Throughout your travels in Eorzea, you may have possessed some colored orbs called matter. While they might not matter at low levels, once you get to the end of FFXIV you’ll be wondering how to use them. In this post, I’ll discuss what fusion does, how it works, and why and when you should do it.
splice requirements
First, you should know that everyone can fuse materials through the NPC Materia Melder in the city. Just provide the material and the NPC will attach it to your device for you for a small amount of gold. You don’t need a level crafter, but you can’t mix too much either. Overcast only works with crafted gear anyway, so if you’re using “blue” gear, like raid or temple, then you can’t overcast them anyway.
If you’re looking for Materia Melders, you can find them in your starting cities, as well as cities and expansion hubs. The map icons are light blue ovals.
If you prefer the freedom to mingle wherever you want without the NPC fees, you’ll need to complete the “Awaken the Soul” quest in Central Thanalan. You must be a level 19 crafter (not ALC or CUL) to complete this quest. However, unlocking the fusion of materials is not enough. You can see what level your crafter should be at the bottom of the item’s tooltip under “Matter Fusion”. So until you have a level 80 crafter, you still need to go to the NPC Materia Melder to get rid of your ultimate combat gear. At least you don’t need to assign a specific craftsman to each item; any DoH will do.
There are different grades of material, from 1 to 8. These provide an increasing number of sub-stats, but require increasingly higher levels of basic items for equipment. This prevents you from racking up tons of stats on low level gear. In most cases, you don’t have to worry about this requirement, as most people don’t start merging devices until they reach the highest level.
The lowest level material requires an item level of 15. The current end materials (7 and 8) require a base item level of 420. So once you get the level 80 (i430) job gear, you can start fusing them together (but there is still more advanced equipment that is still easy to get).
Once fused, you can salvage equipment materials, which you must do before you can discard, sell, dismantle, or upgrade an equipment. But if the material is of high quality, then there is a chance that it will crack during the process. The success rate of level 8 magic stone recovery is 40%, and the success rate of level 7 magic stone recovery is 80%.
All lower grade materials are guaranteed to be recycled, so you can mix and recycle them if you like. This is worth knowing to complete one of the easier challenges in the challenge log (which requires 5 matches). You bring your crafting and Jill expertise together for this quest simply by merging and salvaging the same materials.
Why should I merge?
There isn’t much benefit to fusing your team together if you’re not at the highest level. Sure, you can jump in, try it out, and learn how it works without losing anything, but it won’t have any noticeable effect on your work experience. At least not for combat. For crafters and gatherers, a few extra CP or GP can make all the difference, allowing them to do more in each quest. Certain collection nodes will also give you rewards if you hit various stat thresholds, but they’re still small buffs and you’ll be able to level up fast enough that you won’t stay on these nodes for long.
On the other hand, when you like endgame content, you want every little edge, and the combination is standard practice. This means filling all material slots and using the correct material to get the desired stats. Considering the amount of combat material and material tokens you get from playing maxed out content, the cost of fusing is pretty low, so you might as well gain additional stats and do more damage.
For Savage Raids and Extreme Trials, fusion is often done as a means of squeezing out as much damage as possible, as these fights have an “enrage” mechanic. Bosses go into a rage after a certain period of time, automatically eliminating the team. You need to kill him before that, which requires your party to have a certain amount of DPS. Too low and you won’t get the boss’s HP to zero before the timer runs out.
More casual content like alliance raids, level 80 dungeons, and normal raids don’t always have the enrage mechanic, but the bonus damage is still appreciated, so everything runs fast and smooth. Similarly, certain fusions provide other buffs like Ability Speed, Spell Speed, and Devotion (MP regeneration rate). These indirectly increase your damage, but more significantly affect your experience and rate of running errands. You may see suggestions that say things like “religious taste” or “spelling speed at a comfortable level.”
What material to incorporate?
First, let me reiterate that you don’t need to worry about melting down to max level. Once you get there, your gear will be high enough to use level 8 and 7 materials, so there’s no reason to use anything else. There are many different types of materials: seven types of fighting materials (DoW and DoM), three types of crafting materials (DoH), and three types of gathering materials (DoL).
