Spiritbonding Guide for Crafting and Gathering

In Final Fantasy XIV, Spiritbond is a system which allows you to gain Materia through Crafting, Gathering and Combat. Each piece of gear has a Spiritbond % which builds up incrementally as you perform these activities.

This is not a common method used for Combat classes due to being incredibly inefficient but is a very popular way to gain Materia for Crafting and Gathering. Gathering even moreso.

There are several quests allowing you to unlock skills related to Spiritbonding and Materia useage. These are:

• Forging the Spirit - Unlocks Materia Extraction.
• Waking the Spirit - Unlocks Materia Melding.
• Melding Materia Muchly - Unlocks Advanced Materia Melding.

All of these quests can be located around Central Thanalan (24, 14).

Spiritbond is gained whenever you Craft, Gather or Defeat enemies. The most important thing to understand is that your Spiritbond rate for Crafting, Combat and Fishing depends on the item level of your gear relative to the item you craft/gather or the enemy you defeat. For Miner and Botanist, spiritbond is gained based on the level of your gear relative to the level of the item.

Your Spiritbond rate will decrease if your gear is too far above the content you are trying to Spiritbond with. This makes it very important to consider item level while Spiritbonding.

Even when only 10ilv above, your Spiritbond rate starts to decrease by a noticeable amount until you get 0% spiritbond at a 50ilv difference. To give an example with Crafting, you will gain no Spiritbond while Scrip Farming if you are using Endgame Gear. You need to use items close to or aboe the Ilv of you gear.

There are various sources of buffs you gain gain to increase your Spiritbond rate. These are:

• Potions. The best currently being a HQ Superior Spiritbond Potion.
• Better Crowned Pie which gives +2.
• FC buffs "That Which Binds Us" I/II/III which provide +1/+2/+3 Rate respectively.
• Squadron Spiritbonding Manual which provides the same increases as the Free Company buffs.
• Gear such as Meteor Survivor Ring. These however are not recommended because you lose a gear slot which can be used to gain more materia.

The maximum spiritbond rate you can currently obtain without losing any gear slots is +11 from a HQ Superior Spiritbond Potion, Squadron Spiritbonding Manual and Better Crowned Pie to gain +11 Spiritbond Rate and then make sure to craft a material close to or above the Ilv of your gear. You can also use this to passively farm materia while crafting endgame gear, but you will likely need to use food focused on crafting and not Better Crowned Pies.

For Crafters, this can provide a significant decrease in the amount of crafts required. Gathering classes however have stricter limits. Gathering classes are restricted to a cap of +2 for normal nodes and +5 for legendary nodes. Even if you gain higher than +5 there is no difference in the rate at which you gain Spiritbond.

Having HQ gear is incredibly important to increase your Spiritbond rate. HQ gear provides a 20% increase to your Spiritbond with no downsides. Additionally, each piece of Materia added to your gear also increases your spiritbond rate by 20%.

This means that the gear you are Spiritbonding needs to be HQ with all 5 meld slots filled in to optimise your Spiritbond rate. The materia added does not need to be of any specific grade or type. It can all be Grade I Piety materia if you really wanted it to be. But make sure you hit any stat requirements on your gear firstly.

Use a HQ Superior Spiritbond Potion, Squadron Spiritbonding Manual and Better Crowned Pie to gain +11 Spiritbond Rate and then make sure to craft a material close to or above the Ilv of your gear. You can also use this to passively farm materia while crafting endgame gear, but you will likely need to use food focused on crafting and not Better Crowned Pies.

The most efficient method however is to not focus on Spiritbond. Instead, Scrip Farming is more efficient for crafting classes. Early on in an Expansion you can do both at the same time. Using buffs to gain Materia while you Scrip Farm gets you the best of both worlds. Later in an expansion this stops being effective as better gear provides more efficient Scrip Farming macros which outweighs the materia gained from Spiritbonding.

While rarely an efficient method, you technically do not need to complete a craft to gain Spiritbond. Failing a craft grants the exact same amount of Spiritbond. This means on cheap materials you dont plan on selling, it can be more efficient to simply fail the craft using Preparatory Touch which uses durability faster.

The best way to Spiritbond with Gathering is using Legendary nodes from both Dawntrail and Endwalker. With the spiritbond changes in Dawntrail, you can now gain almost the exact same spiritbond rate from both lv90 and lv100 legendary nodes using lv100 gear.

Spiritbond gain for Gathering is based on the amount of hits and not the yield gained from Gathering. Use skills like Solid Reason and Ageless Words alongside Wise to the World to optimise your attempts on a node.

That being said, to be even more optimal you can also throw in Orange Scrip nodes and to follow this alarm list. If you do, spend your GP on those nodes instead. This makes things very busy but is by far the most optimal way to gain gathering materia getting you roughly 65 materia an hour. This is over double the second best method.

Spiritbonding for Fishers is incredibly slow and not recommended. Instead, Fishing is a great way to Scrip Farm instead.

Below, you can find the step-by-step process of gathering spiritbonding:

1. Start by having a full set of HQ Crafted gear. HQ increases spiritbond rate.
2. From there, meld five materia into each piece while ensuring that you reach the minimum perception required for your nodes. Grade and type of materia do not matter outside of minimum perception, so use whatever is cheap and easy. Each meld increases your spiritbond rate by 20%.
3. Use an HQ Potent Spiritbond Potion or any Superior Spiritbond Potion. Spiritbond gain caps at +5 for gathering. (It was +5 in EW, Nerfed at the start of DT to +2 and then buffed again).
4. From there, follow this alarm list and hit every node you can.
5. Spend your GP on Orange Scrip nodes. Any excess GP can be spent on legendary nodes, you gain spiritbond per hit, not per item, so make sure to use skills such as Solid Reason and Ageless Words, which can then proc into Wise to the World for additional attempts.