When should I start worrying about gear?

For example, my L10 Gladiator is still using the starter sword.

You should be getting better armor and weapons if you're following the main story quests and also most side quests and class specific quests give equips.

Do not worry too much about it. You will get most of your gear from dungeons. No need to buy gear from the market or take the gear from quests (always take the coins, because those gear are cheaper than the coins you get from those quests).

Update your gear as you get gear from each level of dungeons, starting from lv15.

At level 50, that's the only time you will majorly spend your money on gear to update every weapon(s), accessories, belt etc to lv50 to prepare yourself from en-game dungeons farm.

The important thing you will be spending money on is transportation (chocobos, teleports, ferry rides, airship rides). You can get by with just getting gear from the story quests, class quests, and the miscellaneous quests along the way. This will take you all the way to 50. Keep the "Recommendations" window open to stay alert of any quests available to you in the vicinity.

update your gear before going into a dungeon

You start getting killed would be a good indicator.

I'd say a good rule of thumb is to upgrade your gear every 5 levels. If you do your class quests, they will upgrade the weapon for you. While you CAN just use gear from dungeons, you're likely not going to do so well in the level 15 dungeons in level 1 gear. That argument also assumes you're regularly running dungeons. If you're running FATEs to level like 99.9% of the population, you're not getting gear as you level.

So, yeah. Upgrade every 5 levels or so.

You should worry about gear before you step foot into ANY dungeon.

Quests and FATEs haven't been a problem (except for the occasional, "whoops, that was a really bad idea!").

I am almost ready for the first dungeon, so where's the best place to get gear, NPC's, AH? I already did the main quests on my Conjurer up thru like L16, so that's not an option.

I'd say you can get by with relatively not best gear you can equip until Brayflox. That was the first dungeon that mobs do increased damage from my experience.

Solo = Dont have to worry
Dungeon = Gear up since your the tank
Quest gives you armor
class quest gives you weapon and shield

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Originally Posted by lujate

For example, my L10 Gladiator is still using the starter sword.

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How? You get a weapon like every 5 levels from your class quests...

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Originally Posted by lujate

For example, my L10 Gladiator is still using the starter sword.

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That sounds like you missed the class quests, as those will give you a new sword each five levels. Remember to do your class quests every five levels on each class, as not only will they keep you reasonably up-to-date on weapons/tools while leveling, but that's where you get some important class skills as well.

As for armour upgrades, as Urthdigger said, about every five levels or so. Less often (maybe 10 or 15 levels) for jewelry. For your first class, quest rewards will keep you reasonably well geared, but you may need to purchase or make gear for later classes.

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Originally Posted by Asdamine

No need to buy gear from the market or take the gear from quests (always take the coins, because those gear are cheaper than the coins you get from those quests).

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Actually, in most cases the coins are worth significantly less than the NPC vendor price of the equipment. I usually check the market boards to see if there's a particularly cheap deal on the item in question (in which case I'll buy it there and then take the coins as a quest reward), but otherwise it's best to take the gear reward whenever it's better than what you currently have equipped.

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Originally Posted by lujate

Quests and FATEs haven't been a problem (except for the occasional, "whoops, that was a really bad idea!").

I am almost ready for the first dungeon, so where's the best place to get gear, NPC's, AH? I already did the main quests on my Conjurer up thru like L16, so that's not an option.

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You can basically get gear from your gld quest line and try to update some pieces from the npc or market place, it doesn't have to be top notch gear seeing it'd be replaced somewhere along the line anyways but least as close to the level as possible.

if you wanna avoid buying it, you can try to take up crafting or ask a crafting bud if you got one to help out and make some gear. :x

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Originally Posted by Niwashi

-snip- Actually, in most cases the coins are worth significantly less than the NPC vendor price of the equipment. I usually check the market boards to see if there's a particularly cheap deal on the item in question (in which case I'll buy it there and then take the coins as a quest reward), but otherwise it's best to take the gear reward whenever it's better than what you currently have equipped.

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Well we'd also probably wanna keep in mind that prices varies between servers.

B4 every dungeon please do a gear check. I dont care if its level 15 or level 50, please do a gear check prior to any dungeon.

If your a tank its most important, its sad but true...the healer will have trouble keeping you alive if you have low-bee gear.

level 25 gear is not acceptable for Brayfox. Its just not good :(

But yeah, dont have to have top quality gear, just please gear up b4 a dungeon.

Brayflox is a good start.

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Originally Posted by Ryihito

Brayflox is a good start.

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First off I think this is the dungeon where it really starts to shine, the gear that is.

The only reason I would object is simply because why wait until a specific dungeon, when in reality it affects them all! Sure brayfox is the one where you will most likely see the biggest difference but the others also make a difference.

