Paladin: Guide by Willriker/Part IV

13) THE QUEST FOR YOUR ARTIFACT GEAR 	I have said time and time again that Paladins are extremely lucky, in that they get the most useful artifact armor in the game! Not only that but the Paladin artifacts story line is actually quite good I wont spoil that part for you, so don’t worry.  I do not know if the story line will get jumbled if you do some of these quests out of order.. so don’t.  But, Paladin artifact armor is quite difficult to get.  This gear is extremely important, and I highly advise you to make very attempt to get it until you succeed.  Therefore, I am going to include a guide to help you as much as possible in this endeavor.  Note: if you have questions on the stats of the artifact armor I have it all listed in the corresponding slots above in the equipment section.	-AF (Honor Sword) Quest Name:  Sharpening the Sword Prerequisites:  You must be at least level 40 Paladin. The Quest:    The NPC you need to talk to is Ailbeche. He is a little Elvan boy located in the Parade Grounds of Northern Sandoria. He needs a whetstone to sharpen a very old sword, and sends you to Ordelle’s Cave to get it. Once inside Ordelle’s Cave, head to . At this location there is a gapping hole in the ground. Do not fall in! You are to examine the ??? on the stalagmite behind the hole. Once you do and Earth elemental will appear. You will not be able to kill this thing as a 40 paladin, but this sword is too good to level without. So enlist help before tackling this thing. Once it is dead you will need to examine the ??? one more time to receive the whetstone. It is a key item, so don’t worry about dropping it. Next you will need to head back to Ailbeche. He will give you your Honor sword. -AF (Gallant Leggings) Quest Name: A Boy’s Dream Prerequisites: Must be a level 50 Paladin and finished the quest sharpening the Sword The Quest:  You will need to talk to Ailbeche again to activate this quest. He will want to catch a fish and get the treasure it swallowed. But first he will send you to meet his father, head of the royal guard, in the weapon shop in Southern Sandoria. Next you will be sent to the Crawlers Nest, you are to examine the ??? at , only to have a crawler appear. I hope you brought a buddy for this one, a very strong buddy, or a fully party. Once this crawler is dispatched you will get an item called a Giant Shell Bug. (Note: you can also buy this item on the AH, if you cant arrange this party) Bring the Giant Shell Bug to Ailbeche and give it to him. He will give it back to you and tell you about the fishing hole where the fish supposedly resides. Head over to Castle Oztroja, the second floor  and fish using the Giant Shell Bug. I highly advise High Level Help here… This fight isn’t easy. I also advise clearing out the room first. Because you NM is about to spawn, and he has the name of Odontotyrannus. He is a pugil type monster. Once it is deal you will get the Odontotyrannus in your inventory, it is now time to present the legendary fish to Ailbeche. Sadly he does not know how to clean the fish to see what’s inside, and neither do you. But, he does know who does! That person is in the fishing guild house in Selbina. Head to an NPC there named Zaldon and trade the fish to him to find out what is in side. Low and Behold he whips out a pair of Knights Boots! No, this is not your Artifact Armor. Head to Prince Trion’s Room in Chateau d’Oraguille to finish the quest and receive your Gallant Leggings. -AF (Gallant Gauntlets) Quest Name: Borghertz’s Stalwart Hands Prerequisites: Must be level 50 and have completes Sharpening the Sword The Quest:  The NPC to activate this quest is called Guslam and he is located in upper Jueno. More specifically inside the Durable Shields armor shop. He informs you of a legendary craftsman who made a pair of gauntlets who hid them in the worst places of Vana ‘diel. After accepting this quest you will be send to The Eldieme Necropolis to hunt down a coffer key which will work in that area. Once you have the key you will need to find the Coffer to use it on. And this is where you will have a problem. No body likes hunting Coffers, and neither will you. I guarantee it. Once you finally get the coffer and received “some old gauntlets” you can finally head back to Guslam. He will direct you to talk to Yin Pocanakhu in the Tenshudo shop (lower Jueno behind the Auction House) She tells you that she will pay 1000 gill for the locations of a toolbox. Now you will need to examine the ??? just outside the Duty Free Shop in Port Jueno. You will receive a Cut scene