Oh God... Gear Help...

Hello RDMs! I'm a time traveler from 2008 and I've come seeking your advice!

Actually I'm returning to the game after 3 years and am so lost on what to do with my RDM. Please don't be too shocked by the gear, almost everything that wasn't rare/ex was sold when I quit. HQ staves, my good rings, earrings /sadface. I'm really not sure where to start with the 'ol RDM, also take note of the gil, it's in short supply, I guess I could always do the cruor>armor>npc route. I did get DRG to 90 just so I could have something half useful.

If anyone is up for tackling some gear recommendations I would greatly appreciate it. Should I just get to 78 like this and get a teal set? Help me out RDMs, you're my only hope!

I'm not a rdm so this advice is probably going to suck but since noone else has said anything here's what I would try and do:

Go ahead and get 90, no reason not to, really. Start off with teal and slowly work your way out of it.

Start upgrading empyrean after that. As far as accessories go...I couldn't say. My rdm is only 26, after all.

I will hurt you if you full-time full Teal.

Start working towards some AF3 gear, it's pretty rad. I wouldn't worry too much about HQ staves. They're cheap these days, but they're also being replaced by their Magian Trial counterparts, which you should start working on as well incidentally.

Serpentes set is pretty nice and not too hard to get.

Dyna is really easy to get gear from now so if you have a little group to go with you can pick up various duelist parts far easier than back in the day. Just make sure you go with a group that splits gil and you can make quite a bit of money too.

It'd probably help to know what you really prioritize on rdm.

Not much help in the gear part, but Cruor > Chocobo Blinkers > NPC will get you a lot more gil in generally a shorter time period.

I believe the Resistance Ops are Ward Warden and Desert Rain II, in each of the Scars zones. 2400 cruor will turn into roughly 6.5k gil, and the blinkers aren't Rare, so you can stuff your inventory full of em, instead of wasting visitant time on running back n forth to the armor NPC.

Teal's not a bad way to start off, seeing as they're pretty cheap and effective, but yeah, full Teal full-time is a no-go. Refresh idle pieces are pretty abundant now, between DChap (Dyna-Xarc), Pluviale (Ironclad in Aby-Vunk), AF3+1 or +2 body, Serpentes set (Two easy NMs) and a bunch of other stuff. Honestly, yeah, burn yer RDM to 90 and use Teal for a while, upgrading AF3 as you can.

Most of all, though, welcome back ^^

Edit: Augur's Jaseran is a nice Enfeebling/Cure body, also, and is a fairly high drop rate from Ovni. Forgot about that one ^^;

So I wrote a big long tl;dr and decided it was unnecessary.

Long story short, esto+1 seals, augur gear, serpentes gear, and maybe even dyna gear should mostly all be pretty easy to get with a friend or two.

More importantly, if you do anything with a group ever, I really recommend getting a surya's staff at least. It doesn't cost anything, and there are tons of people to team up with. Other staves (like a mab or even macc varuna) are also really, really nice. These are the biggest upgrades you're going to get in a single slot. They may be a bit of work, but they're so so good.

Hah, I wouldn't full time teal, I would eventually work on the AF3+2 gear. Do you know if the fast cast on teal 'set' would replace the AF1 hat? I'm pretty stoked to start working on the magian staves, I'm loving this trial system.


I'm not sure what a RDMs priorities are even anymore. I used to love soloing stuff, I was actually pretty good at it. I had a decent RDN/NIN setup. I guess nuking/enfeebs would be my number one priority now? (other than healing in Abyssea -.-)



Thanks for the tip ^^ and thanks for the welcome back! :D


Thanks a lot :) I'm going to look into this and see what I can muster up!

No, the entire Teal set is the same as the AF hat, and you can still equip the relic body/augment W legs/Augur's Gaiters/Nebula+1 cuffs/slops if you really want to for more Fast Cast.

af3 with random dyna gear and some random other pieces if you where a career rdm b4 u will know what to get besides af3 and random dyna gear

I played a rdm alt, I never paid a whole lot of attention to it but I can tell you a few things I remember.

- Your "crowning achievements" are now magian staves and refresh gear. Magian staves will give you additional MAB or MACC (you can nuke in abyssea). Refresh gear... iirc there's three big ones. Owleyes, augmented wivre hairpin, and stearc subligar. As a rdm the wivre hairpin is superfluous because you have a relic head, but the rest help you with all mages.

*I feel like I'm forgetting a refresh piece or two.

- Every piece of af3 has an amazing use, make sure to get +2 all around.

- You can get ~30 cure potency without a lot of trouble. Get the cure magian staff, just get it.

- You need, really need, like seriously you have to get Minikin Monstrocity atma from durinn in abys-vunk. This is kind of a pre-req to be a mage in abyssea, so please just get it before you're the moron in a group.

Why are people obsessed with refresh gear on RDM? That job never runs out of MP.

Edit: Besides the fact that Duelist's Chapeau and Serpentes set are good pieces, there's no reason to have 23/tick, especially in abyssea.

Cause not everything is Abyssea.

Herp derp no reason to use any DEX gear cuz RR pretty much caps it for you.

ftfy ;x

Rdm can't use Owleyes, but Estoqueur's Sayon +2 is 2mp/tick refresh.

The better Empyrean pieces are Estoqueur's Houseaux +2 and Estoqueur's Cape, since they extend the duration of buffs received by others, so keeping up a Haste/Refresh cycle is even easier now~

Also Estoqueur's Fuseau +2 boosts the potency of Refresh/II.

Serpentes Gloves and Feet when you can. Feet is much easier to get than the gloves.

Get AF2 body and Head. The only real difficulty here is not having access to the areas.

Teal is a great set to get before you get other equip. Look through the earrings and Rings. There's a number of cheap stuff that's actualy pretty good specificly the 70 hp convert ring.

Better to have RDM high up now rather then leveling it from 1 because Phalanx is pretty expensive now...not sure why.

Prd can use it, and hardly anyone does the BCNMs, I'm assuming.

I had an easier time getting gloves than feet but this was before we knew what blue procs where.