Paladin Chronicle by Gixander Part II

Initial Tidbits
So, now you find yourself as a level 1 Paladin sitting (or standing for that matter) in San d'Oria. Your first thought might be: ''How come nobody is inviting me to a party? I thought Paladins got all the invites!'' Well, just like everybody else, you have to make it through to level 10ish before people actually want to start partying. Not always true, of course; you might get lucky and find a party who would want to party in the 7-10 range in La Theine Plateau, but these are rare to come by.

So, the first ten levels are divided into two groups, with the only difference being a spell and a weaponskill. The first group, levels 1-6, are nothing more than getting used to being a Level 1-6 Warrior with a Level 0.25 White Mage. Yes, I know that's a bit harsh, but for the time being, you are nothing more than a hack-and-slash damage dealer with the ability to throw up a Cure or two. If you choose a Tarutaru, maybe a third Cure as well.

Spells and Abilities
So, what do you have in the way of Spells and Abilities between levels 1 and 6? Well, for spells, you only have Cure, but unfortunately you don't even have that until level 5. And when you do, you are already way behind the capped skill curve (assuming that you had no skill whatsoever in Healing Magic). I will say this: I spent about an hour capping my Healing Magic out. Take this into consideration: Keeping Healing Magic capped, as with all other skills, HELPS IMMENSLY. You don't have that much MP to begin with, so my suggestion is to go to the Auction House, and go into Food. Under the Sweets-and-Drinks section, you'll find the pies. Grab a stack of Apple Pies, since they are the cheapest and you really don't need the higher tiers of pies just yet. Apple Pies give a few bonuses to statistics, but for our purposes here, the statistical increase we are focusing on is the +25 MP. In my case, at level 5 I had 26 MP base, so 51 MP after eating a Pie. Maybe not a lot of MP to people beginning Paladin from a mage job, but 51 MP allows you to perform 6 Cures before having to heal. 6 Cures versus a standard 3 means less time healing and faster capping of the skill; it also means a little bit more in the lines of survivability as you approach level 10.

As far as you are concerned, you only have two job abilities in this level range, Invincible at Level 1 and Holy Circle at Level 5. Invincible is the god-send of two-hours: the ability to negate all physical damage for 30 seconds. Now, I'll stop you right here because I learned second-hand (remember, I used to be a White Mage) that Invicible does not make your Paladin an impregnable fortress. Invincible prevents all physical damage, right? Magical damage, such as a mob casting Fire, will still damage your Paladin. There are many reasons you might use this. The most-oft use of this is the "Oh Crap" effect, when your party gets aggro through a link. The Paladin will hit the mob (or perform an action on someone who has) to gain emnity, then fire off Invicible. If anybody out there is reading this and is not going to be a Paladin, i.e. is just reading this to understand the job better, then if you see a Paladin fire off Invicible please, do us a favor and RUN TO THE NEAREST ZONE! That's the whole point. If the Paladin can give you a 30 second head start, why are you waiting around? Other uses may come up, and if I ever am forced to use the two-hour, you'll hear about the event and what may have happened.

At level 5, you gain Holy Circle. Start screaming "Yay!". So many people have attacked this ability, as they have with all the abilities ending in the word Circle, as a bad use of an ability slot. Holy Circle is a ten minute recast ability which increases your ability to intimidate undead for a full minute. This is different than what the scrolling information says in-game. The in-game description, "grants resistance against undead to party members within an area of effect", makes it sound like it just resists anything undead. I was never certain how that would work in practice, but if you've ever seen the statement "The is intimidated by 's presence" on your screen, that's what this does. This form of intimidation is like going to attack a monster, and when you go to swing, he rears up and roars, and instead of attacking you go "Dang!" Easy way to put it is that there is a chance that with this up party members will intimidate the monster. Useful in the dunes at night, but not when just starting out.

At level 5, you also gain the passive trait version of Holy Circle, entitled Undead Killer. Undead Killer does the same thing as Holy Circle, but it's always active on you. No casting anything, you get the ability to intimidate your undead opponent naturally. After all, you are a Holy Knight.

