Leveling Materia Melds

[ckq53]

IMHO I wouldn't even really worry about melding your armor while youre leveling a job. You'll be changing armor pieces every other dungeon especially if you're dungeon grinding for leveling. Just wait till you get your 80 set set up and meld that.

What actually helps me is I already have a set of Augmented "whatever" armor for whatever class I'm leveling. When I get to 50, 60 and 70, I'll slap that armor on and I'll have a good buffer at lest halfway through the 10 levels before I have to start swapping out with dungeon pieces.

[wereotter]

IMHO I wouldn't even really worry about melding your armor while youre leveling a job. You'll be changing armor pieces every other dungeon especially if you're dungeon grinding for leveling. Just wait till you get your 80 set set up and meld that.

What actually helps me is I already have a set of Augmented "whatever" armor for whatever class I'm leveling. When I get to 50, 60 and 70, I'll slap that armor on and I'll have a good buffer at lest halfway through the 10 levels before I have to start swapping out with dungeon pieces.

At this point, since you can pull materia from gear without destroying it, and because you can retrieve materia from gear after its melded, it's more worth it now to meld leveling gear than it was a few years ago. When I replayed the story with a friend recently, I found I was swimming in low level materia by just extracting it from every piece of gear once it hit max spirit bond.

To that end, it depends on your level, but really for the most part, the stat increases are so minimal that you won't see HUGE differences. Below level 50, I would say use determination for the best returns. I would say once you get to level 60+ critical hit and (unless things have changed since I played it last) spell speed melds are good for black mages. Direct hit is the stat to meld into paladin.