So with the incoming 3.2 patch people will be able to meld materia on their high end equipment and the availability of materia V will increase. As a consequence there is a very good chance that the demand for grade V carbonized matter will drastically increase as well, however currently this is one of the most elusive items to gather in the whole game.

Grade V carbonized matter is a hidden item that can randomly pop in a plethora of different gathering points throughout the heavensaward new maps. However its chances to appear are abysmally low. I have personally gathered a lot, I think I got at least 10 thousands of items since the start of the expansion, but I've seen Grade V carbonized matter popping only once

With this guide I'll tell you how you can gather up a whole stack of this item in about a couple of hours. In Part 1 I'll tell you the most effective method to force Grade V carbonized matter to pop. In part 2 I'll tell you what to do once you have finally found a gathering point with a Grade V carbonized matter in it.

PART 1

First off: Make sure you have gotten your kinda-daily map. You don't want to waste time and GP to force pop a hidden item, only to get a map that can be obtained easily without much effort. Now look for a place where Grade V carbonized matter has a chance to pop. There's a lot of those just pick your favorite area. In Heavensward all the gathering spots are divided in 3 pairs of nodes. In order to force them to refresh you just need to cycle through these pairs, and you only need to check one of them, not both. Additionally in every pair there will be one node with a bonus that will be visible just by targeting it, while the other will show nothing until you actually click on it. The latters are the ones that you should be looking for, you can skip the formers.

You must keep cycling until you find a node with "gathering fortune 30%". This might take a while because they are pretty rare, but it will be worth it, trust me.

So you've finally found the right node, great. Make sure you have at least 600 GP (700 will grant you a slightly better chance) and use "Leaf Turn II" or "Unearth II". The chance of getting an HQ item should be now at 75%.

Time to make your first gathering attempt. Did you get it HQ? If yes you can proceed to the next step, if not you'll have to cycle again to find another gathering point with the 30% bonus, or... you can do something smarter! But I'll let you figure out what it is after you read part II.

Supposing the first attempt succeeded, you should now use "prune" or "dredge" bringing your HQ chance to 85%! (if you started with 700 GP, you can use "Prune II" or "Dredge II")

This second attempt should have succeeded, if not feel free to cry and curse RNGesus. For your third attempt you'll use "Prune II" or "Dredge II" which will bring your chance of success to a whopping 95%!

Now if everything went right and RNGesus doesn't hate you (but we know he hates us all) you should have managed to get 3 HQ in a row. Great! It's now time to use the most unused ability your gathering class! luck of the pioneer\mountaineer

So now if you didn't mess up when you choose the gathering spot, a Grade V carbonized matter should have finally popped. Time to Gaaath.... NOT!

Now it's time to be a good child, be patient and wait. put away your scythe or pickaxe or whatever. Trust me.

PART 2

So there's a gathering point in front of you and this gathering point has a Grade V Carbonized matter available for the taking. You either won the jackpot and found one randomly or you have followed the part 1 of this guide. It doesn't matter. What matters is that what's in front of you doesn't come easily and therefore you should think twice and thrice before making it disappear.

What this part is going to teach you is a pretty simple concept: Don't kill it, MILK it!

You aren't dealing with an unspoiled node, or an ephemeral node here. These gathering nodes will virtually never going away, they can last forever. Morever the Carbonized matter is hidden but not rare, you can farm it as much as you want and it won't disappear if you sheath your main tool, it will stay there.

This means that you can disengage the node and wait until your GP recover and\or use cordials, as long as you want.

If the gathering attempts bar of the node is at full, you should use "Blessed harvest II" or "King's Yield II". You'll get 3 carbonized matter this way for every gathering attempt but, and this is very important, stop before you deplete the node, don't kill it!

If the node is just one step from being depleted, you should disengage and wait so you can recover GP. Once you have at least 300 GP it's time to play the role of a healer. That's right, you will heal the gathering node using the second most unused skill of gatherers: "Ageless Words" or "Solid Reason".

This will take a while, an awfully long while actually (that's why I'm writing this guy, I'm bored!), but it's worth it when you consider how extremely better is this method compared to the alternatives.

Eventually the node will be back at full health, and then you can resume your gathering. You wait until you have 500 gp again and use "Blessed harvest II"\"King's Yield II". The best part? You are gathering an item that doesn't have an HQ version, so Nymeia's Ward will kick in, granting you even more carbonized matters if you are lucky.