Now that the Ether Forge in Colony 9 is available for you to use, you can finally begin actually making stuff to help you on your way. Specifically, you can begin making Ether Gems, which will let you essentially customize your equipment even beyond your choices of what to wear and wield. This will let you shore up weaknesses and improve strengths all the more- making it an important part of the game, if you want to be as effective as you can.
Ether Gem Crafting requires three things: Two party members, an Ether Forge, and materials (which can be Ether Cylinders, Crystals, or any combination of the two).
The easiest thing to get ahold of is the party members. As long as you have two people in your party, you can operate an Ether Forge. One party member will be the Shooter, and the other will be the Engineer. I will explain these positions in more detail later, but it is enough for now to know that both the Shooter and the Engineer will have an effect on your operation of the Ether Forge, and each character has a different effect depending on whether they’re the Shooter or the Engineer.
The Ether Forge is the most difficult part to get, since they’re embedded at fixed locations. Fortunately, there is one in Colony 9- it even has its own landmark so you can go straight to from anywhere if you feel like it.
Finally there are the Crystals and Ether Cylinders. Crystals are very simple- every time you kill a monster, you have a chance to find a Crystal that is related to it- it usually will have the name of the monster type and an appellation (Small Bunnit Crystal, for instance). Not only that, but you can sometimes find deposits of Crystals lurking around the terrain. These are marked on your map with an image of a mining pick, and they are especially nice because the crystals they give can apply to any of the attributes changed by a given element of cylinder, and they restock over time, so you can always go back to them and dig up more Crystals. Ether Cylinders are a bit more rare- you probably got some when you beat the strange guardian machines in the Ether Cylinder Hangar, a large but random assortment. Fortunately, you also will be making Ether Cylinders nearly every time you craft an Ether Gem, so you’ll tend to have plenty of those on hand and can, to a certain degree, engineer which ones you’re going to have hanging around.
Before you start making Ether Gems, though, you’re going to want to make sure of what you want out of your crafting. If you’ve got next to no slots on your gear, you probably don’t even need to make Ether Gems right now- you’ll be getting plenty from quest rewards, so there’s no need to spend resources just yet. If, on the other hand, you have empty slots everywhere, go ahead and give it a go. Just remember that the gems you get from quests will sometimes be better quality- around Colony 9 by this point you can have three stars of Affinity and be trading for and getting from quests Ether Gems with a rank of II or III regularly, but your ability to craft Ether Gems will only occasionally net you a rank II gem. Not to say that you shouldn’t craft any Ether Gems at all- some types of Ether Gem aren’t even found in the Colony 9 area (at least, not yet) for trade or from quests, and you have a chance to craft some such Ether Gems at the Forge already. Just make sure you take stock of what you have so you’re not crafting a set of eight rank I Strength gems when you’re already carrying four rank II Strength gems that could go in some of the same slots.
