If you’re looking to play at your absolute best in Final Fantasy XIV, learning how to apply Materia to gear is a must for players of all skill levels. Whether you’re crafting, gathering, or raiding, Materia can give you the edge you need to land critical hits like crazy or craft HQ items when using regular materials. These little joy-filled gems can be used as soon as you start getting gear with Materia slots and on some occasions, five Materia can even be put into a single piece of armor! With the intro out of the way, here is everything we know on how to apply Materia to gear in Final Fantasy XIV.

How to Apply Materia To Gear in Final Fantasy XIV

To apply Materia to gear in Final Fantasy XIV, you’ll first need to complete quests in Central Thanalan to unlock Materia Melding then either use a Materia melding NPC or level a crafter to meld it yourself. There’s a whole lot more to know about Materia melding though such as the kinds of Materia that can be melded, what Pentamelding is, and even how to get “free” Materia. See below for that!

The Basics

As mentioned, to even begin melding, you’ll need to complete the below quests depending on what you are looking for.

• NPC assisted melding – Level up any class to LVL 19 then complete the quest Forging the Spirit located in Central Thanalan (x:24, y:13.8). Once completed, any market in the city-states will now have NPCs who will meld Materia to your gear for a cost.
• Meld it yourself – Level up any crafting class to LVL 19 then Complete the quests Forging the Spirit (Central Thanalan (x:24, y:13.8)) and Waking the Spirit (Central Thanalan (x:23.6, y:13.9)). Once both are completed, you will gain and be able to use the Materia melding action which will allow you to affix Materia to gear by yourself.

Once you have your method, now you need to know what Materia can be used for what. The item level (iLVL) of gear decides what kind of Materia can be affixed. The higher the Materia’s level, the higher iLVL your gear must be before you can affix it. This is to ensure game balance doesn’t get broken.

To get Materia for melding, you can run dungeons, buy it off of the market board, trade tokens for them, or even just play the game normally. The more you use gear at content matching or exceeding your gear’s Item Level (including crafting recipes at your level), you will gain Spiritbond. Once you gain enough Spiritbond, your gear will eventually hit 100% and give an in-game notification that it has maxed out. Once maxed, a new action named Extract Materia will appear when you select your gear from the character screen. Extracting Materia here will cost nothing and reset your Spirtbond back to 0 meaning you can max it out again for more Materia.

The final thing to know about Materia is Pentamelding and really, it’s not something many players deal with. Pentamelding, as the name suggests, is the act of adding five Materia to a single piece of gear through the use of Advanced Materia Melding. To even attempt a Pentameld, Advanced Materia Melding needs to be unlocked by reaching level 25 and completing the quest Melding Materia Muchly located at Central Thanalan (x:23.8, y:13.6). Note that this requires you to have completed Waking the Spirit which needs a crafter at level 19. Once done, you’ll unlock Advanced Materia Melding which allows you to meld beyond the number of slots available on a piece of gear. In the image above, if you see the words “Advanced Melding Forbidden”, you can’t meld beyond the slots available.

If you do attempt to meld beyond the number of slots on a piece of gear, your chance for success drops with each Materia you add. To really make this worthwhile, seek Materia with a higher success chance by diving back into the lower levels of Materia. Welp, that’s it! That’s our crash course on How to Apply Materia To Gear in Final Fantasy XIV. Share it with a newbie the next time you want to save yourself some sanity.

Final Fantasy XIV is available on PC, PS4, and PS5. Be sure to check out our other Final Fantasy XIV guides while you’re here!

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