involving Borghertz’s. He will ask you to retrieve some “Shadow Flames” from the Castle of Zvahl Bailey’s. Once in Castle Zvahl Bailey’s head to the torches at . Once you do you will have to defeat Dark Spark! Almost everyone needs to kill Dark Spark, so getting help won’t be too difficult. Ad make no mistake, you will need a full party with a High-level tank to take this thing out. Once Dark Spark is defeated you will need to examine the ??? again to obtain the Shadow Flames. Now head back to the ??? outside the Duty Free Shop in Port Jeuno to get your reward! -AF(Gallant Coronet) Quest Name: NA Prerequisites: Paladin at least level 50 and  completed A Boy’s Dream The Quest: This one is rather easy but can take a while. Go to Garlaige Citadel and get a coffer Key. Once you get the Coffer key find the Coffer. Yes, it’s that easy. But coffer hunting sucks! And after the 7th real life hour I actually sent a tell to a GM asking him, “would you take my characters left nut for this coffer?” After the GM chastised me, my Coffer popped right in front of me not more than 30 seconds later. The lesson, stick with it, give up your left nut, and this coffer is yours! -AF (Gallant Breeches) Quest Name: NA Prerequisites: Paladin at least level 50 and completes A Boy’s Dream The Quest: There is no Quest. This is just a coffer run, like your AF headpiece. The only difference is that this is in Beadeaux. Please do not bother your high level friends to get this Coffer Key for you. They have lives too. It is quite easy to put together a skill up party for this, with you being the only one that needs a key, ideally. I must admit this coffer went incredibly easy for me. The Coffer chest spawned right near my skill up party. So basically it came to getting the key before someone opened the coffer. Which we did. -AF (Gallant Surcoat) Quest Name: Under Oath Prerequisites: Paladin at least level 50 and completed A Boy’s Dream. The Quest: To activate this Quest you must speak directly with Prince Trion, in the Royal Room of Chateau d’Oraguille, to learn that there is a suspicion of a traitor in the Royal Guard! He will want you to investigate the mater. Now you must talk to Vemalpeau located in Southern Sandoria , then to Najjar at the Bar in Southern Sandoria, and finally to Ullasa In Southern Sandoria . After all that you should’ve been told to get a Paint Brush. To get this Paint Brush you will need to head back to Castle Zvahl Baileys only this time you will need to get… you guessed it a coffer key. Then find the coffer the key belongs to, this will get you the key item Mique’s Paint Brush. Now you need to head back to Vemalpeau again. Head to the second floor of his house to get another key item. Next person you will need to talk to is Exoroche, Ailbeche’s father, at the weapon shop. Now you will be instructed to head out to Davoi. Once there you will need to examine a well at  and defeat two Orcs to get a rare/exe item. Trade this item back to the well, quickly. Note: this is the hardest fight you will have to do for your AF. It will take 2-3 parties to defeat these 2 NM. That includes high-level help. Once done go and talk to Ailbeche once more in Northern Sandoria. He will direct you to Maiden’s Spring  of Junger Forest. After the cut-scene return to Prince Trion for your reward! 14) HNM’S & NM	-HOW IS IT DIFFERENT THAN AN EXPERIENCE PARTY	In a Party Setting your main objective is to help the party to gain experience points faster and safer. You do this by using as many abilities and equipping yourself with as many +enmity and damage reducing items as humanly possible.  You also blow through your abilities (while trying to set up a pattern so that you will be able to use one properly timed ability each fight while the rest are charging.)  You also keep an eye on your TP meter to help kill off an enemy with your other DD.  You will also have the added benefit of SATA to help you conserve your abilities.  In short, you are rationing yourself to kill multiple enemies, and timing your abilities so that one or two recharge during every fight in order to take as little damage as possible and therefore increase your exp per hour.	