gearing up a fresh toon

[yoshi71089]

There are several guides out there, but I can give you the quick run down.

Here's a list of things you should do, in order:

1. Make sure you get your AF armor from your lvl 45 and 50 job quests. This is your basic starting point.
2. Buy Lvl 49 High-Quality accessories. They will cost you 5-10k apiece, but will last until you can replace them with drops/Darklight.
3. Buy your item-level 55 Grand Company weapon, or the crafted equivalent from the Market.
4. Complete both Castrum Meridium and the Praetorium for your story quest, these will give you Philosophy tomes that you use to buy Darklight.
5. Start your relic quest, and you can do everything up to the primals really in AF gear/white accessories.
6. Start running Wanderer's Palace and Amdapor Keep that drop i55 gear, as well as giving out more tomes. These also give out Mythology tomes, which are used to buy the highest tier of gear.
7. Complete Ifrit HM & Garuda HM, and run these a few times to get either your i60 or i70 weapon from one or the other, which you can use to kill Titan HM (Alternatively, you can kill King Moogle for the i75 weapon, but he is slightly more difficult).
8. Once you have a few drops or Darklight pieces, run Crystal Tower once a week to get your i80 armor piece (you can only get one Need OR Greed drop per week).
9. You can also start running Copperbell HM, Haukke Manor HM, and Pharos Sirius at this point, which all drop i60 armor/accessory pieces.

Complete 6-9 several times until you have enough Philosophy tomes to buy 3-4 pieces of Darklight (i70), which should bring you to about 3100-3500 HP (depending on your class), which will help you be able to take on Titan HM. You can alternatively buy i70 crafted gear, but this tends to be expensive, and may or may not be a viable option for you.

10. Find a group that you can practice Titan HM with (or alternatively buy a carry), or practice in the Duty Finder before finding a kill group.
11. Complete your relic quest to get your relic weapon.
12. Run Ultima Hm a few times to get your i80 necklace/ring.
13. Make sure you hit your Mythology tomes cap (450) each week, and use them to either upgrade your Relic to Zenith, or start buying i90 gear.
14. Start running Extreme Primals for the i90 accessories, and the ability to get one i90 weapon per week.
15. Find a Coil group, either pug or static, that you can start running the end-game raid with, which also drops i90 gear.

So, in order for each slot:

Weapon: Grand Company/Crafted (i55) -> Ifrit HM (i60) -> Garuda HM (i70) -> King Moogle (i75) -> Relic/Titan HM (i80) -> Relic Zenith/Extreme Primals (i90) -> Allagan (i95)
Armor: Artifact/WP/AK Drops (i50/i55) -> Copp HM/Haukke HM/Pharos (i60) -> Darklight (i70) -> Crystal Tower (i80) -> Myth/Allagan (i90)
Accessories: Crafted HQ (i49) -> Copp HM/Haukke HM/Pharos (i60) -> Darklight (i70) -> Ultima HM (i80 - Necklace & Ring only) -> Extreme Primals/Myth/Allagan (i90)