During your travels in Eorzea, you may have possessed some colored orbs called materia. While they may not matter at the low level, when you enter the late stages of FFXIV you will wonder how to use them. In this post, I will discuss the uses of merge, how it works, and why and when you should do it.
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First, you should know that everyone can do matter fusion through the NPC Materia Melder in the city. You just need to provide the material and the NPC will attach it to your device for you with a small amount of gold. You don’t need a qualified artisan, but you also can’t over-blend. Anyhow, overusing only works with crafted gear, so if you’re using “blue” gear – like raid or temple gear – then you can’t overuse level them.
If you’re looking for Materia Melder, you can find them in the starting cities as well as expansion cities and centers. The icons on the map are light blue ovals.
If you want the freedom to blend in anywhere you want without paying NPC fees, you’ll need to complete the “Awaken the Soul” quest in Thanalan Center. You must have a level 19 artisan (not ALC or CUL) to complete this quest. However, unlocking material fusion is not enough. You can see what level your artisan needs to reach at the bottom of the item legend in the “Materia Melding” section. So until you have a level 80 craftsman, you still need to go to NPC Materia Melder to dispose of your end-game battle gear. At least you don’t need to assign a specific artisan to each item; any DoH will do.
There are a variety of materials ranging from 1-8. These provide an increasing number of secondary stats, but require increasingly higher base item levels for the equipment. This prevents you from accumulating tons of stats on low end devices. In most cases, you don’t have to worry about this requirement, as most people don’t start consolidating devices until they reach their peak.
Lowest level materials require an item level of 15. Current end-game materials (7 and 8) require a base item level of 420. So when you get labor equipment level 80 (i430) you can start consolidating these (but still more advanced gear that’s still easy to get).
Once merged, you can get materials from equipment, which you should do before discarding, selling, dismantling, or upgrading a device. But if the material is premium, there is a chance it will crack in the process. The success rate of level 8 magic stone recovery is 40%, the success rate of level 7 magic stone recovery is 80%.
Any lower grade materials are guaranteed to be recycled, so you can blend and recycle if you want. This is worth knowing when completing one of the easiest challenges in the challenge log (5 meld required). You gain Jill and the craftsman’s experience for this quest simply by combining and obtaining the same materials.
Why should I merge?
There’s not much benefit to merging your devices if you’re not at the top level. Of course, you can go 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 fighting. For artisans and gatherers, some extra CP or GP can really make a difference, as it allows you to do more in each quest. Certain collect nodes will also give you rewards if you hit different stat thresholds, but these are still small perks and you should be able to level up fast enough to not have to hang around the nodes this is too long.
On the other hand, when you’re into end game content, you’ll want every little advantage, and matching is standard practice. This means filling all the material boxes and using the right materials to get the desired stats. Considering the amount of battle materials and material tokens you get when playing max content, the merge cost is pretty low, so you can also get extra stats and deal a lot of damage than.
For Savage Raids and Extreme Trials, fusion is often done as a means of reducing damage as much as possible, as these battles feature “angry” mechanics. The boss goes on a rampage after a certain amount of time, automatically wiping out the entire team. You need to kill it first, which requires your party to have a certain amount of DPS. Too low and you won’t be able to get the boss’s HP to zero before the time runs out.
More casual stuff like alliance raids, level 80 dungeons, and normal raids don’t always have the wrath mechanic, but the extra damage is still appreciated, so things move quickly. and smoothly. Likewise, certain fusions provide other benefits such as Ability Speed, Magic Speed, and Devotion (MP recovery rate). These will indirectly increase your damage, but more significantly affect your experience and pace of play. You might see suggestions that say something like “religious taste” or “spelling at a comfortable pace”.
What materials to combine?
First let me reiterate that you don’t need to worry about merging until the 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 different types of materials: seven types of battle materials (DoW & DoM), three types of crafting materials (DoH), and three types of gathering materials (DoL).
For combat, you have red materials for damage secondary stats like critical hit, direct hit, and determination. Ability Speed and Spell Speed have purple materials that make GCD work faster for DoW and DoM respectively. The yellow ones include toughness for tanks to reduce (slightly) the damage they take, and filial piety to healers to increase their MP recovery.
Each device property and sub-attribute has an upper bound. As long as the device doesn’t reach that limit, you can add this extra attribute by combining the appropriate materials. In general, you want to avoid merging materials where you will go over the limit, as these secondary stats have no effect and are wasted.
If you check out The Balance Discord, the chore channel there has a list of Best in Slot (BiS), showing you the best gear combinations you can use and the types of materials you should combine them with. Some jobs have secondary stats that are more or less desirable, and the resources and mentors out there can tell you which job you want. While you are still working on getting those BiS parts, you can still favor materials with suitable secondary properties.
If you’re merging gear for combat work, most of the time you’ll be able to merge two pieces of material for the left gear and one for accessories and belts. You should always put level 8 materials in it to maximize stats. If you know you’ll be replacing it soon, you can use level 6 as you can get it back without worrying about it breaking.
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You may notice that level 7 materials have lower stats than level 6, despite being a higher grade. This is because Type 7 and 5 materials can be used freely in supersolution, while Type 8 and 6 materials are limited.
Grade 8 material is your go-to for guaranteed fusion slots in high-end equipment. If you are too molten you can combine more level 8 in addition to the guaranteed position. Anything higher than that can’t be level 8 or 6, so your best bet is level 7 or 5, but any lower will do.
What makes overlapping splicing so expensive is the potential for the overlap joint to fail, damaging the material you’re trying to join. Advanced materials have a lower success rate, but obviously if you want the highest stats, it’s still the way to go.
When you look at the tooltip for the fused item, there should be a blue icon next to the materials if they fit in the guaranteed fusion slot on the item. The red glowing magic stone is over-fused beyond the guaranteed location. Also, if your material wastes some potential due to hitting the item’s stat cap, the material’s secondary stats will be shown in red text indicating how much it actually provides, though materials often yield greater rewards.
For many overmelds you don’t need as many stats to hit the item cap, so you can use much lower materials and it will have exactly the same effect. Craftsmen and gatherers also often use lower grade materials, as it’s cheaper and you can still hit enough stat thresholds to successfully craft most anything with a little effort.
Combat jobs are sometimes over-mixed, e.g. if in the early stages you can get a crafting set before getting a weekly locked raid set. This well-crafted gear can be over-blended, and in general you can max it out with as many extra stats as you can. The first overlay can be level 8 material and the rest should be level 7 material. I think that’s the only use for level 7 combat material.
Where do I get documents?
I cover best practices in my Growing Materia guide, so check it out for in-depth tips, especially if you need a lot of ingredients.
In most cases, combat materials are obtained by trading tokens. These will be Cracked Stellacluster and Cracked Planicluster of Layer 8 and Layer 7 materials respectively. Some of the popular sources of these are the Adventurer’s Need bonus, the Magic Tail bonus, and the Treasure Hunt. You can also trade Elven Fantasy with the Goblin Beast Horde in exchange for the material of your choice.
For non-combat materials you usually need a lot, as overcombining is very common. So the farmable method everyone uses is to give the collectibles to Rowena in exchange for tokens and buy whatever leveling materials you want. Check through your timer menu [Ctrl+U] And look for anything starred that day. This will give you better than usual time returns.
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Hope this sheds some light on the whole material fusion process; it’s a pretty easy system to use once you get used to it. If you have any other questions about this, feel free to leave them below and I’ll do my best to help you.
When did you first try matter fusion, did you do it yourself or use material fusion houses stationed around the world? I’m curious to see how others view the process as newbies, so please let me know!