Can't get "Forging the Spirit" quest to unlock materia

[scruffies]

I'm pretty new to the game (only L30 now), just started looking into "materia" and looking at completed quest log saw that I did do "Life, materia, and everything" which should have unlocked Swynbroes giving out "Forging the Spirit" which unlocks materia. However, "Forging the Spirit" is not a completed quest in the log and Sywnbroes does not offer it.

What's the deal? And.... is there a way to submit a ticket to gamemasters to fix an issue like this? I hope I am not locked out of any materia for the rest of the game with this character.

Thanks reply...

[XenabelleS]

Try being in a DoH (ie crafting) class. Sometimes quests won't even appear unless you are. Materia are a crafting thing.

[scruffies]

OK... seems the whole materia thing is part of crafting, which I don't want to do. So two questions:

1. Can I buy materia on the market and have it added to gear without having the "materia assimilator" that is the reward of the quest "forging the spirit"? In other words, do I ignore the whole matera thing if I don't want to level up a DoH class?

2. Is there anything I can do with "market prohibited' gear other than sell it to NPC's if I don't need it for another class?

thanks responses

[Frizze]

You shouldnt have a problem getting materia added to your gear. A crafter of the appropriate class(weaver for cloth goods, carpenter for wooden stuff, etc) can do it for you if their level is high enough. There are also NPCs in the major towns who can apply materia to gear for you. And yes, materia is readily available on the market board and you dont have to be a dedicated or high level crafter to make your own.

So for market prohibited gear, there are a few options depending on the gear itself and you. You can potentially convert, desynthesize, sell, save, or turn in such equipment. Sell you already know(a few gil from an NPC), and save is self explanatory(does it look pretty and/or is it annoying to get but you could possibly need it again?). Desynthesis(break it down for parts) requires you to level up crafting, so thats unlikely. So that leaves the first and last from my mini list. If the gear is "special" - and most market prohibited gear is - you could potentially turn it in to your grand company for extra seals. Special in this case means that the background of the inventory picture is colored(green, blue, pink... mostly green and pink at your level). If your rank is high enough, your GC will take donations of extra stuff you dont want and give you seals for them(the amount is mostly based off the level of the gear, with some variation based on rarity). If you arent already of the rank to turn stuff in, it isnt usually all that helpful to horde stuff you can turn in later for seals. The stuff youd get later would be worth more anyway, so you can keep a cleaner inventory.

And finally that leaves convert. I believe you need to complete the quest youre looking for in this thread to unlock the convert ability. And not all gear is convertible(if you examine a piece of gear, in the bottom left of the item box there should be an entry for "Convertible" with a yes or no) anyway. But basically, if you soulbind the equipment to 100% that is convertible, you can destroy said equipment to transform it into materia. Higher level gear means higher level materia, and the type you get is randomly picked from a pool of options based on the type of gear you convert.

So, i know you said you arent interested in crafting and i understand that. Not everything interests everyone. I will just point out that getting the 19 or so crafting levels you would need to go undertake this quest could be done in less then 2 hours for not much of a cost in gil. The easiest way would be to go to the blacksmith guild in Limsa and sign up. When you switch over, make sure you use your bonus exp ring from Hall of the Novice(which im assuming you have - if not, thats another 10-15 mins to earn that but who doesnt like bonus exp to help level new ventures?). Every crafting guild has a material supplier who sells the stuff you need to make recipes up to about level 15. However, the blacksmith supplier is right next to the armorsmith supplier. Armorsmiths get to iron equipment a couple levels before blacksmiths do, so that vendor also sells the iron you would need to get blacksmith higher up into the teens. Basically, try to make every recipe once and you should hit your level 19 goal in like 75 or so minutes. If you dont like the idea of being a partially trained blacksmith, you could use any other crafting class but would have to scrounge up some materials for the last few levels on your own(most likely at the market board). Then once you do this one quest, you could toss away your smithy hammer and pretend you never learned that stuff to begin with.

