Materia questions

[Urthdigger]

So, I'm looking to get more hardcore into crafting/gathering, and that means lots of materia. I figured I'd work on making materia of my own, selling what I don't need to afford what I do, and wonder how to best go about it.

1: I've noticed certain things tend to accrue spiritbond faster (namely, dungeons seem to spiritbond faster than open world monsters). Is this simply a matter of monster level, and if so should I focus on higher level items when crafting/gathering, or just go for the lowest level possible (11 levels below me right?)

2: Should I use green ilvl 55 gear, or white gear? The white stuff is far easier for me to craft and acquire resources for, but I'm unsure if the green stuff crosses a materia threshold.

3: elemental materia: gamble with them, or just use them to increase SB rate? Likewise, should I spend seals on sb potions?

[Nyalia]

I don't know the answers to all of your questions, but here are some tips:

1. Don't SB the Aetheryte Rings! Contrary to expectation, they do not convert into DoH materia (they instead give elemental or main stat materia, which is pretty useless).

2. I believe there are three factors affect your SB rate: the ilvl of the item vs the level of the enemies you're killing, your level vs the level of the enemies you're killing (actually, this one could be wrong, I dunno), and how much of a bonus to your SB rate you have.

3. Using ilvl 45+ items in a level 22 dungeon gives practically no SB gain. You'll wind up needing both high and low level materia to be a master gatherer/crafter, so you should have different spiritbonding gearsets for high and low level dungeons, one high ilvl and one low ilvl.

4. I find that the most "responsible" way to SB in dungeons is to use your best weapon, head, body, hands, legs, and feet equipment and put SB items in your belt, neck, ear, wrist, ring, and ring slots. This gives you a decent stats to SB gear ratio, so you won't be totally useless in the dungeon, but you'll SB quite a bit of gear. Also, if you get to a boss, you might want to switch to your best gearset, then back after the boss. I don't know if you even get more SB from a boss than from a normal monster anyway.

5. You can get SB bonuses from the following: +20% to SB rate if the item is HQ. +20% to SB rate for EACH materia melded to the item. +3ish% for each level of "Increased Spiritbond Gain" (I think I heard that +6 SB rate is a 20% bonus?). +?% from the SB rate increasing FC action. So, you want to HQ your SB items and you want to meld crap materia to them (worth ~300 gil or less) to increase your SB rates. When I was SBing crafter gear, I would often meld two materia to each item, which took a 45% overmeld, so it would cost me about 1k per item. Having 40% more materia when the materia was worth about 30k each on average (from high ilvl crafter items) meant that the 1k of melding earned me about 12k in returns.

6. Always have a spare of each item on hand when spiritbonding, just in case you hit 100% mid-dungeon. If you can't make the items yourself, buy in bulk to save time (and probably money).

7. ilvl 45 items always give Grade III materia at worst and have a (fairly small) chance to give Grade IVs. ilvl 55 have a greater chance to give Grade IVs (Still not great, I don't think), but they also take 5-10x as long to SB (or at least, that's how it seemed to me, I never measured it). ilvl 70 items convert to IVs always, I think, but there aren't any convertable ilvl 70 crafter/gatherer items (unless the Artisans items are convertable?)

8. When SBing for crafter materia, I SBed the following: Red Coral Earrings, Electrum Choker, Electrum Wristlets of Crafting, Electrum Ring of Crafting x2, Raptorskin Merchant's Purse. For low level dungeons, I used the Brass crafter items, but I probably should have used higher ilvl items so I could get IIs instead of just getting Is from it.

9. Meteor Survivor Rings give +3 to Spiritbond Rate each and cannot be converted. Unless you're SBing 9+ items, they're strictly worse than wearing rings that can be converted. The bonus is very small. Similarly, the bonus from a potion is small, and (unless they changed it with the patch?) the bonus goes away if you die.

[Urthdigger]

Already knew most of those, but thanks anyhow. I should mention I intend to get a fair amount of materia via crafting/gathering, as I work on supply/provision achievements when I can and intend to gather the materials for and craft my own SB gear. In those circumstances, do you think it would be better to go with patrician's/raptorskin, or try to craft the AF for them?

[Raldo]

So, I'm looking to get more hardcore into crafting/gathering, and that means lots of materia. I figured I'd work on making materia of my own, selling what I don't need to afford what I do, and wonder how to best go about it.

1: I've noticed certain things tend to accrue spiritbond faster (namely, dungeons seem to spiritbond faster than open world monsters). Is this simply a matter of monster level, and if so should I focus on higher level items when crafting/gathering, or just go for the lowest level possible (11 levels below me right?)