In an experience party your equipment setup will also be either one of two possible combinations:  VIT >> DEF >> EMNITY   or some choose to go the route of  VIT >>> AGI >> EMNITY. These two combinations of equipment are designed to get your Paladin to take as little damage as you can. This will lead to more experience per hour and a happy party. Depending on the NM or HNM you are up against your style needs to change dramatically. Many High-Level link shells realize this and will give you some time to learn how they want you to tank the HNM’s or NM’s. You must realize that you are not trying to get a chain 5 or even a chain 6. You are fighting just one enemy. This means that you cannot let yourself slip into many of the habits you have built up during your 70-75 previous experience point levels. Your Abilities in a HNM/NM fight will be used only for the purpose of hate control! You have mages to help cure your sorry butt, but they can only do so while you have the hate! Its ok to take more damage (preventing less with abilities), they have MP they can cure you. Remember, if the main tank dies chances are that the whole alliance will go down with it, so the exchange of the use of your abilities for hate control instead of damage prevention is absolutely warranted. Most fights your link shell will be involved with will last 10-15 minutes, there are four-hour fights and there are five-minute fights. Once the Fight starts, if your link shell wants you to dominate hate, you will need to learn how to do so while rationing the abilities you have to build a steady hate building ritual that lasts for up to 10-15 minutes. This ritual differs with each NM or HNM so I can’t give you a layout of how this is to go. Just keep in mind that once you use an ability it will take 5 minutes to come back. And also keep in mind that you will need to use your abilities to survive a 10-15 minute fight. So save these abilities and only use one or two when you feel hate starting to slip away. As for Spells, You are saving your abilities for when hate is slipping, so you have to get hate from somewhere. You have MP, and that mixed with all your +enmity gear will make for some nice hate control. The only problem is that you do not have a lot of MP… As a Hume Paladin I try to dance in the 100-200 MP range. Any less than 100 MP and I will only use flash for hate, but if I can get off a cure III with a good amount of MP left, make no mistake, I will. And then try to conserve MP, while casting a few spells to maintain the hate you built up before hand. A steady Flash, Provoke, and occasional Cure III will usually do the trick. Remember you are fighting just one enemy, chances are that there will not be another one coming up behind it. So you must ration yourself throughout the fight. Make sure you ALWAYS have something decent as backup and ration your MP. You do NOT want to run out of MP, if you run out of MP something very bad either just happened or is about to happen very soon…You will not be expected to Cure yourself, you have mages for that! You are expected to use your MP to secure the Hate though. It just happens that the MP used in this way often recovers HP as well. By this point in the game I am sure that you have noticed your melees bring multiple sets of gear with them. You really have to do the same. But your gear will, of course, have a different focus. Where your equipment is concerned for HNM/NM you need to reset your priorities. You will be getting hit for a lot of damage, by a lot I mean 100-300 damage a hit! And in combination with that massive damage, you will also get hit for spells and weapon skills that can go well beyond 1200 damage. There is really no way you can get enough VIT to be able to reduce this to a much lower amount. Even with Koenig gear this will still be hard to do. Instead, you will need to focus on surviving these attacks with enough HP to buy your mages enough time to react. Therefore many Paladins decide to go for a different priority when choosing HNM/NM tanking gear which is something like this: HP >> EMNITY >> VIT. This priority simply reflects the job you need to perform in an HNM/NM situation. NOTE: I have made a rather lengthy discussion on how your experience point gear will not work in an HNM/NM environment. The gear that is ideal for this environment is NOT ideal for your experience point environment for the same reasons listed above. 15) WHAT CRAFT WOULD BE BEST FOR THE PALADIN JOB	I cannot tell you how many times someone has asked me, “how do I make money as a Paladin…” Crafting is never a bad thing to get into.  As mentioned before in this guide Paladins are not considered anywhere near the ideal job to farm with. Therefore we need to develop ways to make our gill.  Crafting is a prime example of a way to do this.  Since getting parties is incredibly easy for a Paladin, it won’t kill you to take some time out and go mining for materials.  Hell, chances are you will get invites while mining!  