Originally Posted by: itspirrip 
I dont understand the whole cap thing :(
Meldable gear has certain stat caps, which means that you can only add a limited number of a certain stat to that piece of gear.
In layman's terms this means the following:
You have a wristband to which you can meld a Materia and a +4 Strength Materia.
The wristband can however only have +3 more strength added.
When you add the +4 strength Materia it will fall into the slot just fine, but will only give +3 extra strength to the item.
That extra +1 strength will be forever lost in Limbo.
You can add even more strength materia to them, as much as you want, but they will all give you +0 extra strength.
Thankfully the game will tell you in
big red letters when a materia exceeds a stat cap before melding.
Examples:
How not to meld!Doing it right. (Yes, that is me)Meldable gear can have a
maximum of 5 materia melded to them, however the amount of guaranteed melds depends on the number of materia slots on the gear.
Quote:if I overmeld, will I lose materia? like the chances o losing...
(Pro tip: Always use the guaranteed slot(s) for the most expensive materia and work down from there.)
The first overmeld has a 44% chance to stick, the second 22%, the third overmeld has a 12% chance and the 4th and last has an 8% chance to stick.
Any unsuccessful meld will lose you the materia and it cannot be recovered.
While the actual successrate depends completely on the luck of the random number generator, the percentages are a good indication of the successful melding chances so you should always stick to using the expensive materia on the phases where you have the highest rate of success.
Quote:what do I have to do to not lose materia?
You can do nothing about it, overmelding is an investment that comes with a risk and the successrates cannot be altered, at all.
You will lose materia in the process, it is unavoidable.
Edited by user Friday, April 04, 2014 6:00:15 AM(UTC)
| Reason: extra info, spelling corrections, etc.