Materia Help -- Materia System Needs Overhaul, seriously

The Materia System needs a huge overhaul. As is, it's too complicated, often wrong, and still too much *expensive* trial & error to figure out what can go into a slot.

They added in the screen that shows what stats are "available" for your gear....maybe. Sort of. If it feels like it, for all I know. Because I have yet to have that "Available Enhancements" section actually be helpful.

On one of my toons, I have L36 HQ shoes -- Toadskin Duckbills, two materia slots. There's already a Quicktongue II Materia there, and the circle is about half-filled, which is supposed to indicate that the slot can take a higher-level materia, right? Which should mean a III Materia...right? All my other similar level gear is the same way -- the II materias only half-fill the slots, which SHOULD indicate that you can use III Materia...right?

Wrong.

According to the "Available Materia Enhancements" section, the item has 6 points of Accuracy available. BUT a Heaven's Eye Materia III (+6 Accuracy) is greyed out. I can't put it in there, period. Ditto for all the OTHER III Materia I have of the stats that the Enhancements "claim" should be available -- all those are greyed out & can't be melded.

What can be melded? A Gatherer's Guerdon II. GATHERING. On a BATTLE item.

Too bad I didn't find that out until AFTER I bought a Heaven's Eye Materia. Because by the "Enhancements" section and those little half-filled circles, the item should've handled a HE III just fine.

GAH.

My suggestion: PLEASE, just list on the gear info what exact materia it can handle. PLEASE. Or at least label the slots.

As the Tier of a materia rises, so too does the level of the item into which it can fit. You cannot put a T5 materia into a level 20 pair of boots. EDIT - this may not have been clear enough. As the Tier of materia rises, so too does the minimum level of gear into which it can fit. You can use a T1 materia in the highest level gear you can find. But as I said, you cannot use a T5 materia in the lowest level gear you can find.

Also, the circle you mention does not mean that you can fit a higher Tier materia into it - it means that you have a T2 materia there. Its a small dot for T1 materia, a medium dot for T2 materia, a big dot for T3 materia. T4 materia dot is the same size as T3, but it is brighter. T5 is also the same size as the T3 dot, but it looks more like a swirl than just a single color.

A good rule of thumb for ARR levels is, if the item Converts to a given Tier of materia, that is the highest Tier that can be inserted into it. Unfortunately, I have not been able to come up with a matching rule of thumb for HW equipment.

There are few things you need to understand about materia;

Make sure you have all of the quest pertaining to the usage of it.


Acquiring materia: Quest , Convertion ( need full spirit bound ), Item trade ( shards / books / items / 4 materia any grade = 1 ( Gobbie machine ) ) and desynthesys

Attaching materia: Have proper catalyst min level required or higher.

How to read the equipment : Max slots anything with ( O ) on it means success is 100% however can't bypass highest level item can take. Anything over that is called over melding which depending on the grade of materia the percentage of success can drop.

Example: placing a grade 1 will give higher percentage to succeed then placing a grade 2 and so on.

There are some items which can't be over meld such as tome gear or special gear. See item description. In this case they normally will already a ( O ) on them. or Nothing at all.

NOTE: If gear can be upgraded and it has materia attached it will be lost.

For the accuracy table it was implemented to make an advance visual while pertaining to the max rules of equipment threshold .

Example: an HQ item with skill speed may already be maxed out or near the max allowed of that trait. In which case itc an show RED or lower number than the materia addition. Example: if Grade 5 adds +9 critical , but shows as +5 critical in red it means +5 would be the max it can be raised.

Note: ( O ) is for any type of materia, it's up to the player to track and keep track of thresholds.

I hope this helps

Hey there Zenfrodo. Sounds like you're learning how item levels and tool tips work still. If you look at a materia, let's say your Heavens Eye III for example, there will be text on the items description that says "Base Item - Item Level 45".

This means the equipment you put it in must be item level 45 or higher. Looking at Toadskin Duckbills, they have an item level of 35. So Grade III materia are too powerful for those boots, even if they would be able to handle +6 accuracy. This is mostly because placing 5 grade III materias in it would put the boots way over budget on stats compared to a similar item level dungeon drop, with no materia slots. As for knowing exactly what you can meld into a piece of gear....that's a feature that's already been added to the game (by popular demand, we didn't always have it).
When you select a piece of gear and open the Melding screen for it, you'll see the current/maximum stats listed at the bottom
http://img2.finalfantasyxiv.com/acci...77ea17ac85.jpg
You can open this menu on any item even without having any materia, so you'll always know what you can do with it before making any purchases. I've already melded my boots with 4 Spell Speed and 2 Fire Resist. Resistances will generally not be displayed on gear until you try to meld them. And a major note also is that you can only meld main stat materia (Vit/Dex/Int etc) into the default 100% slots.


Edit: I needed to make the picture bigger ><
Also listing all of the available stats on the default item window would just be TOO much information, and clutter the window unnecessarily, IMO. Counting all the types of resistances and stats that you COULD meld but wouldn't (like skill speed on caster gear, unless you're just doing it to promote spiritbonding and the materia was just the cheapest on the Marketboard) you'd be looking at ~15 extra stats being listed for no reason.
Sorry if the screenshot seemed unnecessary, but it really is always useful to look at it. Seems like you just had an incorrect belief about what the filled circles meant.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by zenfrodo

My suggestion: PLEASE, just list on the gear info what exact materia it can handle. PLEASE. Or at least label the slots.

---

Try reading your tooltips, it says right on every piece of materia what ilvl an item needs to be in order to meld it. As far as the gear goes if it has a main stat on it you can't meld that same stat, secondary stats will either be capped or close to it so ck how much you can meld in the window before doing anything. It really is simple

You're simply missunderstanding the system and making wrong assumptions, so let me clear some of those up:

Each piece of (crafted) gear can hold up to 5 materia - that number is fixed, the tier of the materia doesnt matter.
Depeding on the ilvl of the gear it will be able to hold materia up to a certain tier - it always says so on the tooltipp of the piece of gear you're melding. (thats why your gathering II was possible, but not the Accuracy III - that piece of gear is only able to hold materia up to tier II)
The slots show how many materia can "naturally" and with normal melding can fit into that gear - they'll have a 100% chance. Normally you'll have to of those slots or one for belt/jewls. But remember what I said about 5 possible materias?
This is where overmelding comes in - you need to do a quest in central thanalan that will allow you to overmeld gear - aka force more materia into it after the two slots are filled. The chance that your meld will be successful decreases with every materia you sucessfully put into your gear.

And while its good that you're learning about this now, you dont really need it until you hit endgame - and even then its more important for crafters and gatherers to meld their gear (even though its ofc nice for battle classes too).

So, no, just because you dont know how the system works doesnt mean it needs to be overhauled... Your gear says which materia it can hold, materia is generally pretty cheap and at your level more of a waste anyways, so I wouldnt even bother with it

To address what I see is your key issue, which is a misunderstanding on your part: The fullness of a materia melded into a slot has nothing to do with what grade can be put into the slot. The fullness only corresponds to the grade of materia inserted, and the only variation to this will be coloration: green if slotted, red if overmelded. Meld caps for specific stats are based on item level, and very rarely can met with a single materia.