The Cost of Survival
I know for a fact that both this section and the remaining sections are going to be the longest sections of the guide, especially as we move on from just normal equipment giving 2 or 3 defense to elementally-based equipment that could either kill you or negate part of the damage. Fortunately, at this early stage of the game, all you have to contend with is different classes of armor. I see equipment as falling into one of three different classes: mage, general, and heavy. Mage armor is unequippable by Paladin, and are things like Robes. General and heavy equipment are both equippable by Paladins, but the heavy equipment is where Paladins need to focus on obtaining.

Paladins are naturally gifted in Swords and Shields, which are both A+ skills. In order from better to worse for other weapon skills are Club and Staff at A-, Great Sword at B, Dagger at C-, and Polearm at E. I will only be focusing on Sword at the moment, but will return to review the remaining skill levels at a later time.

Swords
Even at level one, you have a few selections for your Sword; these are the Bronze Sword (Dmg: 6, Delay: 231, Damage Per Second: 1.56), the Onion Sword (Dmg: 5, Delay: 228, Damage Per Second: 1.32), and the Wax Sword (Dmg: 6, Delay: 225, Damage Per Second: 1.60). At this point in the game, what you decide to get is not going that make as big of a difference as later on down the line. You can buy the Bronze Sword from Ashene in Southern San d'Oria at K-7 for 240-278 gil; the Onion Sword is only obtainable from starting a new character as the Warrior job; the Wax Sword can only be crafted with an Alchemy craft at level 9.

Here's the order I would suggest you grab a sword. If you happen to have started your character with Warrior and still have the Onion Sword in your inventory, use that. If not, and you have someone with Alchemy at 9 or higher (or if your character is an Alchemist), synth the Wax Sword. Otherwise, go ahead and buy the Bronze Sword from the NPC. Unless I suggest it otherwise, always buy from the NPC. Always check the Auction House first!

Shields
At level one, there are two shields available: the Lauan Shield (Def: 1), and the Marine Shield (Def:1, VIT+1, AGI+1, Water+1). The Marine Shield would be very good for a Paladin, but it's only obtainable as a dropped item from a NM in Palborough Mines. On the Fairy/San d'Oria AH, it currently goes for 20k. If you had the money, you could buy this and it would help out until Level 24. Vitality is one of the two main statistics to look out for, in addition to defense. Vitality is something to keep an eye out for while looking through items, and you'll see them as we go through since I'll point them out.

The other option is the Lauan Shield, which can either be bought off the Auction House or obtained from a quest in Port San d'Oria. Unlike many quests that require you to run around out of the town grabbing items before rewarding you with a piece of equipment, this quest, The Brugaire Consortium, only requires you to take parcels from one NPC to another. There's three parcels in total, and then you get your free Lauan Shield. 5 minutes and you're done. Gil is hard to come buy, so anything you can quest on the side helps out alot (Fairy/San d'Oria AH: 800gil).

Head
Cache-nez looks like the greatest piece of equipment right off the bat for a Paladin. Having that Enmity+2 helps because that is what makes Paladin keep hate so well. In order to begin the quest to acquire this headpiece, you have to have at least Fame level 5 in Windurst and have compelted Chains of Promathia mission 2-3. If you have these prerequisites, then go after this piece of equipment. It'll last you for a long time as long as you don't mind not having a few extra points of defense. Since not everybody needs to read about the quest chain unless you have those, I'll skip it (but you can jump to the quest chain by clicking on the link in the table above).

Now, we start to see, even at this first level, a division in equipment. Which do you want, more MP or more Defense? The Hairpins fall under that magic group of equipment. When I started White Mage, I focused on nothing more than MP+ gear. I suggest for Galka's they grab the Hairpins, due to their lower starting MP, but I think it's up to you. Copper Hairpins can be bought in Bastok for about 117 gil from the Goldsmithing merchants, or can be synthed via a level 7 recipe.

I picked the Bronze Cap only because at this point the only real use for MP is to help you cap out skills. That's the truth, people. I may have Cure at 5, but I honestly haven't used the spell often enough to be worried. Like I stated above, when you are using Apple Pies you can focus on other things. This includes where your focus shifts on equipment.

But I digress, Bronze Cap can be bought from Miogique in Southern San d'Oria for around 150 gil. In fact, the entire Bronze set can be bought from both NPCs in Rosel's Armor, at around a cost of 1k. I'll continue to reiterate this fact in the following equipment sections.

At level 5, you get the ability to equip a Bone Hairpin, which is like a slight upgrade to the L1 Copper Hairpin. You can either craft these right off the bat as a Bonecraft recipe (it's only 4) or buy them from the Bonecraft guild merchants.

