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The post says the question in the title. I recently got my CRP to 50 and geared in it's AF gear with a Raptorskin Merchant purse, Red Coral Earrings, Electrum choker and all that stuff pre full iLvl 55 greens.
So, how do I meld the materia before I get the Artisian items?
if I was you i'd upgrade that jewellery to the newer items before melding anything. belt too.
and theres plenty of guides here on the forum that tell you how to meld the gear but really its not hard to figure out if you have one or two of each grade 4 materia.
Meld your chest, gloves, pants, boots, off hand, militia wrist and rings first if you wanna get your stuff melded before getting the newer accessories (Dodore belt, rose gold choker and mosshorn earrings). Once you have them, meld them too. You don't need to meld your head piece because you can get your artisan's spectacles without it and they're going to replace it anyway, so don't waste gil/materia/time on that. I followed this guide and my fully melded culinarian has (going with what I remember, I'm at school right now) 399 craftmanship, around 380 control and 357 cp without food.
Overmelding is expensive and time-consuming, so my advice is to get the best gear you can right now, and meld it to the max using the guide Hivernica provided (or other guides on the forum). As has also been said, get the newer accessories before doing this, rather than meld up your Raptor, Red Coral, and Electrum pieces, and don't bother melding up your headpiece since you'll be replacing it with the Artisan's Specticals.
If buying the new stuff and overmelding is simply too expensive, you can consider melding up the older accessories and tossing cheap melds onto the other gear - just keep in mind that in the long run this is a waste of time and money, since you'll certainly want to upgrade to the better gear when you can afford it.
The hardest recipes for a class are difficult even for folks with the best gear melded in all the best ways. Every bit you skimp will make those difficult recipes all the more troublesome!
Assuming HQ gear you should be able to get most of the stats needed simply by melding the accessories.
http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/NSHP
That will get you 336/333/346 Then you just need to find another 11 crafting to make the minimum needed to get the i70 gear.