Grade One Materia farming atrocity

[Akue44]

Farming Low level Materia should not be as difficult as it is now. You do not gain DoW/DoM spiritbond from overworld mobs, so there are only 2 other ways. Fate Grinding or Duty Grinding. This in of itself is not that big of a deal compared to what's next. Farm Close to the Item lvl duty/fate and get marginal spiritbond gain, Do higher than the item lvl and get more than normal spiritbond gain. So far so good but, wait for it, go too high and you go back to the minimal spiritbond gain rate again. I get it for Gatherer/Crafters but for combat jobs? Is this really necessary to gate the spiritbond rate for low level combat materia? I say if you go into a lvl 90 dungeon with a Ilvl 30 piece equipped and manage to survive and do the whole thing, then good for you here have a 100% spiritbond gain for that item. Am I alone in this or should we just accept that getting grade 1 materia for the ARR relic weapons has to be as painful as possible?

[Frizze]

I think the idea is they dont want to encourage people purposefully equipping gear well below their level. What someone wants to do in a solo/pre-made dungeon/encounter/etc is their business, but showing up in a roulette/que with below the minimum equipped is signing other players up to carry your challenge run without their consent. I might be remembering it wrong, but i think people used to do unsynced runs maybe for these? Like wear weak gear, do a weak instance, and unsync it in 2 mins with your high level weapon and abilities. Blue mage is probly the best these days, as you can vastly overpower a dungeon while still synced. Though if they wanted to add a merchant somewhere that sold G1/2 combat materia, i wouldnt complain. They could even put it behind a faction or sidequest grind.

[ACE135]

I think I farmed low materia at the time where the item still got destroyed when extracting the materia. I put on a lot of low gear, I think somewhat around 40, and killed a lot of overworld mobs in that range. I think it went quite fast but I don't know if it's still possible or if they changed something inbetween.

[Iscah]

I think I farmed low materia at the time where the item still got destroyed when extracting the materia. I put on a lot of low gear, I think somewhat around 40, and killed a lot of overworld mobs in that range. I think it went quite fast but I don't know if it's still possible or if they changed something inbetween.

This. You could equip low-level gear, keep your high-levelled weapon equipped and walk through a suitable zone one-hit-KOing everything in your path.

Now you can't do that because you don't get spiritbonding from overworld enemies unless you do FATEs and are level-synched.

[Deveryn]

What if you took your squadron out or ran duty support on a low dungeon? Shouldn't you get a decent amount of bond from that?

[Blindheart]

I miss overworld spirit bonding, i used to level up hand and land materia with chocobo doing all the work.

[Hasrat]

Ok. Here's what you do. See. The materia you get from gear depends on the gear. And, fortunately, you can find plenty of "All Classes" low level gear.
Pick out a full set of HQ combat gear wearable by all classes.*
Max overmeld the cheapest materia you can find, crafter/gatherer materia is even fine for this. This isn't strictly necessary, but melded materia does increase the rate of spiritbond.
Slap that on your Miner/Botanist, and hit up Diadem.

Using whatever your best main/off-hand tools are, you should at least be able to hit one of the materials reliably.
Spiritbond potions, FC buffs (or Squadron manuals), Better Crowned Pie, all add to your spiritbonding rate.

You can knock out all the materia you should need for a relic in about an hour or two.

*May also be important to spread the levels out a bit, to aim for grade 2 or 3.

Editing for future googlers:

My set includes Cotton Sugarloaf Hat (i22), Cotton Halfrobe (i21), Cotton Dress Gloves (i21), Cotton Breeches (i19), Cotton Dress Shoes (i22), Brass Ear Cuffs (i20), Brass Gorget (i16), Brass Wristlets (i16), and two Brass Rings (i18).

I had read somewhere about the spread/percentage of materia grades extracted, and.... I can't really remember, but pretty sure this covers mostly grade 1 with decent chance of grade 2. I'm... probably going to have to swap some things out or something when I eventually burn through my stash of grade 3... maybe?

Reminder as well for this relic step, these are purely glamour. Slap as much of any materia as you can. I might not even actually be using grade 3, just dumping anything and everything in to advance.

In summation, things to increase spiritbond and thus maximize materia: Gear should be HQ, fully over-melded with whatever cheap garbage you can find, buy or make Superior Spiritbond Potions, if you've got your Squadron adequately leveled, do a few runs for Spiritbonding Manuals (or have your FC run the buff). Better Crowned Pie also helps with additional meal bonus, but getting them might not be worth the trouble.

And no, any piece of gear that offers a spiritbond bonus will not help. It'll more likely slow you down, being one piece of gear that isn't HQ and isn't melded. I just wear all the listed gear on MIN, with whatever my best main/off-hand tools are, go to Diadem, and I've got a few dozen of several types of materia to choose from.

[Alpheus]

Ok. Here's what you do. See. The materia you get from gear depends on the gear. And, fortunately, you can find plenty of "All Classes" low level gear.
Pick out a full set of combat gear wearable by all classes.*
Max overmeld the cheapest materia you can find, crafter/gatherer materia is even fine for this. This isn't strictly necessary, but melded materia does increase the rate of spiritbond.
Slap that on your Miner/Botanist, and hit up Diadem.

Using whatever your best main/off-hand tools are, you should at least be able to hit one of the materials reliably.
Spiritbond potions, FC buffs (or Squadron manuals), Better Crowned Pie, all add to your spiritbonding rate.

You can knock out all the materia you should need for a relic in about an hour or two.

*May also be important to spread the levels out a bit, to aim for grade 2 or 3.

Beautiful.