Ophydia Saddle
Essential · Essential_PalGear4★The rig that makes Ophydia safe to ride.
No recipe takes it as an ingredient. Whatever you build is the finished article, so there is no reason to hoard spares.
Details
It stacks up to 9,999.
Ophydia Saddle Crafting Recipe
Leather×30
High Quality Cloth
Soralite Ingot
Aquatic Pal Fluids
Paldium Fragment
Pure Quartz×48
Soralite×48Crafting it takes 164 materials across 5 types.
Where to Find Ophydia Saddle
Ophydia Saddle is not something you find lying around — you craft it, and the recipe is below.
Using Ophydia Saddle Well
The recipe is a Technology entry at level 72 costing 4 points, with nothing required above it, so the technology tree is not what holds you up — the 24 Soralite Ingot is. Soralite Ingot is its own level 66 three-point technology, it is refined only at the Ancient Furnace, and each single ingot takes 2 Soralite Ore plus 2 Quartz at 700,000 work. That is 48 ore and 48 Quartz before the saddle recipe even opens, and Soralite Ore only comes out of Sunreach. Start that furnace running in the mid-sixties or the saddle sits greyed out for several levels after you buy it. If you would rather mine the ore at home, the Soralite Quarry is a level 72 seven-point technology behind a boss unlock — the same level as this saddle, so it arrives too late to help with the first one.
The craft is one of the heaviest saddles in the game: 150,000 work, five times the 30,000 median across the 139 pieces of Pal gear and joint fifteenth-heaviest of the lot, level with the Frostallion and Celesdir saddles. It is built on the Pal Gear Workbench, the same starter bench every other saddle uses — there is no upgraded tier of it — so the only lever you have on that number is who you put on the table. Load it with your best Handiwork Pals before queuing the order.
Do not go hunting Water Pals for the 15 Aquatic Pal Fluids. A Kelpsea parked on a Ranch produces them passively, which is the cheapest standing supply in the game. Failing that, wandering, caravan and dungeon merchants all stock them at 300 Gold each, so the whole requirement is 4,500 Gold over the counter, and the Rayne Syndicate Smuggling Warehouse expedition returns 10 to 20 per run at Very Hard over two hours. Water-sealed chests are the other bulk source at 10 to 20 a pull. Everything else in the bill — Leather, High Quality Cloth, Paldium Fragment — a camp at this level already stockpiles.
As pure transport this is a strange purchase. Ophydia is a ground mount at 1,500 sprint, fourth fastest of the 77 in the game, but the three above it — Hartalis and Necromus at 1,900, Paladius at 1,800 — carry 350 to 400 stamina and Ophydia carries 100, which ties it near the very bottom of the ground list. Necromus and Paladius also unlock their saddles at level 61, eleven levels earlier and for the same kind of point spend. So this is a mount that outruns almost everything for a few seconds and then walks. It is genuinely good for darting around a sprawling base or closing the last stretch to a dungeon mouth; it is the wrong animal for crossing the map.
What the 4 points really buy is Glorious Mist, which hangs off your own attacks rather than Ophydia's: your hits start applying Wetness, on a 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 ladder that climbs as you condense the Pal. Only three partner skills in all 288 touch Wetness at all, and the one that pays for it is Jormuntide's Stormbringer Sea Dragon, which raises damage against a wet defender by 50 to 65% depending on its own rank. Ophydia is the only thing in the game that puts Wetness on a target with weapon fire, so that pairing is the reason to own this saddle. Worth knowing the counter, too: Snock Lux's Grounding Shell blocks the Wetness build-up outright at every rank, so against that Pal the skill contributes nothing.
Ophydia Saddle — Ophydia's Gear
Ophydia Saddle is Ophydia's own gear — no other Pal can equip it, and Ophydia cannot be ridden or put to work in its geared role until you have this in your inventory.
Equipping it turns on Ophydia's partner skill, Glorious Mist.
Ophydia is Grass / Water, which is what decides where it is worth taking — the gear does not change its typing, only what you can do with it.
Alternatives and Upgrades
Other Pal gear items at a similar tier, for when you want to weigh this against the rest of its class:
