Play Better, Suck Less: Get Geared Up.

Play Better, Suck Less is a column dedicated to getting the most out of your FFXI experience in game and out. Whether Windower improvements, new game-play techniques, sweet strats or new tech, it will all be covered here! Today, we learn to use FFXIGear.com to show other people your gear and to evaluate your own.

Trying to figure out what gear you should use in FFXI can be difficult enough as it is, but with a number of different websites to check for the information, things can get pretty confusing. There is the FFXIAH, the FFXI wiki, the BG wiki, and there are some other sites that now seem to be permanent festering virus sores. There really was a need for a website that allowed for some decent gear comparisons without having to check 5 different websites. And that is why FFXIGear.com was created. Talk about your one stop shops for all of your gearing needs! This place is great, but it's special features are what really makes it a great resource.

First, you select your appropriate race and job to give the site your parameters for great selection. Then you have your blank equipment grid, that can be filled with whatever gear you select. Do you just want a stat read out of your current gear selection? Then just plug in your current gear and it will tell you all of your collective totals. Do you want to compare it against other potential gear selections? Just click on the box you want to check and select from the menu of all possible pieces that can fit into that slot. But that is just the beginning.

Before we get to anything else lets get a bit more specific. The gear selection is pretty advanced here. Once you click on a slot, a menu of all possible selections for your job and race will pop up, you can scroll through the selection menu and click from it to have it placed in the slot. You can use the search function for it to find the items you are looking for by name, just type in what you know of the name, hit filter and only those items that fit your filter will remain. For weapons, you get an additional list for the type of weapon you want to use to further limit down your searching. Another nice enhancement is the fact that you can cursor over the equipment in your gear slots and it will tell you the stats on that piece of gear in a pop-up.

In addition, while looking at the stats you can add whatever type of food you want to be using. This is selectable under the main equipment grid and is useful for comparing what kind of food you would want to use compared to your gear. If you have enough accuracy you can change your gear, or if you don't have enough accuracy you can change up your food if other gear is not available. Another nice aspect of FFXIGear is that the stats it includes some hidden stats and latent effects. It will even tell you your base stats and cumulative Accuracy and Attack based on what you should have for your level with the appropriate gear. It does not yet have the ability to add in additional merits, but I am sure that is something they are still working on.

Finally, one of the best things about FFXIGear.com is that it can give you an external permanent link to your gear set up, so that you can post it on your blog, on a forum or send it to a friend so that can get an idea of the gear you are wearing.

If you are wondering what they have done recently, or what they plan on doing with the site you can check out their Dev Notes page. Their current plans include showing evasion, adding spell effects, adding weapon delay and TP gain, showing accuracy against common mobs and creating windower macro lists. That is a great list of additions and you can even e-mail them with your own ideas!

FFXIGear.com is a great additional resource for all FFXI players. Check it out. :)