Dualizing Like a Boss

In Tales of Graces f, to encounter the Gentleman optional boss, one must finish all inn requests in all towns. Sounds easy, right? Unfortunately, the last request in each town is given by the Gentleman himself. As you can expect, these are all extremely rare weapons which require certain sidequests completion and expensive weapons sold only from towns where one has acquired a high number of stamps. That's not all. Once the specific weapon is dualized, it must be further upgraded to a certain high rank quality that often either requires an absurd amount of luck or patience in getting the required shard, or an equally absurd amount of gald and plenty of shards of varying qualities.

I was very frustrated at not getting any Magical shard drops after farming for 20 hours straight. So in the end I thought of a different strategy. Why not downgrade the weapon to a lower quality and build it back up to a desired quality? That way, I can use the shards I already have without wasting my time farming. 

Dualizing the Easy Way

Example, if I want a Dreamer's Flange (Perilous) for the final request by ??? in the Amarcian Enclave,

1. Dualize a Dreamer's Flange via Rare Shotstaff + High-Grade Crystal.
2. The Dreamer's Flange starts with Epochal quality. To make it Perilous, I need a Haughty shard, and I haven't seen one drop in almost 50 hours.
3. So, I erased the Dreamer's Flange's quality with a 6-letter quality, Barbed.
4. Temper and dualize the Dreamer's Flange (Barbed) with another weapon to enable it to be dualized again.
5. Dreamer's Flange (Barbed) + Stuffy shard = Dreamer's Flange (Untamed).
6. Repeat step 4.
7. Dreamer's Flange (Untamed) + Untamed shard = Dreamer's Flange (Perilous). YAY!

However, you need to do a stock take on what quality shards you have, and how many you have. Plan out your dualizing route beforehand and SAVE BEFORE YOU START DUALIZING. The reasons why very few people use this method are:-

• People are lazy, and one step sounds a lot easier than several steps.
• My way uses a lot more gald and shards than the direct path. (I used up 3 shards and who knows how much more gald, while the direct path  uses only one shard and minimal gald but at the cost of A LOT OF TIME).
• This way is highly dependent on the type and amount of shards you have at the moment. If you don't have much to work with, there's nothing I can do to help you. 

Practise a good habit from the beginning of the game. Set the Book of Acquisition to the eleth mixer as soon as you can bear its cost, cook food that increase sharp drop rate (Miso-Glazed Cod is a good choice) and set the game difficulty to as high as you can handle (higher ranked shards drop more frequently at higher difficulties). Also, the sharp drop rate is affected by the difference between your level and monsters' level, difficulty and the number of shards currently in your inventory. Sell unnecessary shards or dualize them onto equipment and resell but make sure you are not carrying more than 100 shards at any given time. If you have more than 100 shards, the shard drop rate is cut in half. If you have 190 shards, no more shards will drop.