Transmuting is a somewhat daunting concept in the item menu, so I wanted to make a hopefully informative post about it. The other posts are not very detailed, so this should demystify the topic.

First thing’s first: Transmuting and enhancing are different. Transmuting and uncapping are also different. The other two are pretty straight forward, so let’s talk about what Transmutation actually is.

With transmutation Star Ocean: Anamnesis, we’re taking all of our extra weapons, and smashing them together to make new, higher rarity weapons.

This is great, but it has some drawbacks. There is a Fol cost, first of all. Secondly, we’re still at the mercy of chance. So let’s dig in to how to transmute.

First, we need a level ten weapon. Let’s start low. So let’s get a level ten weapon of 1 star rarity. It can be anything, so we’ll use Baselards. We’ve leveled this to ten in the Enhance menu. Now, we need to Transmute this weapon. so we head to the Transmute menu and Select the weapon to use as our Base Weapon. We’re using the Baselards, so we pick them. The base weapon is consumed during transmutation.

Second, We need to select our Material. We need five pieces of Material. This must be the same rarity as the Base Weapon and can only be weapons. They do not have to be the same type of weapon as the Base Weapon. In this example, we can use any type of weapon of any level, as long as the rarity matches our Baselards, so pick anything here.

Third, and last, We have to expend our Base Weapon, Material, and Fol, to create the new weapon. The new weapon will be one star higher than the base weapon and the material. the new weapon will also be of the same type as the Base Weapon.

Coin Transmutation

With 5 Star Rarity Weapons, Transmutation works a little differently. You can transmute a 5 Star Rarity Weapon with 5 other 5 Star Rarity Weapons, to receive a Weapon Coin with a type that matched the Type of the Base Weapon. This Coin Can be used at the shop to select a weapon from a list of weapons available there.

I did this at launch when transmutation could give us broken 5 star weapons, and before they were removed with a maintenance I transmuted one of those broken weapons into a coin. I described this process in a different topic, and eventually made a detailed post about the process, which I’ve included below. The quotes are from the post I was replying to.

Follow up question if I’m correct on that assumption: can you get a 1* weapon to lvl 10 and then transmute it with 5 5* weapons to get the coin? Or do all 6 weapons have to be 5* rarity?

I’ll start with this, since it’s easiest. NO. Everything has to be the same rarity in the transmute menu. It’ll be easier to understand if you just play around in the transmute menu and start transmuting low level items. The base weapon mustbe level 10, but the material can be any level.

So theoretically, you take 6 wands (1 lvl 10) and sacrifice all of them for a coin of their type? Or you can say take a lvl 10 weapon of something else and use those 5 wands and sacrifice all of them for a coin of whatever that weapon’s type was? Am I understanding that correctly? Either way I’m guessing you lose that lvl 10 weapon?

Let me just explain what I did to my 5 star weapon I think, so that there is no ambiguity.

1. Leveled my 5 star knuckles to 10
2. entered the transmute weapon menu
3. selected my 5 star knuckles as the Base Weapon
4. Selected 5 5 star weapons as the Material Weapons (these can be any level, but they have to be the same rarity as the weapon you’re transmuting; no more, no less)
5. Press begin transmutation to consume base weapon and material weapons and Fol
6. Receive 5 star Knuckles Coin
7. Traded knuckle coin in the shop for knuckles of my choice.

Conclusion

Let me know if there is anything still unclear and I’ll try to answer any questions that I can. I think the most important things to realize are that the transmutation menu and the enhancement menus are two different menus. Transmutation consumes all weapons, base and material, to give you a brand new item of higher rarity (or a coin in the case of a 5 star weapon).

The purpose of this for 5 star coins is to remove some of the chance from weapon draws, I think. It also allows you to slowly convert fol and dropped weapons from missions into 5 star weapons.

Special credit: Hustlerbojenkins