What good ways are there to spiritbond crafting gear?

What is the best way to quickly spiritbond i55 crafting gear?
Besides leeching in spiritbond parties?

• Use HQ gear (+25% spiritbond rate)
• Meld materia onto that gear (+25% spiritbond rate per meld -- materia type/tier doesn't matter)
• Free company spiritbond buff (+25% as well)
• Craft things as high level as you can (iLv55 gear won't get spiritbond from any synth below a certain point, though I haven't tested to see what that point is).
• Quick synth gives the same amount of spiritbond as synthing regularly, so if you don't care about the results and quick synth is available, go with that.
• Update: Don't craft or gather for spiritbond while in a party (even if they're not in the same zone)! It WILL gimp the amount of spiritbond you gain. Not sure if chocobo affects it.

HQ unmelded iLv55 gear takes approximately 350~400 Lv50 synths in order to fully spiritbond. I did it once, and the shard cost was insane (12x per synth). If I turned a profit, it wasn't a large one, since I only netted a single tier-4 materia.

Honestly the quickest way is to form a 4-8 man party and wear full crafting gear, or just a few pieces.

Other than that, quick synth gives the same spiritbond exp as normally crafting I've heard, but it burns through shards quickly

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Originally Posted by Raldo

Meld materia onto that gear (+20% spiritbond rate per meld -- materia type/tier doesn't matter)

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I heard this before, can anyone double confirm this? I tried this recently but it doesn't work -
both material melded and non material melded accessories give me 21~22% spiritbonding in a single WP run.
What went wrong here?

Was the melded accessory not HQ and the unmelded one NQ? An HQ result adds some Spiritbonding speed, too. :)

I personally just wear crafting accessories while spamming Holy on big packs. Haven't bothered trying with a full set of Patrician's gear and the 45+ accessories, though that's mainly because I'm too lazy to farm all the Fleece/Snurble Tufts needed. I'm somewhat worried about being too squishy in full crafting stuff too. :p

Golden Fleece and level 39 sheeps will spiritbond level 55 gear, so you can farm stuff and spiritbond at the same time and kill two birds with one stone. The lower level sheep will still SB Patrician set, but not higher level stuff liek Aethernyte Rings.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Raldo

Use HQ gear (+20% spiritbond rate)
Meld materia onto that gear (+20% spiritbond rate per meld -- materia type/tier doesn't matter)
.

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Sorry to be nit-picky. Materia adds 15% each.
SB gains only on recipes/mobs within 15 levels from item levels is correct.

Kill level 50 mobs in a party is the fastest you can do SB. That's why the water elementals near Quarrymill are being farmed until the spirits are unhappy.
-> This is the other reason why crafting/gathering gear are "All jobs".

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Originally Posted by Astarica

Golden Fleece and level 39 sheeps will spiritbond level 55 gear, so you can farm stuff and spiritbond at the same time and kill two birds with one stone. The lower level sheep will still SB Patrician set, but not higher level stuff liek Aethernyte Rings.

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Takes ~350 lvl 38 sheep to SB a NQ lvl 50 Dodore though. Have fun killing.

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Originally Posted by waca

I heard this before, can anyone double confirm this? I tried this recently but it doesn't work -
both material melded and non material melded accessories give me 21~22% spiritbonding in a single WP run.
What went wrong here?

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cause your items had different itemlevel, rings + earring are ilvl 49, bracelet etc are 48 and become sb ~10% faster

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Originally Posted by tymora

Sorry to be nit-picky. Materia adds 15% each.

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Just did another test on iLv55 crafting gear, just to double-check.

When my triple-melded HQ hat hit 100%, my double-melded HQ body was at 86% (and it only took one more synth to reach 87%, so it was probably 86.something highish%).

If each materia (and HQ) was worth 30%, then my body should have been at around 86.364%.
If each materia (and HQ) was worth 25%, then my body should have been at around 87.5%.
If each materia (and HQ) was worth 20%, then my body should have been at around 88.888%.
If each materia (and HQ) was worth 15%, then my body should have been at around 90.625%.

Since these numbers are all so close, and there are rounding errors and a few quirks to spiritbonding (such as when you spiritbond identical items, they usually reach full spiritbond 1 synth apart). I'd need to perform additional testing (and I may), in order to determine exactly what they're worth, but I can definitely say it's NOT 15% per materia. It's higher. I'm starting to doubt my 20% number and wonder if it isn't even higher than that.

For those interested, this is most of what I got. Not shown here is a few items that either spiritbonded early because they weren't iLv55 (belt - T3 control materia), or items that I spiritbonded a bit on a DoW job and finished early (neck - T4 Fire materia & wrist - T3 STR materia).
http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h2...psfe58f925.png

Crafting hippogryph leather, it took me approx. 240 synths to spiritbond the triple-melded HQ hat, and approx. 275 synths to spiritbond the double-melded HQ rest-of-the-gear.

I got lucky this time. Last time I did this, I only got one T4. Time to go turn this in for some money.

I usually just replace all my accessories with crafting ones and then go run WP a few times. Doesn't even affect you all that much since majority of your stats come from your weapon and armor.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Raldo

Just did another test on iLv55 crafting gear, just to double-check.
...

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Base * (0.8 if HQ) * (0.85)^(# of materia)
I used number of mobs killed to get my answer.

Using synths are inaccurate because each synth yields a different amount of experience points based on quality gained. I believe that would change the results somewhat.
Mobs on the other hand, always give the same exp.

