Gear Progression

You have hit 150. Your gear is whatever carried you through levelling, and none of it belongs at the cap. This page is the road from there to a full augmented ilvl 119 set.

Read this first. Dawn's gear ladder is not retail's. Several of the systems below share names with retail content but use different currencies, different ratios and different NPCs. Where this page and the wiki disagree, this page is right. The wiki will send you to the wrong zone.

The short version

Steps 1 and 2 are alternatives — take whichever you can afford first. Everything from step 3 on is cumulative.

Step 1 — Bayld gear

Your first upgrade is bought, not farmed. Two NPCs in the Peacekeeper's Coalition in Eastern Adoulin sell equipment for Bayld.

Be clear on what this tier is. Bayld gear is ilvl 100 to 109. It is not 119. It exists to get you functional quickly and cheaply, and you will replace all of it. Do not over-invest here.

Where Bayld comes from

Check your balance any time with !currency.

Vesca — armour

Three starter sets at ilvl 100, priced per piece:

A full set is 2,690 Bayld — about three Sinister Reign kills.

She also stocks a second tier (Gorney, Shneddick, Weatherspoon, 650–1,050 per piece) and +1 versions of everything at ilvl 109 (1,000–1,600 per piece, so 6,000 for a full +1 set).

Skip the +1 tier. Six thousand Bayld buys you ilvl 109. The Quartermaster in !throne sells ilvl 119 for gil, and it is reachable almost as early. Buy a cheap base set to get moving, then save for step 2 rather than paying twice for gear you will drop anyway.

Vesca will not sell you a piece you already own. If you get "check your inventory and try again", you are already holding that item.

Craggy Bluff — weapons

Standing beside her, selling Reive weapons in three tiers:

Forefront is the sweet spot. One Sinister Reign kill and a bit covers it.

Step 2 — Su1, your first real 119

Type !throne and find the Quartermaster. Once you have turned in chapter 1 of the Chronicle of Dawn, he sells Superior 1 gear at ilvl 119 — a full tier above anything Bayld buys.

The HQ set has a much cheaper route. Yilbegan drops it at 100%. The shop exists for people who would rather pay than travel; if you have the time, go kill him instead of spending 3.75 million gil.

Chapter 1 is Voidwatch: five field rift-lords, five kills in all (the Provenance Watcher is optional since 2026-09-21). It is meant to be done early, at a low Master Level (your ceiling is ML10 until you turn it in). There is no reason to delay this step.

Step 3 — Augments at Nolan

Nolan in Norg augments gear and weapons. He is the single most important NPC on this page, and he handles both the Escha sets and, later, your abjuration gear.

Nolan requires Rhapsodies of Vana'diel progress. If he gives you small talk instead of a menu, that is why. Push ROV to Set Free first.

What you need

Farm Escha − Zi'Tah for three things: the gear itself, Escha Silt, and Eschalixir.

Nolan upgrades Eschalixir in bulk:

So 30 Eschalixir makes one Eschalixir +2.

The cost

Augmenting one piece costs 6 Eschalixir +2, and you must be holding at least 3,000 Escha Silt, which is spent on completion.

A Silt Pouch gives 50–99, so budget roughly 40 pouches per piece.

Choosing an augment

You pick one of four paths — A, B, C or D. Each grants a fixed set of augments.

The values are not random. There is no rolling, no re-augmenting for a better result, and no reason to ever repeat a piece. Look at all four paths before you confirm, because the one you choose is the one you keep.

Weapons too

Nolan augments weapons on the same system — the Nibiru line (Blade, Bow, Chopper, Cudgel, Faussar, Gun, Harp, Knife, Lance, Sainti, Shield, Sickle, Staff, Tabar) and around twenty others including Akademos, Espiritus, Ichigohitofuri, Instigator, Lathi and Vijaya Bow.

Step 4 — Abjuration sets

Move to Escha − Ru'Aun and start farming abjurations. This is where you get real job-specific gear.

Each piece needs two things: the abjuration (farmed) and a matching cursed item (bought on the auction house). Trade both to Alphollon C. Meriard in Northern San d'Oria near (L-6) and he purifies them into the finished ilvl 119 piece.

Two grades

Trade the normal cursed item and you get the normal reward. Trade the +1 cursed item with the same abjuration and you get the HQ.

What a full set costs in gil:

The gil is only the unlock. The farm is identical either way — five abjurations, and the same abjuration purifies both grades. All that changes is which cursed item you buy.

So the grade is your choice, not a sequence. Fifty thousand gil for a full ilvl 119 job set is the best value on this page by a wide margin. Thirty- two million gets you the HQ of that same set. If you have the gil, nothing stops you going straight to HQ and skipping the normal grade entirely; if you do not, the normal set is in no way a wasted step. Buy per slot as your gil allows — there is no penalty for a mixed set.

Then take them to Nolan. Abjuration sets augment on the same system as step 3 — Adhemar, Amalric, Apogee, Argosy, Carmine, Emicho, Kaykaus, Lustratio, Rao, Ryuo and Souveran are all supported.

Step 5 — Su3

The top of this ladder is Superior 3, sold by the same Quartermaster in !throne for Dignity Points.

Earning Dignity Points

DP come from killing Chronicle roster NMs in chapters 6, 7 and 8:

Two NMs pay extra: Warder of Courage (12) and Shinryu (40).

Chapter 8 pays four times what chapter 6 does. If you can clear it, farm there and nowhere else.

The cost

Which works out to:

Ten sets are available: Oshosi, Kendatsuba, Ea, Ratri, Arke, Pinga, Mousai, Heyoka, Baayami and Turms.

While you are in Reisenjima — keep your stones

Chapter 7 puts you in Reisenjima, and everything there drops stones: Pellucid, Fern and Taupe, from ordinary mobs and frayed sacks alike. The Geas Fete bosses drop a fourth, Eschite Ore, and that one comes from nowhere else.

Do not vendor any of them. They are the currency for Oseem in Norg, who augments the twenty-nine weapons that drop from Reisenjima NMs. Each stone feeds a different lane — melee, magic, healing, tank — and every stone after the first is a guaranteed +1 that can never go backward.

That means stones are never wasted and never wagered. A stack you bank today is progress you keep. Pick up the ore especially, since no amount of gil will replace it.

Full details, including every augment and its cap, are in Oseem's Engravings.

Weapons, start to finish

Weapons follow the armour ladder rather than replacing it:

1. Forefront from Craggy Bluff for 1,300 Bayld — do this on day one.
2. Nibiru and the rest of the ilvl 119 weapon pool, augmented at Nolan.
3. Relic and mythic upgrades — see the Weapon Progression page, which covers every stage and augment in detail.

If you only remember one thing

Bayld gear is a stopgap. Su1 from the Quartermaster is where your real gear starts, abjuration sets from Alphollon are the best value per gil on the server, and everything worth wearing goes through Nolan before it is finished.