So this is definitely something to think about.  Crafting is not the only way to make money, outside of farming.  You also have options like clamming, fishing, logging, mining, harvesting, gardening, chocobo digging, and even Auction house camping.  There are so many ways to make gill and or gather materials. Go try some and when you get bored try something else! That’s what these options are for. Make use of them! Note: This is not to decide which makes the most money, if you stick with it, this is purely a discussion on what types items the crafts make in comparison to what types of items a Paladin needs through out his or her career. An argument can be made that you should just go with what makes the most money and buy what you want with the proceeds. This is not that side of the argument. -BLACKSMITHING Blacksmithing would be the best craft to support a Paladin throughout his or her career. After all, it makes many swords, shields, and armors. Indeed it does come quite useful. And nothing is quite as fulfilling as wearing a bunch of your own gear out to an exp party or a NM fight or even a mission. And for lower/high level characters this is a great craft for a Paladin. At low levels your character can probably HQ your own gear and at high levels people would be equally impressed with your signature on something like an Adaman Set. That and you can raise Paladin for almost no money at all, as long as you are willing to farm ingredients. This is a great choice. -GOLDSMITHING Goldsmithing is equal to Blacksmithing in terms of usefulness to a Paladin. Goldsmithing not only allows you to make your own rings and earrings, but also makes swords/shields that are as good if not better than Blacksmithing. The only draw back to Goldsmithing is that it is extremely expensive to level up to a useful point. That being said, I would advise you to level Goldsmithing first. No, this is not because I am a sadist… or trying to bankrupt you! If you find at one point that Goldsmithing is simply too big of a money sink to level, then you can switch to Blacksmithing and it’ll be like a walk in the park in comparison. Not only that but the best Blacksmithing Recipes require Goldsmithing skills. So it becomes a win situation. -COOKING I don’t care what job you have, your character will need food! This is a great craft to level due to that simple fact. Lets say that you level Paladin to 40 and decide it just isn’t for you. And now you go to become a Mage job. Well Blacksmithing and Goldsmithing will be of little use to you as a mage. But your Cooking skills will always come in handy. For this reason alone you may want to make the investment. As for Paladin we love the idea of Boiled Crabs/ Tavansia tacos, and Tavansia Salads for free. -BONE WORKING Bone Working has extremely little use to a Paladin. Outside of about job level 18 it actually has no use at all to a Paladin. -LEATHER WORKING Again this skill, in terms of usefulness of the items it makes is of little use to a Paladin. -CLOTH CRAFT There are so few items in this craft that would actually be useful to a Paladin that I don’t see what reason a Paladin would have to level it. Unless it’s simply for the money. -WOOD WORKING Woodworking can make some very nice shields, but other than that not very much in the way of what a Paladin would use. -ALCHEMY Alchemy is a nice craft. Surprisingly enough, it makes weapons and armor on par with or better than Blacksmithing. It also provides some very useful consumable items that a Paladin uses every quest and every mission. And can build quite a reliable income off of all of this too. Not only that but if you are not adverse to taking some time and farming materials it can be one of the cheapest crafts to level! This would definitely be worth considering. 16) PALADIN VRS NINJA (not my opinion but the debate itself)	When The Rise of Ziliart Expansion Pack came out it inadvertently introduced a new tank job into FFXI.  This new tanking job is the Ninja.  Since people now have two jobs with the ability to tank in an experience point/NM and an HNM environment the natural thing for people to do was compare the two jobs to see which is better.  The impact of this often-heated debate has permanently changed the FFXI environment.  This is basically how the debate started and the results of that argument.	The Paladin’s job, as detailed above, is to maintain hate control while taking as little damage as possible.  He minimizes the damage the takes through the use of curative magic and heavy armor.  He also has the job of controlling the hate in any situation.  