Crafter AF gear melding/acquiring materia

[Divine_Intervention]

Okay I'm not fantastic at making money yet. Sure, I make enough to keep working with my other crafts leveling (as of today, wvr 50/alch 50/gsm 50 others 20ish)

Now, I know i'm going to have to meld materia to this gear in order to reach the requirements for 2 star and above recipes. I have a few questions though.

1) I think i've melded a low level materia to my wvr af chest. using materia removal system, does my gear stay intact and just take that out, am i going to have to craft another?
2) Prices of IV materia on my server are INSANE. As of today, 600k for 1 IV control item. If i was to look into spiritbonding gear myself, rather than buying these, is it going to be a marked improvement (taking into consideration my money earning rate, time invested into spirit bonding ((how long does that take with all hq patricians etc, all melded with low materias, spirit bond potions etc)) over just grinding craft sales and trying to make the money? Word limit next post >

[Divine_Intervention]

3) Areas and How - do i put on all this crafter gear i want to SB (hq ofc), with my white mage staff and go to .. where's the area? How long should it take to fully SB a full set using above parameters.

4) Actual melding. I've read a lot of posts on this, and i'm not great with numbers. Actually, i SUCK with numbers. Can I have a very simplistic "put this in here" materia melding guide please? I'm not lazy, i just know my own limitations, numbers and also money income are the main ones lol.

I'm out of questions for now, but appreciate any advice you guys can give me. Craft on!

[Adoxx]

1) You will not have to craft another item. When you remove Materia, the item stays intact but you will lose the Materia. In this case though, if it is low level then it will be worth it.

2) I always Spiritbond my own gear because whatever I have leftover is pure profit. One of the best areas is Urth's Gift and as a WHM, you can solo this. I usually just do Electrum accessories but you can do full Patrician's gear as well if you want (as long as you can still mass pull and stay alive). As for how long it takes will be determined on how fast you can kill and whether you are doing it solo or not. I can usually Spiritbond several sets in 2-3 hours. Another option is to run Expert dungeons with just Electrum accessories which takes about 2-3 runs to fully Spiritbond but you will also get Myth/Soldiery/Crafting Items.

3) Same as number 2.

4) Here is a great link for melding. You will want to do maximum melding for 3-Star gear eventually. This shows you max melds and different options of materia. http://disciplesoftheland.com/GuideView.aspx?gid=23

[Divine_Intervention]

That was perfect, thank you very much. I got lucky and got 1 cp IV materia from a partisans, but i'm going to sell these ones i got tonight and use the money to stock up my crafting mats for those equipments listed.

[Adoxx]

Yeah no problem m8. If you stick to that gear you will normally get Grade III Materia but you will get Grade IV from them every once in awhile. I usually get one Grade IV for about every 8-10 Grade III. If you get enough Grade III though that you don't need anymore and not enough Grade IV, you can always sell your leftovers and buy what you need with the profit.

[Waeksyn]

You don't need to meld any TIV materia to get the stats that you need. My DoH jobs are at 395 Craftsmanship, 384 Control and 348 CP without using TIV materia. This is sufficient for any of the 3 star methods out there (you need to use CP food such as HQ Fish Soup or Bouliabaise to get the CP level needed).

[Divine_Intervention]

Waeksyn , could you provide some information on how you've managed that. I'm struggling ilke hell for money and while crafting and spiritbonding my own stuff is useful, it's a hell of a lot of time invested for usually III materias, so i've got a broad range of III and II materia available.

[Waeksyn]

I wish I could say that it's easy but, it's not. My main is an i98 Brd. What I do is craft 25 pieces of crafting accessories (5 copies of the 5 items) and SB when doing dungeons, fates, etc. I keep whatever materia that I need and sell the others, including all of the Tier 4 materia. For example, right now I have 2 Tier 4 Control materia on the AH for 230K each. I then use that gil to buy what I need but don't have. I also have all DoL at 50 so generally gather all materials that I need unless I'm feeling lazy, in which case I'll buy from the AH.