The really nice equip is the Traveler's Hat. It gives you two great things for Paladin, defense and Mind. Grab a Bomb Ash and take it to Port Bastok and talk to Benita, trade it in and get the hat. For a five-second quest, you get a 3 Defense equipment with a bonus of 1 to your Mind, which does affect your magical side of the job.

Body
Since between levels 1 and 6 you don't have any Neckpiece or Earrings able to be equipped, we'll move straight on to Body. And this will also be a very short section, since you only have one choice. You might see that there's quite a lot of the "Tunica" body pieces that you can equip, but these don't actually provide anything related to defensive capabilities. By all means, grab one if you'd prefer, or if you previously participated in Campaign Battles from Wings of the Goddess you could grab a Iron Ram Jack Coat (Def: 1, HP+4, MP+4).

The one piece that you have unless you decide to go those roads is the Bronze Harness. As I stated above, the entire Bronze Armor set can be bought for around 1k gil from the NPCs in Rosel's Armor in Southern San d'Oria. Head there to buy this armor, which gives a very nice boost to Defense, 4.

I want to make this statement right now, even though in higher levels it will probably change. The statement is that always keep an eye on your Body armor. In the first 30 or so levels, your Body armor is the best piece of equipment, giving you the highest increase of defense. It usually takes two or three of the other pieces in the set just to equal the defense increase as the body armor. Until we've managed to get Paladin up to 30ish, I suggest looking at your Body equipment first when you upgrade equipment. Note! This does not mean that's the first thing you should buy.

Hands
As I stated in the Body section, there is only one level 1 hand equipment, the Bronze Mittens. With a single point of defense, if you were to still have the race-specific starting gear you'd have the same amount of defense. If you did still have that you could equip that and not have to spend gil on this piece. However, if you do, remember that you can buy the entire Bronze Armor set at Rosel's Armor.

Abestos Mitts are one of those equips that you never know whether you should bother with it. My personal belief is that if I have the piece of equipment in my Mog House, then I'll equip it. The Asbestos Mitts drop from a monster named Balloon in the Inner Horutoto Ruins (the Windurst equivalent to Ghelsba Outpost). At level 6, having an increase of 1 point to both Fire and Ice does not truly make a difference.

Rings
There are just way too many rings to count in the game, and even more combinations as you have TWO slots. Now, the rules for wearing rings are very simple, so I'll reiterate them here. First, you can wear any combination of rings, even to the point of equipping two of the same ring. Second, and this is more of an exception to the first rule, any Rare ring you are only allowed to equip one of. Basically, this means you can equip Ring 1 and Ring 2, Ring 1 and Ring 1, Rare Ring 3 and Rare Ring 4, but you cannot equip Rare Ring 3 and Rare Ring 3. How nice.

If, at the start of the game, you matched your character's race to the appropriate starting city (Elvaan for San d'Oria, Hume or Galka for Bastok, Tarutaru and Mithra for Windurst) you would have received a Ring for your ingenuity. Well, these Rings each help Paladin's out in different ways.

The Bastokan Ring (HP+3, Dex+1, Vit+1) helps out with a few points of HP and a good boost for the initial levels to your vitality. Vitality, as I've stated before, is much better than defense for the early levels, because it narrows the range in which you'll take damage. See the section on statistics above for further explanation.

The Windurstian Ring (MP+3, Agi+1, Int+1) helps out on the side of Agility. As stated above, Agility is what drives your skill with a Shield. The higher your agility, the better your Shield will block.

The San d'Orian Ring (Def: 2, Str+1, Mnd+1) helps out in a way on two fronts, Defense and Mind. Defense lowers the amount of damage you'll take, and Mind helps with your Healing and Divine magic skills.

If you didn't manage to get those, we have the following ring selection for your perusal and for my analysis:

The only problem with these rings is that you have two choices: either buy them off the AH or run your Chocobo to either Dangruf Wadi or King Ranp's Tomb to get these rings. My suggestion is grabbing Ascetic's Rings. They will help boost your magic, as I stated above, and really don't cost that much.

I've never utilized Copper Ring's except on my previous character. I decided on this run through that my San d'Orian Ring is much better than a Copper Ring, so I started out with a San d'Orian Ring and grabbed an Ascetic's Ring.