Quote Originally Posted by Randis View Post
I would just keep the shards, you can use them yourself later.
You can get gear 1-20 from NPC, you will find the NPCs standing around in the marketwards.
(I am not talking about retainer) Go to armorer raw for example, you will see a NPC standing right in the middle/center, he will sell you armor. different NPC on different raws and some raws have no NPC.

You will see that you can find most of the gear and weapons cheaper sold by other people, NPC is usually expensive (unless for r1 arrows and some other simple items).
Also you really do not need to buy new armor for ranks 1-12 or so, it is waste of cash. Game is so easy that you can get to R20 in just 1 day if you know where to rank up.
Beat me to it ^^