For combat, you have red stuff for damage sub-stats like critical hits, direct hits, and determination. Ability Speed and Spell Speed have purple materials that make GCD faster for DoW and DoM, respectively. Yellow stuff includes toughness for tanks to (slightly) reduce the damage they take, and mercy for healers to increase their MP regen.
Each property and sub-property of each team has an upper limit. As long as the device doesn’t reach that limit, you can add more of this subproperty by merging the appropriate materials. In general, you want to avoid merging materials where you exceed the limit, as these substats have no effect and are wasted.
If you check out The Balance Discord, the errand channel has a Best in Slot (BiS) list, which shows you the best gear combos you can use and the types of materials you should incorporate into them. Some jobs have substats that are more or less desirable, and available resources and mentors can tell you which ones you want. While you’re still working on getting those BiS parts, you can still prioritize using materials with the appropriate sub-properties.
If you are fusing gear for combat work, most of the time you will be able to fuse two pieces of material for the left side gear and one for the accessories and belt. You should always put level 8 materials to max out stats. If you know you’ll be replacing it soon, you can use level 6 because you can get it back without worrying about it breaking.
melt
You may notice that Tier 7 materials have lower stats than Tier 6 ones, despite being one level higher. This is because Class 7 and 5 materials can be freely used in superfusion, while Class 8 and 6 materials are restricted.
Grade 8 material is your universal material for guaranteed fusion slots on premium gear. If you’re melting too much, you can fuse an additional level 8 beyond the guaranteed slot. Anything higher than that can’t be a level 8 or 6, so your best bet is a level 7 or 5, but anything lower is fine too.
What makes lap splicing so expensive is the possibility of a lap splice failing, destroying the material you are trying to join. Advanced materials have a lower success rate, but obviously if you want the highest stats, that’s still the way to go.
When you look at the tooltip for the fusion gear, there will be a blue symbol next to the material if it fits into the item’s guaranteed fusion slot. Red glowing magic stones fused beyond the guaranteed slot. Also, if your material wasted any potential due to hitting the item’s stat cap, the material’s sub-stat will be displayed in red text showing how much it actually provides, even though the material would normally provide a larger bonus.
With many overmelds, you don’t need a lot of stats to hit the item’s cap, so you can get away with much less material and it will have the exact same effect. It’s also common for crafters and gatherers to use lower quality materials, since it’s cheaper and you can still hit enough stat thresholds to successfully craft most things with a bit of effort.
Combat jobs sometimes get too mixed up, for example if you’re in the early stages you might get a crafted set before you get a weekly locked raid set. This well-crafted team can be overmixed and you can usually max it out with as many sub-stats as you can. The first overmeld can be tier 8 material and the rest should be tier 7. I think that’s the only use for tier 7 combat materials.
Where do I get the materials?
I cover the best methods in my Materia Farming guide, so check it out for detailed tips, especially if you need a lot of materials.
In most cases, combat materials are obtained by trading tokens. These will be Cracked Stellaclusters and Cracked Planiclusters from Class 8 and Class 7 materials respectively. Some common sources of these are Adventurer in Need bonuses, Wondrous Tails rewards, and Treasure Hunting. You can also trade Elven Fantasy with Goblin Beast Horde in exchange for materials of your choice.
For non-combat materials, a lot is usually needed, as excessive melting is very common. So the farming method everyone uses is to give Rowena collectibles in exchange for tokens, and buy the materials of whatever level she wants. Check delivery via your timer menu [Ctrl+U] And look for anything starring that day. This will give you better time returns than usual.
resume
I hope this sheds some light on the whole material fusion process; it’s a pretty easy system to use once you get the hang of it. If you have any other questions on the matter, please leave them below and I will do my best to help.
When did you first try material fusion? Did you do it yourself or did you use material splicers stationed around the world? I’m curious how others view this process as newbies, so please let me know!
Categories: Gaming
Source: HIS Education