With all that said. Materia is mostly pointless until you get into end-game content. While leveling you replace your gear at a fairly rapid rate, and the extra point or two you could meld into something might not even make a noticeable difference. So deciding to put all these decisions off until later is also valid.

[Hasrat]

Additional, I suspect part of the "market prohibited" issue OP is concerned with may be just any old gear with spiritbond (hence looking into materia conversion as something to do with old gear still bound to player). Which, without crafting experience, I think can only really be sold (or discarded) if it's normal no-background type gear.

[scruffies]

Frizze... I very much appreciate the significant time and thought you put into your detailed lengthy response. THANK YOU!

Only been playing for about a month and ended up with a couple of pinkies, which naturally were not for my class, so your post covered all the options!

I don't like crafting much, but I love the marketplace (my RL career was in sales... hehehe) which is to say I love making money (Gil). I've never found gathering in WoW, Everyquest, EQ2, paying much (low prices, too much product) and I am not sure if going thru the effort you outlined to be able to disassemble gear for materia would be worth much on the market, but will look into that.

I have printed out your comments Frizze in case I do decide to pursue materia.

And Hasrat, thanks for your comment. I do have a lot of low level "soul bound" gear so yes, was wondering if there was better option than 1Gil at a NPC. I think not.

[Niwashi]

Try being in a DoH (ie crafting) class. Sometimes quests won't even appear unless you are. Materia are a crafting thing.

Actually, Forging the Spirit is open to any class. It's the one that enables you to convert used gear into materia. You don't need crafting for that part.

You're thinking of Waking the Spirit, which is the one used to unlock melding that materia onto other gear. That one requires a crafting class (one that makes gear, so any DoH other than Culinarian).


But yes, regardless of whether you get into crafting or not, you should still be able to convert gear into materia, provided that it's both a type that can be converted (will say so in the item tooltip) and it's 100% spiritbound.

The materia you'll get from it is much more valuable than used gear, especially since you can sell it to other players (not limited to NPC sales only, which give a pathetic return).

Or you can keep it for your own use, either having an NPC materia melder add it to open slots on your gear, or asking a crafting player to do so. (NPCs can only meld to open slots, whereas crafters can add up to five materia per item, though with a failure chance if there isn't an open slot.)

[scruffies]

OK...I am a complete idiot.

Finally found "side quests" and found that I did in fact complete "Forging the Spirit" I was looking under completed quests but not specifically "side quests' so didn't see it.

I also had looked for the "materia assimilating" item but apparently it's not a "thing" but an ability that I now have, so...

Sorry to spin peeps up on this, however, I did learn a lot from Frizze, so thanks for that!

Tomorrow I will see if I can disassemble some old gear and get some materia from it.

Again... thanks for the thoughtful responses all.

[Frizze]

I've never found gathering in WoW, Everyquest, EQ2, paying much (low prices, too much product)

Honestly, the easiest way to make money in this game is to level the gathering professions. They dont have really high gear requirements, and their only real gating is time invested. The key is to know the marketplace. As a gatherer, youre almost exclusively catering to crafters(trying to think of gathered things used by adventurers, i was only able to come up with a couple examples). So you look for materials that sell well and sell often. Note that this isnt necessarily end-game gathering only. Yeah, that can be a lucrative market but the competition can be tough(not to mention the requirements being higher). No, the key is to find some of the lower level easier to get items that people just need a lot(or that may be annoyingly out of the way to go gather when you only need limited quantities). My classic example is Alumen. A miner can collect that as low as level 15 or 16(and while its not super out of the way, its not in a place you go to that often), but its used by leatherworkers while tanning skins on almost every recipe until up in the 40s. New crafters start all the time, and the game has a habit of throwing lower-level materials into higher levels crafts a decent amount of the time(some of the level 55ish recipes were mixing in level 30ish metals for instance) so this strategy is a long term money maker if you decide to pursue it.