He can keep hate in almost any environment. In fact if a member died in a party that member either did something incredibly stupid or there was a slacker of a Paladin in the party. This is not to say that Paladin does not have its down side. Having a Paladin in party means that he will need people to heal and maintain him. A silenced and paralyzed Paladin is not useful at all. Not to mention that he gets hurt! A Paladin gets hurt and does not have the magic points to allow himself to main cure himself, he only has magic points for hate control which does restore some HP in the process. As soon as a Paladin uses his MP to main cure himself he might as well kiss his experience points per hour ratio goodbye. The Ninja takes a different approach to tanking an enemy. A Ninja forgoes the heavy armor of a Paladin and focuses on letting “shadows” take the damage that the Ninja might otherwise receive. A Ninja gains two “spells” which allows the physical damage done to the Ninja to be neglected. In place of a loss in hit points a shadow, gained from the ninjitsu spells utsinemi and Utsinemi Ni, is lost instead. This means that in theory a Ninja can get by with just a support healer. A lesser mage can come in and take the place of the main healer, thereby opining another spot in the party up for another DD member. A Ninja can also make enemies weaker to certain elements, thereby increasing the damage of skill chains and magic bursts. These are the main advantages of a Ninja in an experience point environment. An extra Damage member in a party, mixed with a weakened enemy, means that enemies die faster! In short, this equates to more experience points per hour. In contrast, a Ninja has very limited tools to control hate with. And many would, and have, contend that what good is being able to take no damage when you can’t hold the hate of an enemy. This means that having a Ninja as the tank in a party can lead to big experience point gains, or a lot of deaths. Melee members really have to watch their damage output around a Ninja. And having a thief, or at least a thief sub-jobbed melee, in the party is a must have to aid in hate control. Also, having shadows are nice, but they do run out. One Area of Effect spell of skill and a Ninja loses all of his shadows in one swoop. This is not to say that one job is better than the other. It just means that they accomplish the same task in two different ways. And therefore both jobs bring two different skill sets to a party. Anything a Paladin can tank a Ninja can also tank. Anything a Ninja can tank a Paladin can also tank. They just do so in different ways. Some times the skill set a Ninja brings to a situation will make the fight easier. Some times the skill set a Paladin brings to the table makes the fight easier. It all depends on the enemy and the over all set up of the group you are with. Don’t worry there are plenty of enemies in Vana ‘diel to go around. -THE DEBATE SHOWS WHAT PALADINS TRULY HAVE As a result of this extensively long and drawn out debate a trend began to emerge. The Paladin undoubtedly brings a safer environment to be in. A Paladins skills for controlling hate are unmatched by any Ninja. This may lead to a little slower experience gains per hour with a Paladin, but something really messed up has to happen for there to be a death or let alone a wipe-out of an experience party under a Paladin’s watch. That and the melee finally get a chance to see what kind of damage they can really do! Why do I put this argument before you…? Well, I believe that before you get into a job you should know what is expected of you. You should know above all else what the single most valuable thing that your chosen job brings to a situation. Remember, as you choose to be a Paladin, this argument is still fresh in people’s minds. They will have preconceptions of your chosen job. You must show them that we indeed control the hate of an enemy like no other, but we can also get comparable experience points to any ninja out there. I cannot prove people right or wrong by myself, I need you to help. And THAT is the main purpose of this guide as a whole. To help prove that A Paladin is just as versatile and effective as any other job in the game. 17) THE DD PALADIN	The Myths: Paladins cannot do damage. Don’t even try. Your job is to get hit not to hit.  It is time to smash those myths to pieces RIGHT NOW!  A Paladin can DD.  He might not be the worlds most outstanding DD ever known to mankind, but he can be about as respectable a DD as a Warrior.  This is a hell of a lot better than people thought we could do.

