Equipment route

[Zeronic]

I am a bard, and slowly progressing since my Girlfriend wants to do the main story with me. Atm I am doing Aurum vale for Tomes and Gear (and exp since I dislike fate hunting all the time).
I wonder though, what should I do once I hit 50? What gear should I get? Are there some buyable accesoiries? Please give me a sort of route on what equipment I should get.
Thanks in advance!

[Kellogs4toniee]

When I first hit 50 a while back, it was speed run CM and Praet for philosophy tombs (and AK for philo). Now me and my FC members run WP in 15 min or less for philo and myth

As a result, i am not sure how df is for those dungeons anymore. but regardless your first goal if you have end game raiding in mind is to spam run dungeons that give you philo tombs so you can use them on getting dark light gear. Or use crafting classes to make and materia gear like gryphonskin gear and accesory for your bard.

Since I mentioned it, leveling crafting classes are super fun IMO. My raid group has peaked at Twintania for a while now and in the mean time since I can't really hear my scholar anymore, I leveled like 7 crafting classes to 50. Good money maker and the leve system addicting, esp for perfectionists.

It also goes great with a girlfriend. One of you can gather, one can craft, or synergies crafting classes like one be weaver and one be leather worker.

[Urthdigger]

Ok, here's a general guide that works for every class. We'll assume you're starting in AF armor and some 40ish weapon.

First thing to do is to get item level 55 gear. You have two ways to do this. Drops from Wanderer's Palace work, but are reliant on luck. You get tomestones as you do this though, so that's an option to fill out slots. The other option is the crafted Militia gear. There's a full set of "main" gear for each class, plus each type of class gets an accessory or two. I generally prefer this as you can convert the items into materia when you're done with them and often make back more than you spent. For the other accessories, fill them out with the level 49 crafted accessories for now. Do note, for all crafted items use the HIGH QUALITY versions, then they'll be on par with dungeon drops.

Got your 55 gear? Good. You should have already started on the relic quest by now, which will mean turning in a crafted level 55 weapon (If you don't have a weapon from your grand company or wanderer's palace, this will mean getting two of that weapon. Thankfully you can use a normal quality one for the quest), but you'll make progress on it as you work on your other endgame. At this point, you'll want to be tackling Amdapor Keep and Ifrit Hard. This will get you your level 60 armor and weapons, respectively, and the former gets you tomestones like WP did. Best part is, at this phase you'll likely see armor and weapons drop that nobody needs. If you lot on these (And DO ask if anyone needs them first, be polite), that'll make gearing up your later jobs easier as you can essentially skip to this phase.

Now, you should be able to start getting darklight armor with your tomestones of philosophy, which is where your level 70 armor comes from (There's also crafted level 70 armor and weapons, but we'll skip those for now as they're prohibitively expensive in either tomestones or gil depending on your route. Better than DL if you have the gil to burn though). For your weapons, you'll be facing Garuda Hard and Titan Hard. Titan is IMMENSELY stronger than Garuda, so if you're farming for a weapon you'll likely be farming her instead of Titan.

Finally, once you've beaten Titan Hard, just get 900 tomestones of philosophy and you have your relic weapon! By this point you should also have enough mythology tomestones to get something, with +1 relic typically being the most effective first purchase (Although I like accessories since I could use mine on other classes as well)

Most importantly, I will say that, outside of the "get a set of iLevel 55 gear", you don't REQUIRE all the items from a previous stage to move on to the next, although it is recommended you have a fair amount of them. Sometimes luck isn't on your side and that stupid robe refuses to EVER drop for you, but so long as you've made an effort and aren't sorely undergeared, you'll have no problem moving on to the next stage.