Gear Materia

[RicoJalapeno]

Is there a guide on how to attach materia to your gear? As a noob I won't have to worry about it too much for awhile , but I am going to be a Bard, so I just want to know what kind to focus on.

[Skies]

Hrm... There is definitely no guide, sadly, that I know of, but some basic pointers:

Actually attaching materia to gear requires a crafting class, the same one that crafts that piece of gear. It's shown on the item's status window, however!
It also requires a key item from the quest 'Joining the Spirit' that can only be initiated by a Disciple of Hand of level 19+ (except Culinarian since they cannot meld materia to any gear).
Once you have those, then finally you need a Catalyst, which is harvested by a Disciple of the Land (you can buy them from the Market Wards at semi-reasonable prices, sadly this is player-market driven), in order to meld the item. There are three types of Catalysts each for certain tiers of materia, but I cannot tell you much on that as I merely started that quest just now, but I do know that Carbonized Matter (all catalysts are named [X] Matter, btw) works for the first tier of Materia.

The first piece of Materia melded into an item has 100% chance of success, afterwards it's possible to meld more (Forbidden Melding, it requires a quest I think as well and other things, I do not have experience with it so I will not comment further) but the chances of that working are lower and lower.

Also! There is a Melding Request option for your items. Simply go to the inventory and, provided you have the item, the materia you want and the catalyst all in your inventory you can just click the item and click "Melding Request" and it will put it up for whatever passing crafting to meld that materia in you gear, it costs you some money, however (which goes to the crafter). That said, it only works for the first, 100% chance, meld.

[Estellios]

This lodestone guide should answer most of your questions on Materia.

You need the materia, gear, and catalyst and you can either trade them to another player for melding or you can use the new "Request Meld" feature that the previous poster suggested. You can use it in the inventory menu by selecting the piece of gear and selecting "Request Materia Meld" from the popup. Important though: In order for the request option to become available you must complete the "Forging the Spirit" quest from Swynbroes in Central Thanalan (29, 20).

All the quest involves is talking to him, converting a piece of gear into materia, then talking to him again so if you have an item with full spiritbond already you can complete the quest in a matter of seconds.

As far as what you need to meld on gear for Bard and Archer, Piety and Dexterity are your main damage modifiers although I think Piety helps more. Piety also raises your Enfeebling skill so your debuffs from weaponskills are more reliable and powerful. Aside from that stats should be pretty straightforward.