Question about melding

[Conradus]

Yes, that could be right. But I am never able to meld a Craftmanship+3 to a single slot. It feels like I can meld it only to gear that can meld Materia II already. What's the point of having it as Materia I if it can't be fully used? They could just make Craftmanship+2, it would have been less confusing. Unless I am doing something wrong.

You're melding it to the wrong thing. I don't know about level 30/35 gear, but looking at the melding caps for top-level gear it seems that you could get good results by melding to a body piece, or to your secondary (and possibly primary) tool.

[Bixby]

You're melding it to the wrong thing. I don't know about level 30/35 gear, but looking at the melding caps for top-level gear it seems that you could get good results by melding to a body piece, or to your secondary (and possibly primary) tool.

Yep. There's a place for everything. Cotton Halfgloves only have Control on them to begin with, so they could take CP and/or Craftsmanship materia without bumping into their caps, for example.

There might also be a point where you'd meld a materia even though you know you're not getting its full effect. If the rest of your gear is already stuffed with materia, and melding a +3 CP, even though it only actually gives you +1, gives you that last CP you need to be able to use <insert crafting skill here> one more time per synth, it might be worth it. There are also things like ACC caps to think about (e.g., a SCH needs a certain amount of ACC to keep Energy Drain from missing in Binding Coil; a single point of ACC can be worth a lot in that case).

[Conradus]

Yep. There's a place for everything. Cotton Halfgloves only have Control on them to begin with, so they could take CP and/or Craftsmanship materia without bumping into their caps, for example.

You might be surprised. The cap is calculated based on both item level and item slot. The chart about melding top level gear shows that your hands piece can only take +4 Craftsmanship despite having none to begin with. The body piece can can take +16 Craftsmanship despite already having 92. The Militia off-hand tool can take +19 although it already has 107. That's why I suggested trying those slots if you're looking to fit a Craftsmanship materia. It seems likely to me that the main hand tool should also take Craftsmanship materia well, but the chart gives no guidance here since the top-level main hand tool is, of course, unmeldable.

Crafting and gathering materia seem to work different from battle materia. With battle materia, an HQ item specializing in a stat is generally already at its materia cap for that stat, but that doesn't appear to be the case in crafting and gathering.

[Bixby]

You might be surprised.

Indeed I am. I've got some reading to do sometime. Thanks for the information.