Just my opinion though...and i guess i'm pushing it a little too hard ^.^;;

They seem like a newer player who isn't even up to brayflox.... so I don't think that particular dungeon even relates to the topic, anywho... lvl 14 glad.. that leaves you at sastasha level and considering all three starter dungeons give almost the same gear, you should be set just rocking the dungeon gear you'd need for sastasha and slowly upgrading while going through those three as you nab tank gear in them.

The three starters would be

• Sastasha
• The Tam-Tara Deepcroft
• Copperbell Mines

After this you'll be able to go to Halatali which is lvl 20 so you'd want minimum lvl 18-19 gear before you go in there give or take some gears you got from the previous dungeons seeing dungeon gear can last you for a good amount of time. ( Halatali is an optional dungeon that you'll be able to open by talking to Nedrick Ironheart in Vesper Bay, Eastern Thanalan (20-23) )

I think Sastasha is the quest I have.

Not sure how I ended up using the starter sword so long (operator error probably). I got a sword from the Lightning FATE and finished my class quest up to L15 which gave some gear. I bought what I could off the AH, but 1000 gil for leggings was more than I could stomach.

I wouldn't pay that much, either, unless they were HQ. You can get level 15 leggings all over the place for 450 gil. Level 15 gear in general, I wouldn't bother with the markets unless they had some bargain basement deals going.

Real life got in the way, and I didn't get to run Sastasha until last night.

I guess my gear was good enough, barely. I survived all the way to the end. I died on the final boss, but the healer and two DPS were able to finish (although finishing the dungeon dead was kind of a buzz-kill).

As a dps your gear is unimportant unless you're failing solo instances. As a tank I think it's just common courtesy to keep your gear up to date. No one wants to spend an hour wiping over and over in a 30 minute low level dungeon because the tank didn't bother equipping any accessories or upgrading their gear beyond what they get in their class quests.

Even if you're a DPS, you should take care to keep your gear updated. Your job is to help things die faster, and if your gear is out of date you won't be doing very well there. While the tank and healer can technically kill things for you, it's rather rude to make them do all the work. In addition, later dungeon fights will often have phases where dealing enough damage fast enough is a requirement, usually either in the case of something that must be destroyed before it can do a powerful attack, or continually summoned reinforcements which will swamp the party if not dealt with fast enough. In those cases, you cannot simply mooch with piss poor gear.

Piggyybacking this thread instead of making a new one.

When should we start being concerned with putting Materia on our gear?

Also, I despise crafting in all MMOs. What would constitute a decent tip for having Materia melded for me?

Honestly, most people don't put materia into gear as they level. Most of the stats you'll actually care about will be capped on your armor and weapons if you get a HQ item, making materia just for tertiary stats that might be nice. It's mostly a concern at endgame, where you might want stuff like +crit capped on ALL armor, not just the ones that happen to have it, or accessories with both caster stats AND vitality.

Of course, if you're converting your old gear when you're done with it and thus getting tier I and II materia (Not that valuable to the endgame crowd), feel free to have someone meld it into your gear. Just take care to have it done on a piece of gear that doesn't already have that stat on it, since the existing stats count towards the stat caps.

Oh, and I usually tip 500 gil.

Being a tank, I really believe having to worry about gear before Brayfox is overkill. However, I highly recommend running Hakkue Manor multiple times to be sure that you are geared up for Brayfox.

The difficulty jump from Hakkue to Brayfox is huge. They even make you look for AoE in water. Why the hell would they make you do that?

Is there a general rule of thumb for iLvl for normal mode dungeons, or is it come-as-you-are?

Ideally I'd say your weapon no more than 5 levels below the dungeon and armor no more than 10 levels below as a bare minimum. That said, exceeding the minimum is always appreciated. If it's your first class you should be able to gear up well enough via sidequests. If it's a second class, may want to befriend a crafter, or become one yourself, to ensure you can get the gear you want.

Don't forget that past Level 20, you can get gear from Grand Companies too. If you are on a second class, chances are you have a lot, or capped out on seals.

Urth's thumb of rule is good to follow. Weapon having 5 iLevels below the dungeon you are doing, and armor having 10 less. Don't worry too much about accessories though. They're not as important as armor, but they do give you some stat benefits.

I watched someone sorted via into the low level duty roulette with a level 18 Gladiator that was wearing maybe an average iLVL of... 5.

Every other party member (LNC, THM, WHM), had more HP and probably more armor.

Please don't be like that Gladiator, that is all I ask.

Well it is not an absolute must to have updated gear at the beginning but having the same lvl of gear as the dungeon does make it easier.
lvl50 is really when you must have the best gear, especially when you go into the hard mode dungeons and Primals

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Originally Posted by Asdamine

Update your gear as you get gear from each level of dungeons, starting from lv15.

