Minimum melds needed for hat

[Titor]

Hello,
I just got my DoL classes up to 50
What is the minimum melds I need to get the hat? The guides I see are for full melds which I do not want, I really only want the hat for glamour purposes so I want the cheapest way to be able to get them.

[Jeykama]

All you need is 370 gathering and 332 perception to be able to touch the node. The HQs can be done entirely with luck and/or patience.

[RiceisNice]

You should also have at least 500 GP to speed up the process of obtaining the HQ materials.
300 for toil
100 for 15% gathering rate
100 for 10% HQ Rate

That'd give you 100% gather rate (at 370 gathering), a minium of 11% to HQ, and 6 attempts, allowing you to use brunt/deep vigor for 100% hq.

[LunarEmerald]

Best to use food to reach 600 gp. Use toil then the +30% hq skill. It's better to have a 90% chance to hit with a 31% hq chance than 100% chance with 11%

With this method, you can easily get both the hat and tool in a few days.

[LunarEmerald]

Using the above method. You will get 2-3 hq on average.

Will almost never get 0

Will occassionally give 1 or 4

Will rarely give 5

Will almost never give 6

[Tovin]

I planned out my melding for the hat/main hand knowing that I didn't want to re-meld for the 2.3 nodes after. For left side I started with a full HQ set, except the belt, I currently have Raptorskin survival belt. I'll upgrade later. For right side I have Electrum Earrings and Raptorskin rings.

I started with:
Gather - 323
Perc - 321
GP - 573

Here's what I did (bolds are guaranteed slots, non-bold are overmelds):
http://imgur.com/b2jn8qT
NOTE: The materia called out is the actual stat of the materia, not the materia name.

I did slots 1/2 as shown, and plan on doing the other melds as needed. It cost me about 469k in melds, but I had really bad luck, and no adventurer to spirit bind materia for me (highest adventurer I have is 31).

Melding this way gets you to
Gather - 370
Perc - 341
GP - 595


This gets me to 595GP - so I hit toil, hit once and hope I get a log. Then I do the 30% HQ and then Brunt Force if I've hit all previous times.

Hope that helps! I am sure there is an easier and better way to do it, but that's what I came up with.

[Granyala]

Thanks Tovin, this looks really helpful.

Going to try to avoid Class IV materia for now, b/c 280K for one seems overly excessive.

[Tovin]

Thanks! I know there's a LOT of max meld posts out there, and not many "put this here" posts. I also want to add that I haven't re-visited the slot 3/4 melds since I got the new hat and mainhand. It needs some work, but so far been working on getting my crafters up.

[Artiste]

Try to get 600 GP also, with minimal stats it gonna work (did this for my miner, botanist main class), it's not needed for it give a lot of comfort.
So you can use Toil of the Mountaineer or Solid reason (kinda same result in fact), and Unearth II for 30% more HQ, with luck, you can do a chain and use Deep Vigor to get 100% success HQ on the last attempt.

[Yonko]

You should also have at least 500 GP to speed up the process of obtaining the HQ materials.
300 for toil
100 for 15% gathering rate
100 for 10% HQ Rate

That'd give you 100% gather rate (at 370 gathering), a minium of 11% to HQ, and 6 attempts, allowing you to use brunt/deep vigor for 100% hq.

I'm pretty sure you will hit 500 GP without any melds if your using the top end gear (AF + BIS <2.2) I know I have ~576 and I think I only have 1 GP meld.