Hiden farming: the old way

Hiden colors

Hiden decorations were obtained through refining GX Hiden armor pieces. These armor pieces could be crafted at the Workshop under Special Armor > Hiden Armor. You’ll find there 2 armor pieces per weapon, one white set and one red set. Once upgraded to G rank, you can turn the white set into a black set and the red into a blue or to keep the original color. The color of the set and the resulting decoration impacted a secondary skill present on said deco.

Decoration	Skill
SnS Hiden white	SnS Tech +6 Expert +2
SnS Hiden red	SnS Tech +6 Element Attack +2
SnS Hiden black	SnS Tech +6 Fencing +2
SnS Hiden blue	SnS Tech +6 Speed Setup +2

Example with SnS, you can check on ferias under Equipment Index then by searching for instance GS Hiden for GS decos, LS Hiden, Lance Hiden, etc

There are also EX Hiden decorations which can be crafted by trading a deco of each color (so 4 Hiden for one EX and you’re going to see that even getting one single Hiden deco is quite the ordeal).

The refined decoration is the same no matter the armor piece consumed so you can make a full armor set or just 5 helms of the same color for the same results.

Also note that the original armor piece is a low rank one. So to refine it, you need to raise it to lvl 7, then F rank lvl 7, then FX rank lvl 7, G rank lvl 7, GF rank lvl 7 and FINALLY GX rank lvl 7.

So first thing first, you need to upgrade 5 armor pieces 42 times. Now let’s see what is costs.

Souls, Ribbons and Merits

When you hunt HardCore monsters, you get Souls based on the monster strength and the weapon you used.

Monster rank	Soul
HR 1-2	X Soul (Low)
HR 3-4	X Soul (Mid)
HR 5-6 (non-Gou Quest)	X Soul (High)
HR 5-6 (Gou Quest, Exotic & Supremacy)	X Soul (Top)

X being the weapon used, so if I hunt a low rank HC Gypceros with SnS, I’ll get a SnS Soul (Low)

You can also gather a lot of Souls through a dedicated Daily Quest doable twice a day. One specific monster per rank is also buffed each day which can be checked on the Bounty Board right to the Quest Gate under Guild Priority Request. These boosted monsters grant you 3 Souls instead of 1. You can also check what monster will be buffed in the following days.

Crafting the original armor piece cost 5 Soul (Top), 10 Soul (High), 15 Soul (Mid) et 20 Soul (Low), so 50 Souls aka 50 monsters hunted with your weapon. The total cost to raise 5 Hiden armor pieces to FX rank lvl 7 is already:

425 Soul (Low)
975 Soul (Mid)
1375 Soul (High)
425 Soul (Top)

So no less than 3200 hunts (not accounting for Daily Quests and the Bounty system obviously). And going up one armor rank require 1 specific HC drop so you can add 10 HC drops on top of all this.

You might also have noticed this cost is for FX rank, not GX. Indeed, starting from G rank, you don’t drop Souls but Ribbons with the following logic:

Monster rank	Ribbon
GR 1-2	X Ribbon (Low)
GR 3-4	X Ribbon (Mid)
GR 5-7	X Ribbon (High)

And starting from GR500, you drop Merits only used for the GX armor rank with the same logic.

Monster rank	Merit
GR 1-2	X Merit (Low)
GR 3-4	X Merit (Mid)
GR 5-7	X Merit (High)

And so the total Ribbon/Merit cost for 5 decos is…

500 Ribbon (Low)
825 Ribbon (Mid)
825 Ribbon (High)
250 Merit (Low)
300 Merit (Mid)
250 Merit (High)

And even worse than before, all 21 G armor levels require specific G and HC drops. And now I think you’ve got a better grasp of why farming Hiden the old way is not that great of an idea.