How do gunblades work?

[EdwinLi]

The cartridges are packed with pulverized crystal; the wielder infuses the powdered crystal with some magic or another which stays latent until the charge is activated and the powder is ignited. You can fire them to send a shockwave through the blade OR fire it into the air around you. It just can't fire projectiles over long distances like a gun or Garlean gunblade.

To add on to this...

The there is two types of Gunblades that exists in FF14 being the Gunbreaker Gunblade and Garlean Gunblade....

Gunbreaker Gunblade is designed to follow the concept of Squall from FF8. The weapon focus is to be a pure melee focused weapon that uses the Magical energy infused into the Cartridges to enhance the Blade of the Gunblade. Depending on the Cartridge, the user can infuse different elemental attributes into the gunblade's melee attacks but the most common one used is the Fire Element to perform the explosion melee attacks the Gunbreaker is well known for. The Cartridges can be made by the user or another person by infusing empty cartridges with magical energy.

In Thancred case he has "Minfilia" provide him with the Cartridges due to his lack of ability to use magic and he will even have a Special Unity attack with "Minfilia" if they are in the Trust party together which has "Minfilia" throw to Thancred a Special infused Cartridge for his strongest attack.


The Garlean Gunblade is designed to be the Lightning Gunblade from FFXIII and Real Life Gunblades you can find in history books. Their blade is made for melee combat and they have a fully functioning Gun Barrel to fire projectiles or create magical range attacks for Range combat. The source of Garlean Gunblade's magical abilities and projectiles is Ceruleum rather than the user's magic. The Barrel function is also different from Gunbreaker's Gunblade because it is primarily used for Range attacks both physical and magical attributes and the weapon is designed for a hybrid of Melee and Range combat. The basic one we seen that used by Gaius and normal Garlean Officers use basic physical projectiles and depends on a Magitek wrist gun for their magical projectile attacks but the newer version of Garlean Gunblades (as we learned in GNB quest is just recently developed) are used by Regula and Vitus with the designed made to implament the Magitek wrist gun function into the Gunblade so it can maintain a infinite ammo using only a Ceruleum core with the added function of performing Magic Range attacks.

Lore wise, the Gunbreaker Gunblade and Garlean Gunblade are considered two completely different weapons due to their design's function. If SE wanted they can easily create a separate Job with the Garlean Gunblade.