Materia

You can attach Materia to your gear to increase its stats. Different types of Materia boost different attributes.

You can create Materia by extracting it from gear that has 100% spiritbond. This doesn't destroy the equipment, just reduces the spiritbond to 1%. Your gear's spiritbond increases as you earn EXP.

Creating Materia

To unlock Materia Creation, complete the quest BlueQuest IconForging the Spirit in Central Thanalan. This quest is available from Swynbroes if you have completed the level 19 Main Scenario Quest Life, Materia and Everything.

When you earn EXP or perform actions that would earn EXP, your gear also earns experience in the form of Spiritbond. When Spiritbond reaches 100%, you can convert the gear's Spiritbond into Materia, which resets the Spiritbond of that piece of gear to 1%.

To extract Materia from spiritbonded gear, you can right-click the gear and choose Extract Materia, or if you go to Main Character > Actions & Traits > General, you will find Materia Extraction, which you can drag to a hotbar or assign to a crossbar. The Materia Extraction window allows you to view the Spiritbond of the gear you have equipped as well as any gear in your Armory Chest and inventory.

Gear with 100% spiritbond is shown as a white dot in the Inventory Grid.

Melding Materia

After you complete the BlueQuest IconForging the Spirit quest mentioned above, you will be able to talk to Materia Melder NPCs in city-states and hub cities and pay them to meld Materia to your gear.

Or, if you have a crafter at level 19 or higher, you can talk to Swynbroes after completing BlueQuest IconForging the Spirit, to accept and complete the quest BlueQuest IconWaking the Spirit. This unlocks Materia Melding. You will be able to meld Materia into gear if you meet the Materia melding requirement of that piece of gear. View the gear's information window and look for "Materia Melding" to see the requirement.

You can also send meld requests to players who are currently a crafter of level 19 or higher (if they have unlocked Materia melding) by right-clicking them and choosing Request Meld, but they can charge gil for it, and you will need to provide the Materia.

Overmelding

You can unlock Overmelding when you reach level 25 in any class by talking to Mutamix in Central Thanalan to accept and complete the quest BlueQuest IconMelding Materia Muchly. This unlocks Advanced Materia Melding, which allows you to attach Materia to gear even if all of its Materia slots are full. However, a given piece of gear can only hold up to five total Materia (i.e. Pentamelded gear), and some gear does not support Advanced Materia Melding. The success rate of Advanced Materia Melding is much lower than that of attaching Materia to normal slots.