(03-30-2015, 11:42 AM)Gegenji Wrote: I should note that the gilding is being used to dampen the effects of magic. Whether it actually allows the user's magic to be bolstered as well has yet to be seen, considering it's being done by Garleans. And it just happens to be a golden-hued alloy, we don't know the actual contents of the gilding itself.
(That said, I could totally see "tinfoiling" one's armor for extra protection against magic, if one could afford it.)
Hell, it could be like FF8's Junction system for all we know. Equip Fire spell to your armor slot, gain Fire and Magic resist. Equip Fire spell to your sword, gain Fire damage.
Coat your armor in gold, dampens magic against you. Coat your grimoire in gold, amplify your magic.
Who knows. All I'm saying is there's a pretty specific subdivide for metals used for armoury and metals used for aetherial conduction with little-to-no cross over between the two. Garleans coat their armor in "gold" to dampen Eorzean mages after that BLM in the End of an Era trailer totally annihilated those Garleans with one Fire III.
But the armor metals: Bronze, Iron, Steel, Mythril, Cobalt, Darksteel, and Wootz have no aetherial properties and shouldn't hinder spellcasting, from a technical standpoint. If you want to play with gilding or coating your armor with aetherial enhancing metals, go Silver, Gold, Platinum, Electrum, or Rose-gold, but note that these metals are far too soft to make armor on their own. They'd need to be coated on top of a stronger metal, or mixed (though, I'm not an expert on metallurgy, but I think that would actually weaken the end product right?) together.