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Horrible advice. You walk into a lvl 15 dungeon in lvl 1 gear I am out, idc how good you claim you are. You should always keep your gear upgraded. If nothing else it makes dungeons, fates and hunting log kills all the much faster. And the gear is so cheap and can so often be used cross-class there is no reason not to keep it up to date.

Always have gear around 2-3 levels of your level, just that's your stats man, you'll find a wall in the quests that you can't do due to your stats just sucking and you not being able to output enough dmg, or hate. Especially as a gladiator, when you do dungeons you want to be geared, that's directly the amount hate you can output, if dd's are outgearing you, they are pulling hate, simple as that. Basically from 1-50 you just want the best basic gear you can have, don't worry about materia, its useless for you if you're leveling fast (I have multiple crafts 50, i just think materia is way more useful for crafters, if you get the ilvl70 crafted gear at 50 you can materia it and make it nice)

Then around 50 is when you really start worrying about gear, gear 1-50 is cheap and easy to get, after 50 its a grind to get end game gear, and sort of a slow growth from ilevel 50 to 70, and then 70-80 is slow also, CT makes it a little faster. At least at 50 they give you a free set of gear (AF), but its not great, and you can only do so much content with it, till you want to get into Darklight so you can continue doing more endgame but with the Ilevel requirement now for endgame content, you'll see "i need to be ilevel 48, or 58, etc..." there won't be a lot of guess work. By then I'd try to find a good FC that runs basic end game content, or has enough members online to be able to form FC groups. FC groups are just a better way of learning endgame content than going through duty finder and being exposed to elitist jerks, its fine once you know the content, but daunting for a newbie.

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Originally Posted by Dotsusama

I watched someone sorted via into the low level duty roulette with a level 18 Gladiator that was wearing maybe an average iLVL of... 5.

Every other party member (LNC, THM, WHM), had more HP and probably more armor.

Please don't be like that Gladiator, that is all I ask.

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Did a CM run the other day there was a gladiator 50 who only had 4400 hp but was appropriately geared, he just kept dying, also don't be that gladiator!

Well, I'm still within the five level range.

This is my first class, so I don't have enough GC seals for squat. Right now I'm getting by on class quest rewards.

My approach was to generally try to get a couple pieces of gear from each progression dungeon, and then replace anything that was falling behind with gear purchased from the market board.


Example: Get 2 pieces of plundered gear from the early dungeons, then 2 pieces of doctore's gear from Halatali, then 2 pieces of Warden's gear from Toto-rak, then a couple pieces of calvary gear, then get your AF gear or some coliseum gear before your AF gear...

Worked for me.

I never really paid a ton of attention to the ilvl... just because the Calvary pieces which were lvl 32, were better than any of the crafted market board gear that I could purchase at lvl 38-40.

To each their own though.


Also, before enterting any new dungeon, I'd recommend looking at the market board and seeing if you can get better gear on the cheap. If not, run a dungeon a few times and see if better gear drops. If it doesn't, then go back to the market board and see if higher level stuff (you should be a higher level) is available for cheaper.

Weirdly enough, I was buying better lvl 44 HQ stuff (got my HQ weapon for 598 gil) for cheaper than inferior lvl 32 regular stuff was priced at on my servers market board. Keep an eye out for things like this. Sometimes all you need to do is ding up 1-2 more levels, and way better quality and way cheaper stuff becomes available (you can do market searches to see if this is the case, just bump up the level to 1-2 higher than your current level and search).

Don't waste 1000 gil on a lvl 34 sword, when you can get a lvl 36 HQ sword for 900 gil. Getting from lvl 34 to lvl 36 is really quick if you utilize daily roulette, FATE's, questing, and (as a last resort) leve's. Plus, that lvl 36 HQ item is going to last you way longer than a normal lvl 34 item.

The earlier suggestions about there being upgrades about each five levels or so is assuming standard gear - the sort that can be crafted (normal quality) or bought from NPC merchants. If you get a dungeon drop, that's going to be better and may exceed the stats on standard gear that's several levels higher, so it won't need to be replaced as soon. High quality crafted gear also tends to be roughly on par with the following tier of normal quality gear.

The market board in this game has a nice feature in the fact that it shows all tradeable items regardless of whether anyone has it up for sale at the moment or not. I've found it useful to periodically take a look there just to see what exists for my level (or the next level or two up). If someone has it for sale cheap, I might buy it there, but if not at least I know what gear to look for or to try making (if I'm high enough in the corresponding crafting class).

Another really good source for finding what gear is good for a given level is at the Crafting as a Service website. Click "gear me out", select your class and level, and choose whether or not you want craftable results only. It will then tell you what the best gear for your level is as well as when a better piece will become available for the next several levels. It's a really well done website, really useful for crafters, but this section is useful even for non-crafters wanting to know how their leveling gear stacks up.