The accessories that I use (for SB, not for crafting) are: Electrum choker, Red Coral Earrings, Electrum Wristlets of Crafting, Electrum rings of crafting. Good thing about this is that all of these are possible with Goldsmith (plus Leatherworker for some of the leather used in ingredients). I then meld them all with the cheapest tier 1 materia I can buy off the AH.

In my case, I've finally caught up to all of the crafting materia that I need (with the addition of 3 star recipes, I needed to re-do all of my off hand pieces (8!) to meet the new requirements). Just in time for the new relic quest requirements - I'll continue SB'ing and selling all of them to purchase the materia I need for that quest.

The encouraging thing is that, although it does take a long time, the income from all of the SB'ing in my case created positive cash flow, so I'm sitting on a nice bank roll now which I'm trying to save for when they introduce personal housing. I think the relic quest will make a dent in that, although I don't intend to actually do any of the sphere scroll melding until I have all of the Alexandrite that I need. So, lots of time to acquire the needed materia.

I posted the materia I use on another thread.

[Adoxx]

I just wanted to point out that though Waeksyn does not in fact use any Materia IV, the amount of Materia III used in possible fail spots (especially in off-hand) could POSSIBLY (not necessarily depending on luck) cost you more overall than using a few Materia IV in guaranteed spots. With the link that I posted, you only really need to use one Materia IV on the off-hand and that is is (no overmelding). So although I do like that Waeksyn has found a way to meld without any Materia IV, depending on server prices it could ultimately be more of an expense (time sink) due to the overmelding of higher leveled Materia.

[BobbinT]

You don't need to meld any TIV materia to get the stats that you need. My DoH jobs are at 395 Craftsmanship, 384 Control and 348 CP without using TIV materia. This is sufficient for any of the 3 star methods out there (you need to use CP food such as HQ Fish Soup or Bouliabaise to get the CP level needed).

sorry, but I'm not sure that's possible. For body AF, max meld is 16 craftsmanship & 5 control. Taking away control which needs 4-1 or 3-2, craftsmanship definitely need at least 1 tier 4 materia. Otherwise it's not possible max melding AF body.

My AF body meld setup right now would be T4 craft on main slot, with the overmelds either craft T4+T2 or craft T3+T3. And I would put control on body with recommended setup T4 on main slot & T1 for overmeld, since T3+T2 setup right now has quite crazy price on T2 alone, making my bunch of T3 control I farmed from Patrician-acc SB seems useless.

To summarize, my ideal meld for body is T4 craft - T4 control - T3 craft - T3 craft - T1 control.

And the max meld of all gear including head/main tools which uses i70 (excluding offtools), you get craftsmanship 391, just the right minimum requirement to do 3* crafts.

I just wanted to point out that though Waeksyn does not in fact use any Materia IV, the amount of Materia III used in possible fail spots (especially in off-hand) could POSSIBLY (not necessarily depending on luck) cost you more overall than using a few Materia IV in guaranteed spots. With the link that I posted, you only really need to use one Materia IV on the off-hand and that is is (no overmelding). So although I do like that Waeksyn has found a way to meld without any Materia IV, depending on server prices it could ultimately be more of an expense (time sink) due to the overmelding of higher leveled Materia.

Maybe. But in my case, I have abundant mats to make patrician sets and acc over & over again. Right now I'm sitting over 20 of each T3 craft materia that's some I don't even use anymore since all my DoH AFs almost completely melded, save for 2 body left (BSM & ALC) which I'm waiting to score one T4 craftsmanship for each body, then I can spam all those T3 I got.

Then there's offtools that I'm still undecided what to meld mostly, except putting some control materia to it since total control meld from all max melded AFs + i70 head & main tools doesn't even met minimum control requirement for 3* crafting. Judging from max stat meld on offtools which is 19 craftsmanship - 9 control - 3 cp, best possible meld would be 3 T4 craftsmanship & 2 T4 control, which would be absolutely insane melds. XD