When should I start worrying about gear?

[juniglee]

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.

[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.

[Maero]

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

[zaviermhigo]

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.

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.

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!

[lujate]

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.

[OSUBuckeye4]

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.

[Niwashi]

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.