Thief: Guide to Weapons and Armor

Notice
This guide (until sufficiently edited for this to warrant removal) is based off a person who leveled Thief quite a long time ago, and has never surpassed the level 37 mark on Thief. Until enough outside help warrents the removal of this notice, understand that this guide may ignore recent additions of gear that did not exist approximately 8 months ago. It will also only focus on lower level THF gear until another with more experiance can improve this guide. ~Andres

Weapons
Due to the nature of Daggers, at low levels, their low DMG rating and relitively weak Weapon Skills makes them poor options for the soloing and early partying. Also, since the first Dagger Weapon Skill that works really well with Sneak Attack and/or Trick Attack is Viper Bite, many Thief's will use either Hand to Hand or Sword weapons at the early levels. Both Fast Blade and Combo stack fully powered with Sneak Attack, and at early levels, the lower skill rank has a lesser effect on weapon skill.

Dagger
Since many Daggers come with beneficial effects, Ninja is the most common sub in order to Dual Weild two daggers. Warrior may be used before level 20.


 * lvl 1 Bronze Knife
 * lvl 7 Beestinger or Blind Dagger
 * lvl 9 Brass Dagger
 * lvl 12 Dagger, Silence Dagger, or Spark Dagger
 * lvl 20 Decurion's Dagger and/or Mercenary's Knife
 * lvl 23 Corrosive Dagger (optional)
 * lvl 25 2x Federation Knife or Windurstian Knife

Sword
Swords are the recomended choice of the soloing levels of 1~10, due to their higher DMG rating, more powerful 1st weapon skill, and relitively same attacking speed of a dagger. In the early party levels, this or Hand to Hand weaponry is most commonly used, since at Level 15, Sneak Attack is far more effective with these weapons. If using a sword, most Thief sub Warrior or Ninja.


 * lvl 1 Wax Sword
 * lvl 7 Sapara
 * lvl 10 Royal Archer's Sword
 * lvl 12 Brass Xiphos (most skip directly to Scimitar)
 * lvl 13 Scimitar
 * lvl 18 Fire Sword, Flame Sword, Iron Sword, or Iron Sword +1
 * lvl 19 Small Sword (often used as an offhand weapon for a long time due to +DEX, with one of lvl 18 swords as mainhand)
 * lvl 27 Gladius (Often skipped for Mithran Scimitar)
 * lvl 28 Mithran Scimitar (Note: Often expensive, usually dual weilded, nice bonus to DEX however)
 * lvl 30 Centurion's Sword (Note: debatable if better/worse than Mithran Scimitar)

Hand to Hand
Hand to Hand weapons recieve less skill than Swords for a Thief. However, with a Monk subjob, they provide a decent amoutn of damage and speed. Combo is likely the strongest Weapon Skill until Viper Bite when combined with Sneak Attack, but in exchange a THF must lose some of its Accuracy and Attack offered by Swords. Althought this is slightly compensated for in many Hand to Hand weapons. This is not recomended until level 15, to combine Sneak Attack + Combo, to use earlier is to merely weaken yourself usually. Monk is the only viable sub for this choice of weapon, due to Martial Arts.

This assumes use of Knuckles only from 15 till approximately level 30, this is not recomended otherwise.


 * lvl 15 Bastokian Knuckles or Republic Knuckles
 * lvl 20 Metal Knuckles (Only use if you obtain +1 version)

Those are seriously the only two Knuckles I recomend for those levels. Both offer relitively high DMG for hand to hand weapons and +Accuracy.