Part 103: Forging/Equipment

Forging Tutorial

Yeah, I know I’ve held off on writing this up until the Last Chapter. Lydie & Suelle has a frankly really janky forging system; you can’t just go to Hagel with your Weapon Materials that have all the highest-end stat- and skill-boosting traits and call it a day. No, this system really goes out of its way to test your ability to hit effect levels while synthesizing and knowing which traits to transfer with various types of equipment. Hence, why I’m finally getting around to writing this.

Crafting Weapons



Let’s start with the basics: just crafting weapons. For this, you’ll need Weapon Materials. Lydie & Suelle has four tiers of Weapon Materials: Ingots, Silvalia, Gold Eisen and Harmonium. When used to craft weapons, these Weapon Materials boost the stats of the weapon depending on how well you did hitting (two) effect level thresholds. Weapon specs tend to have a set Weapon Material for use as a base (so for the Whisper Rod here, that base is an Ingot), and then anything goes for the rest. So since (Weapon Materials) is the second category…



We can use a Harmonium to really give it much more oomph. But wait, why is there Harmonium being used in two categories? That’s because Harmonium and Velvetis (the top-tier Armor Material) both count as Hidden Power, too. So any weapons that require (Hidden Power) can become an order of magnitude more powerful once these two materials are available. Moreover, this makes it possible for a lower-tier weapon that requires additional (Weapon Material) and/or (Hidden Power) ingredients compared to a higher-tier one to provide better stats than a higher-tier weapon that just requires one Gold Eisen or Harmonium, depending on their respective base stats. But it’s usually the case that the Harmonium-tier weapons require additional (Weapon Material) and/or (Hidden Power) to further juice their stats anyway.



Like for the Bloom Spiral I forged before entering the Black Horizon! Speaking of which, Lydie and Sue both get their Harmonium-tier weapons unlocked with that final Hagel event. Everyone else gets theirs unlocked once you finish their event sequences (so for the OG party members, that means friendship level 80, with Ilmeria’s sequence being tied to your alchemy level and Lucia’s being tied to chapter progression). So those will be trickling in one by one as I play through the Last Chapter. Now before I move on, here’s all the Weapon Materials and the effect levels to hit to get your stat boosts:






For reference, STR here refers to Equipment Effect. Even now, well over a year after the game’s release, it isn’t entirely clear what exactly Equipment Effect does. It increases your attack power and skill power, but it’s dubious whether you’d want a boost to Equipment Effect over a boost to both Attack and Speed (and as seen here, the higher-tier Weapon Materials force you to choose between boosting Attack/Speed and boosting Equipment Effect while crafting). But that’s really all you have to worry about when crafting Weapon Materials. Because…



You might notice here that all the traits are greyed out. That’s because weapons, on their own, cannot have any traits.



That’s where Weapon Cores and sub-cores come in! Weapon Cores and sub-cores can have traits pertaining to Skill Power and MP consumption reduction. Weapon Cores (but not sub-cores) can have traits pertaining to Attack, Equipment Effect, ATK-DEF flat boosts, and all-stat flat boosts. Anyway, you craft these at the atelier, and you can attach up to three traits to your core and sub-core. Finally, when you customize your weapons with Hagel, you can pick three traits out of the pool of traits between your weapon’s core and sub-core.




Moreover, Weapon Cores also increase the weapon’s stats! (And don’t worry about the two screens above; the UI for weapon customization only shows the weapon’s base stats before adding any Weapon Materials, so nothing got nerfed out of nowhere.) Anyway, for instance:





Here, it’s more straightforward: the higher effect level thresholds you hit, the better the boost to your stats (or other effects, like increased chance of critical hits or increased stun or decreased wait time after using items).

Crafting Armor



Now, we can move on to crafting armor! This is much more straightforward than crafting weapons: you just give Hagel the ingredients…




And then you select your traits! Armors can have traits pertaining to percentage-based stat boosts, ATK-DEF flat boosts, DEF-SPD flat boosts, all-stat flat boosts, HP, MP, Defense, and Equipment Effect. But of course, the stat boosts from your Armor Materials (Cloth, Moffcloth, Flugel and Velvetis) still matter a ton, so here are the relevant effect levels:






As noted earlier, Velvetis also counts as (Hidden Power). Additionally, Moffcloth also counts as (Animal Materials), so it can be used to give some extra boosts to any weapons or armor that require an ingredient from that category. And unlike with the higher-end Weapon Materials, Flugel and Velvetis give more of a reason to choose boosting STR (aka Equipment Effect) over DEF/SPD; for your units in the back row who mainly rely on firing off follow-up skills and don’t have to tank anyway, they may appreciate the extra boost to their offense.



It should also be noted that early on, certain armors are arbitrarily locked to certain party members. There are some that Lydie and Sophie and Lucia and Ilmeria can’t equip, whereas there are some that Sue and Firis and Alt can’t equip (e.g. Nightshade). Thankfully, everyone can equip the highest-end armors like the Dragoon Mail, no questions asked.

Addendum: Accessories

In addition to their weapons and armor, each character can also equip up to two accessories, which you synthesize at the atelier.






In addition to hitting effect level thresholds (like for the raw stat boosts that the Gnade Ring gives, or for the increase in follow-up skill power and chain bonus power that the Magic Stone Chain gives, or for the ability to consistently maximize damage output that the Lucky Coin provides), Accessories can have traits pertaining to HP, MP, MP consumption reduction, ATK-DEF flat boosts, DEF-SPD flat boosts, all-stat flat boosts, Speed, and Equipment Effect. They can also have Radiance traits, which boost the Combination Art gauge and increase other attributes—and which you won’t see until postgame.

Finally, you might have noticed that some traits can be transferred onto multiple equipment categories, like with MP consumption reduction or Equipment Effect. So yeah, it’s possible to be able to fire off skills for 0 MP or to really stack your Equipment Effect to the heavens if you play your cards right.

Well, that’s it! I hope I covered everything in a way that explains how this system works, so that you too can craft busted equipment to take down postgame bosses! Because we’ll be getting to that at some point during the Last Chapter!