Ether Gems, incidentally, are a key point of the game. Made from crystals that may be gathered from defeated enemies, Ether Gems are stuck into gear to make it better.
Only certain items of gear have Ether Gem slots, and each piece of gear has a limited number of slots. These slots, by default, are empty- and that’s where the Ether Gems come in. Whether crafted or found, Ether Gems can be stuck into a slot on a weapon or a piece of armor, and they will affect the stats, resistances, or Arts of the character wearing them. A few Ether Gems affect other things too, but those are rarer and harder still to find.
Slotted items are marked with an S on their icon, and they tend to cost slightly more than you would expect based on their stats. The really expensive or simply difficult part is finding the right Ether Gem to put into the piece of gear.
There are also pieces of gear that come with Ether Gems pre-slotted into them. These items are both better and worse than their empty-slotted counterparts. On the one hand, you don’t have to go to the trouble of finding or crafting an Ether Gem to put into the slot on the item- there’s already one right there! It’s usually a useful Ether Gem for the character, as well. Unfortunately, you can never remove these Ether Gems from the gear that came with them. This means that they aren’t as customizable as their empty-slotted counterparts.
I’ve mentioned several times crafting Ether Gems- this can only be done with Crystals and an Ether Forge. Crystals are rare items randomly dropped by any creature you fight- they tend to have benefits attached to them that relate to the creature that dropped them, but these benefits cannot actually be used- as they are not Ether Gems. In order to turn them into Ether Gems, you need to take them to an Ether Forge and use it- this will turn the otherwise-useless rare drops into highly useful rare equipment. Crystals are fortunately easy to identify- not only do they have a unique icon for their item, but they also are named- ‘Small Caterpile Crystal’, or ‘Small Bunnit Crystal’, for instance.
