that it's the same ilvl as the new dungeon gear, no materia slots and behind multiple specifications.