Thief: Guide to Weapons and Armor

This Article is a Community Guide
Guides exist as a community effort to help fellow players navigate the game. Opinions and strategies in their content may vary from editor to editor, but feel free to add new or correct out of date information. Guides are subject to the same editing standards of other FFXIclopedia articles.

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

Main 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.

Ranged Weapons

Thief have a wide variety of ranged weapons avaliable to them, and since THF are likely one of the best classes for pulling, this is a good thing. The typical/cheapest pulling device for a Thief are a Boomerang, due to its unlimited uses and a bommerang with +AGI for THF. However, Marksmanship is also a potencially useful thing for a Thief to use, a well placed Acid Bolt at the beginning of a fight is one great way to improve damage output.

Another benefit of a THF pulling is for SATA. As the puller, a THF has control of when the monster arrives at camp. If timed well, a THF can land 2 SATA's within the span of a few seconds, instead of only one.

Bow

In the Soloing levels, a well placed bow and arrow shot can destroy near half of an anemy's HP. At party levels, it can place a decent damage first hit on the enemy. Also, the longer delay allows a THF to stop the shot easier if something occurs to the party.

lvl 1 Shortbow

lvl 7 Self bow

lvl 24 Wrapped Bow

lvl 36 Composite Bow

Arrow

to be completed later

Crossbow

Unlike a bow and arrow, the first Crossbow is not avaliable to a THF until the soloing levels are traditionally over. However, unlike a Bow + Arrow, a crossbow has status bolts that can weaken a enemy before it arrives at camp when used to pull or damage.

lvl 10 Legionnaire's Crossbow

lvl 12 Crossbow

lvl 25 Power Crossbow (+1 AGI, keep this for TA if your pulling with crossbow)

Bolt

to be completed later