Augmentation is unlocked in three stages, with accessories (Ornamentation) unlocking after finishing Welch’s Grand Designs quest. The other two, Whetting (weapons) and Fortification (armor), won’t unlock until you finish Welch’s final quest. What Augmentation does is allow you to put any items from your inventory and place them onto other pieces of equipment. For example, you want to increase a weapon’s attack, so you can augment it with an item that will increase said attack.

Every piece of equipment that you can augment has a max number of times that you can actually augment it, depending on the level of the Specialty skills listed above. As an example, there are some pieces of armor that have a total of eight slots at the max skill level, but it might only have five slots at skill level 3. It’s a good idea, especially once you reach the postgame, to max out the skills for all three Augmentation ones.

Mikis Ultimate Weapon¶

By now, you realize that Miki is going to be your primary and probably only healer in the game, so there is no need for her to attack at all. That means her higher end weapons do not actually need to be equipped to her, since she shouldn’t be attacking at all. This makes something as simple as her joke weapon (Welch’s Handy Stick) one of her best weapons, once you augment it. The reason for this is that it has a whopping 16 augmentation slots, so you can load it up with some nice stats and factors. In order to create the weapon, you simply need to synthesize a Signeturgy item with an Impurity of 50.

Once you do that, go to the ship and use six Wires to synthesize a total of 15 Elemental Leathers. After that, create four Resurrection Mists by synthesizing a Medicine item with a 44-45 Quality. Take any spare weapon with at least four augment slots and no factors, then slap the Resurrection Mists on it to get four factors that increase your healing potency by 20% each. Augment the Handy Stick with that weapon and the 15 Elemental Leathers to create something that should look like this:

• DEF +450, MEN +375, Fire/Ice/Earth/Wind resistance +60, Curative spell potency +20% x4