Gearing up your retainer for ventures

Took a year off from 14 and just learned about the ventures. I know you can equip them with gear, but I was curious as to how in depth I need to go with this. As in, do I gear my rogue retainer as if I was playing it as well, best gear available, including accessories, or is that really necessary? Does it improve the XP and loot they earn if they are geared better?

TIA

best leveling is via the ... 18 hour ones? [i forget time] and the XP is fixed, you only need to meet the ilvl requirement for the level of venture you wish to take which isnt to hard.

only time the gear ivlv matters to be the "best" you can give them is for Quick Ventures.
its semi-confirmed still that better ivlv increases the RNG chance of better items obtained.

so for Fixed things it doesnt matter
Quick Venture is the random one and ilvl does help a bit but honestly dont worry about giving them best of the best

18 hours is correct.

I'm basically just trying to find the best way to earn gil since I don't craft or gather (just don't have the time) and I was told this was the best option. I have a miner at 32 so maybe I'll try to finish him out. Dunno.

Thanks, though.

The higher the iLv, the (usually) better the item they bring back. However, my i204 retainer likes to bring me a lot of dye...and a single water crystal. Though sometimes she brings me desynth/sellable stuff that goes for a good price.

Basically ventures is a roundabout way of converting GC seals/centurion seals/... to gil. There's the slow and steady way of doing it by having them gather specific materials like a miner can bring back ore that you can sell. Then there is the quick venture way that will mostly return grabage but if you send them out several times a day they will occassionally come back with minions or mats that you might be able to sell for several hundred thousand gil. For the quick ventures, the gear definitely helps you get higher level items, at least to a point. I basically just give my retainers the gear I replace on my character.

Problem is I typically get rid of a lot of my low level stuff, even on my retainers, to help with inventory space. Hindsight I would have held on to a lot of it.

Oh well.

For leveling combat retainers, the important thing is to keep their ilvl up to the point where they qualify for the highest tier exploration venture they can do. The 18 hour ventures are the most efficient method of leveling them in terms of ventures spent and how often you need to check on them. (Regular ventures appropriate to their level can get exp faster but you have to keep sending them out a bunch of times, so this may not be a practical leveling method if you're short on time or ventures.)

What I've generally done is wait until the retainer hits a new tier of exploration venture that they don't meet the ilvl requirements for, then gear the retainer with the highest level stuff they can equip at that level. That will usually last them through several more tiers of stuff. If you need to scrounge for gear, check out the MB or NPCs for cheap stuff. Only ilvl matters, so using NQ gear, the wrong kind of accessories, or whatever is fine.

At level 50, a bunch of tiers of exploration venture open up, but they're all worth the same amount of exp. Post-50 ones will have a bit of a jump, so you might want to kit the retainer out in poetics gear or WOD drops at that point. At level 60, you'll want to work a bit on getting their ilvl higher. The retainer's ilvl affects three things:
- Quick venture results: Some items will be cut off from the table of possible results if the character's ilvl is too low (you'll see a message like "With better gear, your retainer could find rarer items.") If you get the message "Your retainer's gear allows finding rare items" then the retainer is geared enough for this purpose.
- Ilvl affects the number of items that can be brought back from a regular hunting venture, though the cap is 10 of something. It also affects the number of items that are HQ.

The current round of expert dungeons is typically a great source of gear for retainers, as is any cast-off gear that you've just gotten an upgrade for.

Gathering retainers depend on the Gathering stat in basically the same way as ilvl on hunting retainers. You can pretty much ignore all gear that adds Perception or GP during the leveling process. Since it's stat-based, it can potentially be worth going for HQ gear, but at lower levels the main thing is still qualifying for the exploration ventures.

For gatherer retainers, yes kitting them in HQ benefits them in the form of better Perception score , but you can also totally skip accessories (unless you happen to have some old ones with perception melded at hand but that's not really required.)

+1 i agree with that.

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Originally Posted by Sida

you can also totally skip accessories (unless you happen to have some old ones with perception melded at hand but that's not really required.)

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That's what I was mainly wondering. I have no problem with everything else, but I wasn't looking forward to keeping up with accessories for them.

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Originally Posted by Sic_Pirate

That's what I was mainly wondering. I have no problem with everything else, but I wasn't looking forward to keeping up with accessories for them.

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Note that that applies only to gathering retainers. Since the score they use is their perception score, and all gathering accessories give only GP (unless melds) they get zero benefit from accessories.

Combat retainers, however, are about ilvl. Leaving them with completely empty spots on their right side really hurts the iLvl. Note that you can give them any accessories you might have at hand, it doesn't matter if you kit a rogue with healer accessories, as long as it increases their iLvl enough for the requirements they need.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sida

For gatherer retainers, yes kitting them in HQ benefits them in the form of better Perception score , but you can also totally skip accessories (unless you happen to have some old ones with perception melded at hand but that's not really required.)

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It's the Gathering stat, not Perception stat, that matters. So basically, they should be wearing DoL chest, gloves, and pants, and BTN/MIN should have an off-hand tool. Items that only give Perception (like most DoL hats, belts, and shoes) are as useless to them as accessories that only give GP.

Q. How in depth do you need to be with retainers gear?

A. Everything, besides the ilvl is irrelevant. So don't worry about the gears stats. Just focus on ilvl.
In order to use new hunts/expeditions/field explorations. Every 10 levels, you will need to update your retainers ilvl.
Which needs to be 10 ilvls below your current ilvl (until you hit lvl 51).
Level 10, has a lvl i0 requirement (so don't worry about gear just yet). Level 20's new content requires ilvl 10 to unlock. (etc. etc.)

Source: Myself. I own 8 retainers per character. My main has 6 lvl 51 hunters, and 2 lvl 8 hunters.