2: Should I use green ilvl 55 gear, or white gear? The white stuff is far easier for me to craft and acquire resources for, but I'm unsure if the green stuff crosses a materia threshold.

3: elemental materia: gamble with them, or just use them to increase SB rate? Likewise, should I spend seals on sb potions?

1) Monster iLvl, basically. That's why i90 stuff doesn't bind anywhere outside of coil and other such stuff. Unfortunately, I don't think monster iLv is exposed anywhere, so it's hard to say for sure. It's much more efficient to target as high of monsters as you can reasonably find, however there aren't any open-world options above iLv50 (and I'll kick you out of my party if I see you spiritbonding in any of my dungeon runs) so I usually just stick with the 48~50 mobs in Urth's Gift / Castrum anything / Beastmen zones / Mor Dhona.

2) I'm told (but haven't personally tested) that iLv45~50 gear gives T4 materia at the same or similar rate as i55 gear (maybe 10%ish rate of T4 materia? Again, low sample size), so I would suggest using as low-level of gear as you can that still gives whatever tier of materia you're after. So to directly answer your question, I would use the white gear.

3) Up to you, really. I prefer to gamble; a +25% rate increase on ONE ITEM doesn't scream "must have!" If I feel like melding for +bond rate, I just trawl the markets for cheap T1/2s. I don't know how potent +Spiritbond is, so I can't comment on the potions.

Side notes:
• The spiritbond rate increase per materia/HQ is actually +25%, despite the fact that everyone else seems to say +20%.
• I haven't done any research (nor have I seen anyone else's actual data) to see how potent the +Spiritbond stat is.
• The FC buff for Spiritbond rate is the same as adding a materia to everything, so it's a +25% rate increase. I haven't tested the 2nd tier version (I think there is one?), but I'd assume it's a +50%.
• Spiritbonding via DoH/L solely for the purpose of making materia makes me want to rip my eyes out. If you want DoH/L materia, I'd much sooner suggest you deck yourself out in the Lv50ish all-classes gear and go to town on some monsters.

[Tovin]

I've got my miner at 32 and my botanist at 37 or 38 - is it worth it to meld stuff while leveling, or should I wait until I hit 50?

[Nutz]

I've got my miner at 32 and my botanist at 37 or 38 - is it worth it to meld stuff while leveling, or should I wait until I hit 50?

It depends on how much materia you have really. It was probably completely silly to do, but at some point I put a bunch of guerdon I materia on my BOT (in the high 30's or perhaps low 40's I think) and it made it so that any of the point system leves with a potentially large exp bonus were laughably easy without using cordials. Of course those leves aren't hard with good gear anyway, but I've run into bad luck before and failed to max out the bonus (using close to if not the best HQ gear for that level with no materia). It'll speed things up a little bit, but guerdon Is are fairly expensive for tier I materia. I was just sitting on a lot of them from leveling MIN and BOT and converting all of my gear to materia as soon as it reached 100%.

[Nyalia]

I've got my miner at 32 and my botanist at 37 or 38 - is it worth it to meld stuff while leveling, or should I wait until I hit 50?

I recommend investing in updated left side gear (maybe except belt) every 10 levels or so. There's a really, really nice 38 gatherer chest (Vintage Doublet Vest - ilvl 40) and good items for the other slots around there too. Updated gear will help you much more than materia will at low levels.

Actually, here's the best thing to do: When a piece of gear spiritbonds, update that slot and convert the old gear. Otherwise, if a piece of gear is 10 levels out of date without hitting 100% spiritbond, upgrade that slot anyway. In that case, take the old item and, if you have a lower level gatherer, store it until the lower level gatherer can use it. If you don't have a lower level gatherer class, sell it to a vendor.

This method keeps your gear new enough and gets you materia to spiritbond later. When you hit 50, you're going to need a LOT of materia to full meld your gear. While leveling, it really behooves you to collect as much materia as you can, and then blow it all on the ilvl 55 gatherer gear.

[Tovin]

Thanks very much guys. Truly appreciate it! All my gatherers are within a few levels of each other. Miner 24, Botanist 39, fishing 35....sadly, highest adventurer is 30!

[Nyalia]

Thanks very much guys. Truly appreciate it! All my gatherers are within a few levels of each other. Miner 24, Botanist 39, fishing 35....sadly, highest adventurer is 30!

Haha, I reached 50 first in WVR Turns out, any level 50 lets you unlock glamours, so I was glamming up my highest level DoW/DoM class well before they hit 50.

[Sassi666]

so is wearing gathering gear in dungeons quicker to spiritbond than actually gathering in said gear? Or can you SB the gear while you gather mats for your crafters? I don't really like the idea of wearing crafting gear in dungeons as I'd feel I wasn't pulling my weight, but that's just how I am I guess lol.