Quote Originally Posted by Colorful View Post
It's never going to be necessary, but why would a party leader take a guy in 220 gear without melding materia when they could take someone with it? I don't like this idea, never enjoyed farming for gil, never will. Grinding tomestones is enough, and now you want me to do something else like gathering that's infinitely more boring? I really hope they change this before 2.2's release, or make the acquisition of materia far easier and not so reliant on RNG.
They could start by removing the stupid elemental materia, that have no use whatsoever anyway, besides being the "too bad, you lose" result of materia converting.

Otherwise, exploratory stuff will drop items that can convert probably to tier V, as well as letting you trade gear that's useless to you for other stuff, possibly straight up materia. Chests might also have materia. I predict the price of tier V will drop once other non-Mutamix methods exist and are commonplace. And the tier IV spike we saw this morning will be low again (maybe not 15k low) once people undercut each other to sell their spiritbond materia.

You'd be able to earn gil from spiritbonding, but nothing prevents you killing a few hundred cockatrice, or sending your retainer to do it, and sell the thighs on MB. Insert any other mat with good value that can be farmed with combat. Fleece and snurble tuft have stable prices on my server (lowest is 400, but they sometimes go fetch 700-800 for NQ).