Weapons and armor at levels 1–40

Remember the difference between weapons. Daggers are faster and score critical hits more often, but also miss more often. Blunts almost always hit, but hardly ever score a critical. Swords usually hit, and critical at a good rate. Bows do a lot of damage, but are very slow to shoot.

Think about what class you're going for. If you intend to be a Knight, you might not want to get caught at Level 20 with a dagger and a bunch of Mortal Blow skills, as all your Knight skills concentrate on swords and blunts.

Fighters, do not wear very low Mystic armor (in particular, the Cotton Tunic quest reward), as these actually lower your P.Def!

Investing all your money in one piece of armor is bad, because it might drop, and then you lose it all! With your defense spread through five items, it isn't as critical to drop one.

Think before wielding a shield. At the lower levels, it's probably better, but remember for the future that a shield takes off 8 Evasion.

When considering what armor to buy, take the special sets into consideration (listed in this guide on p. 128). Each one listed provides an extra benefit or two. For example, while Bone Armor has better P.Def then the Wooden set, the Wooden set gives you more HP.

If you're using a bow to kite, you don't need to put as much money into your armor.

As people start to buy their 20k armor sets, most of them get Bone armor because it looks better. But Bone armor and Tights armor have identical defense ratings, and Bone armor weighs more. Until Lineage II introduces a wear-and-tear factor, Tights armor is better.

Once you have the best armor that your starting village vendors offer, you need to go out into the world to get new armor. While Gludin is easier to get to, it starts off with a 20% tax rate, while the Giran tax rate is only 10%. While the Giran rate is subject to change once a clan controls its castle, the lesson still applies: know global tax rates so you can buy at the cheapest convenient location.

Don't rush into the second recommended weapon, as that gets you into the D Grade weapons, and this means you have to buy D Grade Soulshots. The big difference between Non-grade and D Grade is that D Grades must be player crafted, and thus are harder to find and are more expensive, for the most part.

Hunting for a weapon drop can be a long and grueling experience; while it's sometimes worth it to try to get an armor drop, weapons drop so rarely that you are usually better off spending your time getting money to buy it!

Remember, you don't have to buy all of one set at once, or all the items in a recommended set.

Before buying something, look at what drops it. Is it something that you can hunt? Do you need it badly enough that you want to buy it instead of trying to get it as a drop?

For the final sets (the hard ones), all of the items are drop only. If you get the complete set, congratulations, but don't think this is normal by any means! By the time you have that set, you would usually be more then rich enough to get C Grade stuff!