A question about armor/clothing

[FFfan321123]

I am getting FFXI for Christmas, and I have some questions. First, how do you aquire armor/clothing for your character? Second, is it hard to obtain? Thanks to anyone who answers.

[Agnastar]

Re: A question about armor/clothing

There's a number of ways.

Each race/gender has it's own starting armor set.
You can buy armor from NPC stores in cities.
You can receive armor from quests ( not alot here; however at higher levels there is alot to behold. )
You can buy armor form the auction houes ( from other players; this is the most common, yet sometimes the most expensive option )
And some armor you can acquire off of monsters ( usually this is very high level monsters which require 18+ people at max level to get, or sometimes the monster is very rare and holds a very nice item)

I'd say auction house is your best bet for getting clothing/armor. It might be the most expensiv, because alot of what you buy is from others trying to make money from crafting the armor or hunting it from monsters and selling it. At very early levels, 1-10, your best bet is to buy armor from NPC Stores.

[FFfan321123]

Re: A question about armor/clothing

can you buy shorts (trunks?) for male humes at NPC stores?

[Agnastar]

Re: A question about armor/clothing

Well, there is no "shorts", unless you consider subligars ( sexy ) to be shorts. There are the trunks for the sunbreeze festival event, but those are event-only, and I don't know how to get them. And by christmas, the summer event will be over ( go figure ).

[FFfan321123]

Re: A question about armor/clothing

Oh, I see. So about this "starter" armor pack, it is different depending on your race/job and is not the same old thing that all of the new players get? As in, the starter armor is not the same for every race and job, right?

[Agnastar]

Re: A question about armor/clothing

Each job has it's own starting weapon.
Each race has it's own starting armor set
Each gender of that race has it's own specific armor set. IE.. Elvaan Males start with a different armor set than their Female counterparts, and Female Humes will have different starting armor than their male counterparts. I believe that tarutarus have the same starting armor, regardless of gender. I could be wrong on that though.

[Rones]

Re: A question about armor/clothing

can you buy shorts (trunks?)

You won't be able to look like Tidus if that is what you are thinking. Character clothing has a very different look from ff10. The job specific artifact armors you get later are call backs to the origonal ff styles, but the rest is very unique to ff11.

[Cade]

Re: A question about armor/clothing

All the starting armor is the same for each race/gender stat wise, they just all look different. All new players get it.

[Elesirdur]

Re: A question about armor/clothing

FFXI doesn't differ greatly from most MMORPGs in terms of item aquisition. There is a bit more of a focus on player characters (PCs - real people) crafting armor, weapons, and general consumables than in other MMOs. However, it's not to the level of Star Wars: Galaxies where absolutely everything is player harvested or crafted.

The economic system is not very advanced either, and there are very few price controls since items purchased from NPC vendors have not really changed in price within the nearly 4 years the game has been available; even though inflation has increased the price of almost all major items. Prices also vary from server to server, primairly depending on how many ppl are on a given server, and how much gil is floating around the economy. I would say that most severs have a purchasing parity of almost, or even more than, a trillion gil (that's 10^12 not 10^18 for our European friends), but on servers with more total gil the CPI (consumer price index) would be higher, meaning that things would cost more. Not to mention, but as far as armor and weapons go, NPC vendors tend to sell the really crummy stuff - all the good items are crafted or, at higher levels, dropped from NMs and HNMs.

Anyways, you'll end up buying 95% of your stuff from the Auction Houses - which work very nicely - and at early levels there is almost always a ready supply of armor and weapons. But as your climb the grind ladder to the higher levels, you may want to make friends with some high-level crafters that can create specific items on a comission basis, as opposed to camping the Auction House for days on end waiting for something to be listed

PS: Sorry for the bussiness jargon, I'm a Financial Analyst IRL