Oh one more thing, you forgot to count the +1 SB bonus on the rings. That will shift your results by a little.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by tymora

Using synths are inaccurate because each synth yields a different amount of experience points based on quality gained. I believe that would change the results somewhat.

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Quality does not affect the amount of spiritbond gained (hence the "quick synth gives the same amount of spiritbond" tip). I already ran tests for that long ago, and it took me the same amount of synths to increase by 1 bind point when I did quick-synth, progress-only synth, and 100% HQ synth. Also, I didn't waste my time pushing quality for these tests; progress only.

It is true, however, that I did forget that I was wearing +2 spiritbond.

You are saying that HQ gives a different bonus than materia though; that is odd and I didn't factor that in as a possibility, I'll have to run more tests then. I'll do it like you did, and use monsters, because spiritbond crafting is mind-numbingly boring.

I have performed a test with the following gear...

http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h2...psbdd76335.png

(+# indicates the number of materia on the gear)
HQ+0 - Wrists
HQ+1 - Ears
HQ+2 - Neck
HQ+3 - Head
NQ+0 - Hands
NQ+1 - Feet
NQ+2 - Legs
NQ+3 - Body

I just hit 20% on the hands (NQ+0), and all the rest of the gear lines up as if HQ and each materia were worth +25% rate each (25% for NQ+1 and HQ+0, 30% for NQ+2 and HQ+1, etc.). I will update this post when the hat hits 100%, but I fully expect the hands to be at 50%, and everything else to line up similarly to a 25% increase per HQ/materia.

I can only assume there was something wrong with your test. Either you killed different types of monsters, different level monsters, different amounts of party members, etc. This is why I test based solely on the spiritbond%, and not the number of monsters (also because I'm not running a parser, so I end up screwing up my manual count).

Update: My hands just hit 40%, and since the data is lining up nicely, and I'm about to break to do a WP group; I'll stop here for now. Current state:
NQ+0 - Hands (40%)
HQ+0 - Wrists (50%)
NQ+1 - Feet (50%)
HQ+1 - Ears (60%)
NQ+2 - Legs (60%)
HQ+2 - Neck (71%)
NQ+3 - Body (70%)
HQ+3 - Head (81%)

I'm going to chalk the random 1% difference up to rounding error, and say everything is a +25% increase.

I will update my earlier post to now state that every bonus is +25% instead of +20%.

Update2: The above data was enough to solidify that it's +25% for everything in my opinion, but for those curious, when my hat hit 100% everything lined up within 1~2% of where you would expect it to be if everything gave a +25% bonus (100/87/86/74/73/61/61/49).

Level 50 water elementals, solo with chocobo. Always.

Anyway, looks like our definition of % are different.
Using your numbers, my 15% came from...86/100, 74/86, 61/73.

To put it in words, I will say 15% reduction in required synths or mobs killed. Same thing for HQ bonus. Mine will be 20% reduction.
- I previously said "Adds 15% bonus" so I was wrong there.

While yours, 25% bonus in Spirit-bond gain.

Interesting how math works sometimes.

Unfortunately, it's been far too long since I've had the appropriate math classes to cook up a proper formula, so hopefully someone more mathematically inclined can amend your earlier formula.

That was supposed to be an edit... not a post. I'll delete the above post.

Edit: I figured it out; the formula should be...

[Base] / (1 + .25 * [# of materia (+1 if HQ)])

It looks like your 20% and 15% numbers came froooom....
The difference between NQ+0 and HQ+0/NQ+1 is 20% fewer actions
The difference between HQ+0/NQ+1 and HQ+1/NQ+2 is approx. 15% fewer actions (actually 16.6667%)
The difference between HQ+1/NQ+2 and HQ+2/NQ+3 is approx. 15% fewer actions (actually 14.4286%)
The difference between HQ+2/NQ+3 and HQ+3/NQ+4 is 12.5% fewer actions
...and so on.

Didn't have data on materia #4, #5 and assumed the variations were within reasonable round-off or counting error range.
But yes, your way of counting might be more accurate.

Am I a bad person for liking your post simply because of how silly your getup looks, rather than it being useful, Raldo? :p

I'll also chip in and say it seems like 25% increase per materia/quality level. Was doing some spiritbinding today, with a HQ+3 Melds hat reaching 100% while the HQ+2 Meld items were 88-89% and the sole HQ+1 Meld item at 75%. I'd imagine there were hidden decimals at plays, and the fact that I murder enemies en masse in packs of 8-10 means that the hat might've been fully spiritbound before finishing off the entire pack. :) Maybe I'll try something more systematic/controlled next time. :p

Update: I can now confirm that the +Spiritbond FC buff gives the same bonus as an extra materia on everything, so another +25%

So I understand that if you're trying to SB level 50 gear (to make tier III/IV materia) and you attempt to do level 20 synths, it will take a very, very long time to SB.
But what about the other way around?

What if you're trying to make some tier II materia? Could you make some level 30 gear and then do level 45-50 synths? Would that be faster or slower than doing level 30 synths?

Yes, at least, I think it goes faster. The other thing I like to do is where my lvl 30ish jewelry when I'm doing my dailies or fate grinding in higher level areas.hope that helps. :)

Spiritbonding potion, FC buff, fully melded (a use for elemental materia!!), HQ

Then go run Turn 3 of the Binding Coil of Bahamut : 3

You'll be fully bonded in no time.