-EXPERIENCE PARTIES (BEFORE ENDGAME) I am sorry to say that you will not be able to take a full DD role as a Paladin and still be able to tank the enemy. This much is true. It requires a completely different setup to be able to take the hits than it does to dish out the pain. However when the time comes where you are exping off an enemy which does not hurt you all that much and MP is not an issue you CAN AND SHOULD equip some DD gear. Adding to the pool of damage in any way will increase the rate at which the enemies die. And since you are taking damage just fine, why not help out a little in the damage department. Since you shouldn’t go over board in such a situation, I would advise a more damaging sword (keep the shield) a life belt, and some strength rings. Any more than that and you risk compromising your tanking abilities, but then again try it out. You can always sell excess equipment back. At any rate, you realy should start off all exp parties in a full tank setup, and as you judge your situation filter in some accuracy, attack and strength enhancing gear. A little bit will go a LONG way in the damage department for you.

A little DD gear will go a long way. Its actually surprising how much an additional +10 STR and +10-20 Accuracy will do to you. Again in a regular exp you will not do the damage as a war, but you will be quite a lot more influential than you were before. In merit parties on the other hand… things are different.

-MERIT PARTIES

In merit parties your role is different, completely different. You will be hard pressed to find a merit party which will want a Paladin to tank. At least not without a Ninja Sub job, but then it will be hard to keep hate, if not impossible. Therefore, unless you want to level a whole new job to merit off of you need to adapt to the situation. In a merit party they do not want people to take damage, therefore almost everyone will have a ninja sub job, and if they even bother with a tank it will be a ninja tank. The next interesting thing about a merit party is that, in large part, you will have a ton of DD in the party, with no black mage in sight. You will more than likely have a ninja as a tank, unless you are all going for a ninja sub job, then that is almost irrelevant. In short you will not be fighting IT mobs, instead you will be chaining VT enemies for insane chains, some upwards 100-200.

In these types of parties it is not uncommon for a Paladin to go all out DD. A full attack setup is needed. After all you do not want to be a leech. You want to be a productive member. You must be a productive member. Paladins equip slightly different, in this situation I would advise you equipping attack, accuracy, strength equipment, and the most damaging sword you can find. Once fully equipped in a DD setup you will notice once and for all how versatile Paladin really is. In the equipment section I have added SOME of the pieces you will want to pick up, but not all. Please check the AH, and examine the warriors walking around. You will get a good idea about how to equip your Paladin from their equipment.

At first, it was extremely hard to convince melee that a Paladin can work in such a setup. But a lot of great Paladins have worked very hard to dispel that myth. It only takes one Paladin with a bootleg setup to make 5 other people distain the idea of having a Paladin in their burn party. And if you have a bootleg setup, and joined 2 parties… you just made 10 people not like the idea of inviting a Paladin into the burn session. Sadly for every decently equipped Paladin there are 10-20 others which are indeed bootleg. And it is a very hard task to change public opinion in an LS, never mind server wide or even game wide. Please do not detract from their work and go in with a bootleg setup. We are currently making a name as an acceptable member in a burn party. So your life will be considerably easier now, but take the time and make a good setup. You won’t be the only one surprised in your damage output!

18) DISCLAIMER AND RESOURCES	Over the years if have read many of guides on Paladin. It would be wrong to say that my opinion has not been shaped by those readings.  My problem lies in the fact that I have read so many guides that I can no longer remember where I got what facts from which guide.  I went from my “own knowledge” during the writing of this guide.  If there is some portion of this guide that seams very familiar that is the reason.	Also, there is quite a bit of numerical data in this guide.  All of the numerical data in this guide was not initially compiled by myself.  I lifted it from these sites:  [] [www.koolaid-ffxi.org]