Learn and Burn: Gear From the .dats.

Back for more education? Well, like yesterday you are going to get less real edification than the day before. The first part of the June 2010 update was available for download today, and with that comes part of the new .dats for the coming update. It's like finding part of your Christmas present stash two weeks early. There are many pretty things going on in the .dats, new gear, new job abilities, new spells, new... other stuff. Today, lets take a quick look at some of the new gear and make some educated guesses about who might be getting this gear.

My first thought when I saw this, especially now that we can see the Yagudo head used as a necklace, is that a clothcrafter out there some where was doing the doing the nasty with Hoo Madoo the Fornicator. It does look pretty cool with the feathers and all, but it is a little bit creepy to have a Yagudo head on your chest. It's going to look like it's trying to motorboat all those female characters out there. My first thought is that this is going to be THF AF3, just because it looks a little bit like Denali gear. Alternatively, it looks like it could be WAR AF3 because WAR does have that certain barbarian aspect to it, though in FFXI they have mostly been seen as the "master of weapons" kind of figher, even if they do prefer the Great Axe. After I put some thought into it and remembered that I had seen this body piece previously, I have come to the conclusion that this might be BST AF3. I think this shows an obvious break from the previous line of AF gear. Older BST AF looked like it was made out of sheepskin, and had a pretty good look to it. The feathers give it the same kind of look, but I think it does look a little too much like a Yagudo and not enough like some kind of bird that a BST could charm. In the picture that this gear appeared in previously, the character wearing it was using an axe. While axes used to be quite ubiquitous, since the two-handed update they are mostly the sole dominion of BST. Even WAR that still stick with Axes usually do so with an off-hand Sword like a Ridill or Joyeuse. Finally, the base model for this body piece is taken from the Bison set which was also used for the Khimaira. Taking this all together, I am definitely leaning toward BST for this design.

This one is pretty obvious to me, I believe this one is the RNG AF3. One of the things that I love about RNG AF is it's lack of symmetry. Any archer is going to have have an unbalanced look to them because they have to have certain protection against the bow string and freedom to maneuver and to nock an arrow. The RNG has always had a hint of rugged woodsman to it, a master of the wilderness, and I don't know how well the orange of this gear fits with that, but I do like how one arm is much more heavily armored than the other, and the other arm has an enlarged elbow guard. This is actually pretty close to how heavily armored archers would look. I also like the pouch that matches that of the original AF (not just because it made it easier to figure out that this was RNG AF). It does look like the armor on the arm is directly lifted from the graphics on the Shantotto expansion legs. I suppose this could also be for Corsair or even for Thief, but I just don't see it.

This could be a lot of things, and I think most people's initial impression would be that it is BST AF3. Well, that can't be the case because I already said something else was BST AF3. :) And there are other good reasons too. The first and most obvious reason to me is that it is in the togi design, which is the basis of most "Far East" gear so far. You might as about the sheepskin, and I might answer that you should take a very close look at Usukane gear. While Usukane is very elaborate, if you look at the layers of the gear you can actually see some fur underneath part of the designs. I think that is because it is partial designed to be realistic looking and that is the backing that you would get on armor like that. So that leaves us with Samurai, Monk and Ninja. I think that Samurai is going to get something that is more like traditional Domaru, and this is not that. A Ninja may not be really Ninja-like in game, but the design of their gear still generally follows the Ninja-design style. That leaves us with Monk. Monks are supposed to be austere and this gear does have a very basic and unadorned look to it. There are a few other visual clues too. There is a very basic brown belt tied around the waist, another Monkish adornment. Also, it has a waist support that looks a lot like a muscle belt, which just seems to be something that a person that relied on their hands as weapons would use.

This gear screams Dark Knight to me. If it is then of the new AF3 piece this one follows most closely in design to previous AF gear. The dark and steel look to this gear says "I am emo and I need to cut things with a Galka". The design of this gear is based on the pretty much useless Einherjar gear. It has similar shoulders, but it doesn't really have the purple that is found in most of the Dark Knight AF gear. While I think this one is definitely Dark Knight, it is also possible that it could be a number of other jobs, especially Warrior. It would fit in with the heavy armor aspect of the Warrior archetype but the Warrior AF in the past has tended toward showing off a lot of skin, and not actually protecting vital organs. It could also be for PLD or DRG, but there are obvious problems with that. For PLD, this gear is just too dark, and well, we have already seen screenshots of what looks like PLD AF3. As for DRG, it doesn't have anything that really resembles anything Dragon like on it at all. And I think they would probably go for something a little more purple.

This is the one that gave me the most trouble. I originally thought it was going to be the BST AF3 back when I thought the one that I finally picked to be BST AF3 was THF AF3. It has that same rugged look that you would see out of a BST related piece, but it also has more metal protection, which made me think it was for another job. I finally came to the conclusion that it was probably WAR AF3 because I really couldn't think of any other job for it. If SE decided to go with that barbarian look for fighter that I talked about before, then this would probably be what it would look like. It's got the battered hides, with the metal chains for extra protection. I do have to say that I am not sure that all of this gear is actually the AF3 that SE has promised. Of all the body pieces that were in the update today, I would say that this one is the most likely to not actually be AF3. There are also a bunch of other jobs that this could be associated with like MNK, NIN, RNG and THF.

I find this body piece to actually be the best looking for the bunch so far. I also found it pretty hard to make a guess as to who it would belong to. My ultimate conclusion is that it is BLU AF3. It has the design of an Aht Urhgan style body piece, with the cloth under the metal armor and everything tied on. Like the body piece that I guess is going to be WAR AF3, I think there is a good chance that this piece might not actually be AF3. While you might think that BLU don't normally get heavy armor, keep in mind that AF3 will be coming from Abyssea where things are a bit more rough than they are in our version of reality, so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to think that they would get heavier armor. Also, when it comes to game play, improving a classes armor level is not without precedence as DRG was given access to heavier gear after Aht Urhgan was released. The style of the gear just speaks BLU to me, but I could easily be wrong on this one. It could be DRG, it could be WAR, it could be PLD, hell, it could even be THF.

So what do you think of my picks? Did I get the right jobs? Do you even think this is going to be AF3 or do you think it is something completely different? Leave a comment, I would love to hear your interpretations!