Quote Originally Posted by VarkingRunesong View Post
New player here: What does spirit bonding do?
Spirit bonding tracks your use of a piece of gear. When it reaches 100% you can convert (now "extract" materia) from it depending on the type of gear. DoW/DoM gear will yield combat materia, crafter gear crafting materia, etc.

previously, converting a piece of gear into materia would mean you lose the gear because it was consumed in the conversion process. now you can just extract the materia from it and the spiritbond percentage will reset to 0, meaning you can start over again to make it get to 100%.

there are ways to make the spiritbond rate increase faster - the more materia you meld to a piece of gear, spiritbonding potions, gear that has spiritbond rate increases as part of it (meteor survivor ring), or the manual you can bring back from squadrons.