What purpose does spiritbonding serve now?

There are so many other ways of getting materia now. Fully spiritbonding a piece of gear just to get a random materia out of it seems very inefficient. Yet there's an ALC Lv72 recipe for a superior spiritbond potion. So what's the deal? Why should I care enough about spiritbonding my gear to make a potion for it?

Battle gear or crafting and gathering gear? I've stopped converting battle gear because I'm finding it useful to desynth, but I'll convert crafting and gathering gear over desynth every time because it doesn't matter what materia it turns into because the materia will be useful when you're blowing up piles of materia with forbidden melds. During Stormblood I would would grab a set of base level appropriate gear and pop spirit bond buffs when making making a stack of high level leveling mats since the gear would finish spiritbonding at less than 150 crafts. Haven't done the same in Shadowbringers yet but that's because I haven't been crafting stacks of current crafts that can spiritbond the gear. While there are other alternatives to acquire the materia, passively acquiring a few while doing something else is still useful when pentamelding.

I mean, there's still achievements XD


There are five different in-game achievements awarded through spiritbonding.

1. 1) "Prepare to Be Assimilated I" - gained by converting 10 spiritbound items. Completing this task rewards five achievement points.
2. 2) "Prepare to Be Assimilated II" - gained by converting 50 spiritbound items. Completing this task rewards five achievement points.
3. 3) "Prepare to Be Assimilated III" - gained by converting 100 spiritbound items. Completing this task rewards five achievement points.
4. 4) "Prepare to Be Assimilated IV" - gained by converting 500 spiritbound items. Completing this task rewards five achievement points.
5. 5) "Living in a Materia World" - gained by converting 1,000 spiritbound items. Completing this task rewards ten achievement points and the title "The Assimilator".

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Originally Posted by tdb

There are so many other ways of getting materia now. Fully spiritbonding a piece of gear just to get a random materia out of it seems very inefficient. Yet there's an ALC Lv72 recipe for a superior spiritbond potion. So what's the deal? Why should I care enough about spiritbonding my gear to make a potion for it?

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No so many other ways of getting Tier 1-3 materia. Tier 3 materia is needed for some crafter quests, and for the level 50 relic weapons. And having materia to meld to your gear is always useful, even if it is not needed at low levels.


And while there are other ways of getting higher tiers of materia, it is not like it hurts to have yet another way of getting it.

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Originally Posted by JWag12787

I mean, there's still achievements XD


There are five different in-game achievements awarded through spiritbonding.

1. 1) "Prepare to Be Assimilated I" - gained by converting 10 spiritbound items. Completing this task rewards five achievement points.
2. 2) "Prepare to Be Assimilated II" - gained by converting 50 spiritbound items. Completing this task rewards five achievement points.
3. 3) "Prepare to Be Assimilated III" - gained by converting 100 spiritbound items. Completing this task rewards five achievement points.
4. 4) "Prepare to Be Assimilated IV" - gained by converting 500 spiritbound items. Completing this task rewards five achievement points.
5. 5) "Living in a Materia World" - gained by converting 1,000 spiritbound items. Completing this task rewards ten achievement points and the title "The Assimilator".

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There's actually a sixth achievement for 5,000 spiritbonds as well.

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Originally Posted by Espritduo

There's actually a sixth achievement for 5,000 spiritbonds as well.

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I copy-pasted from somewhere.
Good to know they missed one :3 :D

It's whole purpose is actually a gilsink, in that it was set up to remove gear from the game and thus gil from the economy (instead of players simply reselling their old gear on the MB back to other players once they had finished with it). That was the original idea anyway.

Now, not so much, but it still partially serves that function at least with vendortrash grey and tradeable/sellable green gear (this is why simply having one spiritbond point on a piece of gear then makes that gear 'bound' to you and unsellable on the MB).

It's merely one way of controlling the in-game economy from SE's perspective.

The lower-grade materia can still be valuable, depending on your server, and can be a nice bit of extra money for newer characters (who are likely to be getting their gear to 100% bond while questing). I've been selling grade 1 materia for 1000-3000 gil depending on the type. Grade 2 is less profitable, but occasionally sells, and grade 3 sells well IF you get a type required for relic or crafter quests.

Impressive that the IIIs still sell well. Pretty sure you can get them from the Firmament now, right? Trade scrips for Brass Spoils, trade in for grade III? Was one thing I remember finding last relic I did, that Diadem was a decent source, if you could ever get in. Lower grades could really use more sources, tho. But I guess that keeps spiritbonding relevant. For higher level gear, tho, I'd just as soon desynth or sell or anything else. After running Eureka for a while, I'm just sitting on mountains of materia I don't need.

ah, i remember back in arr we search for a spiritbond party to farm water spirit in urth's fount to spiritbond shit XD

Wtf is spiritbond???