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Within an hour or so of starting up yourFinal Fantasy 7 Rebirthjourney, Cloud will receive an important new piece of equipment in the form of the Item Transmuter. At its core, the Item Transmuter is simply a stand-in for this RPG’s crafting system, but there’s more here than meets the eye.
Between increasing your crafting levels, knowing where to find recipe ingredients, and getting down the basics on what you ought to craft (and when), the Item Transmuter can be abitdaunting in the early hours. We’ve dabbled with it as extensively as the game allows, so heed our advice!
What Is The Item Transmuter In Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth?
Cloud obtains theItem Transmuter, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth’s answer to acrafting system, fromKalm Inn’s owner, Broden. You’ll meet Broden atthe start of Chapter 2, which is to say, quite early on.
Broden’s more than meets the eye - but importantly, he also thinks Cloud will get more mileage out of the Item Transmuter than he will. And he’s not mistaken. You’lluse the Item Transmuter hundreds of timesthroughout FF7 Rebirth,crafting several dozen items.
Craftsmanship Ranks
These items are acquired through two main means. The first, and most common, iswhen they automatically appear in the menu itself.You’ll see the next ‘batch’ of itemsevery time you raise the level of your Craftsmanship stat.
Technically, the newcomers to the Item Transmuter’s list reflectthe next Craftsmanship rank, rather than the current one. This gives you a nice little sneak preview of what’s to come.
Transmuter Chips
The second way, which involves themore special additions, is viaExcavation Intel. When an Excavation Intel quest appears in yourWorld Intelscreen, you’ll hop on your chocobo anddig for new Transmuter Chips.
These chips will addnew tiers of upgrade recipes for your armor and accessories, so they’re among the most sought-after components.
You will often locate akey quest item for a current or upcoming side questas well, such as theWindmill Gearin the Grasslands region.
Crafting Categories
We’ve gone over the two overarching varieties of Item Transmuter recipes, butthere are several categories within each. Getting a feel for these will help your understanding of the process, especially sincenot every category will be visible to you from the start.
Items
These are the most straightforward, and alsothe most numerous. Items willalways increase in quantity in correlation to Craftsmanship rank, and they consist of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth’s exhaustive number ofconsumables.
Examples include the subgroups ofPotions, Ethers, Debuff Cures,and theCushionsrequired to heal your party atChocobo Stopsand other benches.
Armor
Crafting armor is agreat way to save cashat Rebirth’s weapons and armor shops. It also allows you tocraft higher-tier armor than you’ll currently findat these shops - at least, it does more often than otherwise.
You will probably seequite a few pieces of armor you cannot yet craft, which will change over the course of the game. Even as this changes, you’llkeep seeing more that can’t yet be crafted, as is common among the crafting categories.
This also applies to every category, but note that you’ll also seethe necessary ingredients,including thoseyou can’t acquire until you unlock a new region. A string of question marks will pop up for these.
Armor Upgrades
Here’s where thoseTransmuter Chipscome into play. But some Armor Upgrades, particularly the earliest ones, will likely displaybefore you locate and dig up the requisite chip.
Always keep an eye on this category, because anEnhanced Elphadunk Bangleis superior to an Elphadunk Bangle; anEnhanced Wisefox Armletis superior to a Wisefox Armlet; so on and so forth.
These improvements typically involveboosting the basic stat perksfor armor, so there’s no reason not to invest in them. You’ll need a copy of the base item as well as the separate ingredients.
Accessories
Similar to armor,most accessories can be obtained through shops, but are preferably crafted. Some areunique to crafting, while a few morecan only be found through overworld, dungeon, and hub treasure chests, making additional copies all the more beneficial.
A good example of this isPsychic’s Charm, which notincreases max MP and Magic Power by five percent; it also grantsimmunity to Silence. A pretty good fit for Aerith and anyone else whose Materia slots you’re filling up with magic.
Accessory Upgrades
Finding those Transmuter Chips also nets you access toaccessory upgrades. Like the armor upgrades, these conferadvanced versions of the stats and immunitiesfound in the base models.
Hi-Power and Supernatural Wristguards, for instance, don’t just raise the Strength Stat by a set amount. The formerincreases HP by 250, while the latter gives abig boost to the Strength stat uptick.
Key Items
Key Itemsinclude theside quest items needed to complete certain quests. We mentioned it earlier, but theWindmill Gear fixes the broken windmills in the Grasslands. There’s something not-quite-working in each region, and amending that gets you great rewards.
Amusingly, if somewhat unintuitively, even if youhave key items like the Windmill when initiating their side quests, you will still need to go through the motions in the dialogueas though you haven’t yet constructed it.
This might go without saying, but justchat with the NPC again after agreeing to craft the key item, at which point the game will register that it’s already in your possession.
