Anyway to buy Grade I-IV Combat Materia?

And the marketboard is just devoid of I and II materia.

You can buy Grade III-V with brass spoils (Diadem).

Airships and Submarines can bring back Grade II-IV (the kind they bring back depends on the sector they're being send to - no gurantee though that they'll bring back any...)

I dont know of an easy way to get Grade I (or rather a way that doesnt involve spirit bonding).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vidu

I dont know of an easy way to get Grade I (or rather a way that doesnt involve spirit bonding).

Low level Field Exploration with your retainers :)

Answered for the sake of completion obviously, because that's a rate of 1 materia per 18h ...

Explorations, quick low level explorations, Squadron, wearing low level gear and killing high level mobs for fast spirit bound xp.

You're probably doing an ARR relic. I can't imagine why anyone else would need lowbie materia. Take my advice: just make your own materia.

I did an ARR relic recently. After breaking some materia, I was short ONE of a particular materia (Tenacity 1*, to be specific), and the market board was fresh out. I went to the lowbie gear seller in town, bought a full set of garbage gear (lv1~10ish) and killed stuff in Lower La Noscea (around lv8~13). The gear was all fully spiritbonded within a few minutes, and I had what I needed**.

Extra notes:
• Don't forget to buy accessories! If you're buying from a vendor like I did, then you'll have to visit a different vendor for accessories.
• Tenacity materia only comes from the tank-only and/or melee-and-tanks-only gear. For this, you may need to buy gear between lv10~20, because there aren't many vendor options that fit this category in the Lv1~10 category.
• Piety and spell speed only come from mage gear (if there is a distinction between Healer and DPS-mage, such as with accessories after a certain level, then Piety only comes from Healer gear).
• Skill speed only comes from non-mage gear.
• I tried going into uncapped Sastasha to spiritbond, and it didn't work. I'm not sure why.
• The monsters you target need to be roughly comparible to the level of the gear. Too high and you get nothing. Too low and you also get nothing.
• There is a Potent Spiritbond Potion that you can buy off the markets that will speed things along. There's also FC actions or scrolls from adventurer squad.
• I'm relatively certain that every +1 spiritbond is a +25% spiritbond rate, so +4 would mean things bond 2x as fast.
• If you're aiming for Tier1 materia, you'll want gear Lv29 or lower.
• If you're aiming for Tier2 materia, you'll want gear Lv30~44.
• If you're aiming for Tier3 materia, you'll want gear Lv45~50.
• Don't forget that you can take the materia you don't want to the goblin for more chances at what you actually want.
• Make sure you are not in a party (that includes people not in the same zone as you, as well as your chocobo)! I do not know if this still applies, but two years ago when I first researched this, I found out that your spiritbond rate is slower if there are more people in your party.

Don't bother spritbonding a weapon, just use whatever you normally do. I mean, you can spiritbond a weapon if you really want to, but it'll obviously slow down your kill speed.

*Yes, I put Tenacity on my BLM relic. It was the cheapest materia on the markets, and at this point the weapon is purely for glamour. It doesn't matter what's "better".

**It actually took me 5 gear sets of spiritbonding to get what I needed. I realized after a couple sets that I only got Tenacity from the Tank-only or Tank-and-melee only gear, so I eventually swapped up to the lv10~20 gear range where there were more tank gear options available to buy.

Another tip about spiritbonding, each materia on an item adds 20% to its spiritbonding speed. And now that there's an option to remove materia from an item, there's no real cost to filling the open (guaranteed) materia slots. Get an item, put materia on it (any type), spiritbond it, then retrieve the materia you placed before you convert it into new materia.