Gear not spiritbonding?

[Freyja_Hyskaris]

I submitted this as a bug report but I was wondering if anyone else has encountered this problem and/or has found a solution around it.

I went to extract materia from my ilvl530 Augmented Cryptlurker's Gear equipped to my AST, only to discover that its spiritbond was at... 0%. I have been using this gear for my AST from level 80 all the way through level 90, having run many dungeons and fought many enemies wearing it, yet every single piece--Main Hand, Head, Body, Hands, Legs, Feet, Earrings, Neck, Wrists, Right Ring, Left Ring--are all stuck at 0%.

One seemingly important piece of information is that I did not run into this problem with my other set of Cryptlurker's gear equipped to my BRD, which has been wearing that gear set as long as my AST has. My BRD gearset hit 100% spiritbond long ago and I was able to extract materia from it no problem.

Thanks in advance for anyone who can shed some light onto this issue!

[Kirika-]

Meld a materia to it, even if it's just tier one and a non-useful stat, as gear that is melded will bond much faster.
Non melded gear will still bond, but it takes many many many times longer to get bond % gains.
Also, you need to be doing content that will/would result in EXP gain (even if you are already capped in EXP) in order for bonding to even occur.

[Jojoya]

To gain spiritbond, you need to be doing content appropriate to the item level of the gear. For the Augmented Cryptlurker gear, that means Endwalker content since 530 is the ilvl for level 83 content rewards.

If you've been running roulettes to level and getting placed into low level duties, you're not going to gain spiritbond even with level sync because the content is still lower than the gear level. You probably used your BRD to complete the MSQ, which is why that gear did gain spiritbond. The content was the correct level.

If you're trying to farm grade VII/VIII DoM/DoW materia via extraction (not sure why, it's very easy to get through other methods), run level 83+ dungeons/trials while using a Superior Spiritbond Potion, Squadron Spiritbond Manual and Better Crowned Pie.

As Kirika said, also make certain all slots are melded since that also increases the rate spiritbond is gained. It can be any materia of any grade/type so buy whatever is cheapest on the MB if you don't already have some on hand.

[Freyja_Hyskaris]

Okay, thanks for the insight! I did have materia melded to this before I took the screencap, I just didn't notice the spiritbond level until after I took them out and went to extract the materia.

It's true that I use my BRD much more than my AST (mostly a healer to help my friends out), so in hindsight it's possible I did not run any EW dungeons as AST. I do recall doing some ShB superboss FATEs as AST (Formidable, Archaeotania) but according to what you said, those would not be high enough to kick off a spiritbond. I'll give one of the EW dungeons a try to see if I can get the spiritbond process started.

And no, I wasn't trying to farm materia, I just figured I would extract some materia if I could before I desynthesized the Planisphere. I'd like to hang on to the rest of the set for when I level the other healing classes, so having it all at 100% spiritbond would be ideal! Thanks again to both of you for your help.

[Freyja_Hyskaris]

Just wanted to give a quick update: I ran the Tower of Babil with my AST and my spiritbond hit 27%. Thank you so much for helping me troubleshoot that problem! I really appreciate it.