(Don't) Fear The Reaper: A Dark Knight Guide

As for the drain 3 testing and updating the guide to reflect it, I'm on it.

Just some quick advice to get your acc/xhit up fast for cheap. With apoc you want to be at 5 stp on ws and 32 on tp set to get a 5 hit (if you ws in more stp can tp in less, but normally not worth trade offs imo), atm your 6 hit is going to be holding your dps back a ton. Your acc isnt actually to bad atm, most drks are where your at, I have damn near best augs you can get anymore for tp bare 8stp (but acc wise yes), and im just hovering 1200 in low acc 1250 mid acc with AG relics, so while short of that, your not as far off as you think!

1. Emicho guantlets (14 acc 6 stp gain)
2. Petrov ring/chirich (5 stp)
3. Lissome necklace (4 stp -2 acc)
4. Odys legs (can easily get 11 stp on this with equal/greater acc). Use pellucid stones and you will get 30 acc+ stp easily.

Those changes alone should net you the stp needed to 5 hit AND probably 30~ acc more. You can solo the necklace and ring on drk with apoc, the legs might be a bit harder but I have seen it done, hands too. Honestly though you could get a shout together as none wants the odys drops and always the herc lol :D would get them under an hr I bet, same for emicho hands. I would concentrate on those 4 upgraades asap as they seem to be the most impactful for you.


AHH before I forget lol, ds/nv abs-acc is +60 if you get the gear for it, which is very easy to do nowadays :D so really your 1109 acc would be 1169 right from that, 20 from endarkII (with jp), 10 hasso. You will break 1200 and with the gear mentioned + food you will easily be nearing in on 1350 which is well over enough to do nearly anything atm in game. Keep up the good work!

Has anyone here made the +2/3 Omen hands? I'm wondering what the Weapon Bash augment does.

Gotcha, thanks for the advice. I'll get on it asap.

Edited the information about Drain III and fixed the Drain/Aspir set, by the way.

So, yeah...

I understand this feels kinda dead, but let's just say it's been a bit busy for me getting myself up to speed in-game, and my job's going to get some big hours soon come spring break.

Going to look more into updating during this coming week.

I finally made those.
Tested in Ballista with a friend.
I don't see yet what it changes...

Did it do more than normal damage?

I can't remember exactly but it was 3 digit damage.

Hello !

I just came back in the game (2 weeks ago or so) and last time I've played was in 2009 so I'm a bit lost as what kind of equipment I should get for my DRK.

I am probably not going to have multiple sets right away as I have to get back on track and that's why I am posting this.

So far I've cleared all Dyna, I am working on getting Apocalypse (soloing takes some time but it's fun) and I have all sparks gear. That's where I'm stuck and don't know what to do. I have no LS or mates to play with. I was looking forward to obtain an iLvl119 weapon via Alluvion Skirmish but I can't even get it done because I'm still stuck on the Wildskeeper Reive monster (a huge bee that I am unable to kill with my trusts). That's my current status.

What I'd like to know is if there are alternatives for me to get better gear ? I'm working on Ignominy but not sure how far I'll make it being on my own.

Thanks again for this great guide.

You can toss your Walahra Turban now!

If I had to do it all over again. I would start out with sparks gear. Sparks gear, which is sparks armor and weapons as well as a few rings. Sparks is one of the things you get for completing Records of Eminence quests. You should also join a Unity, I recommend Apruru because that is my favorite healer trust.

From there you should work on finishing up Rhapsodies of Vana'diel, RoV for short. RoV is useful just for the ki that do all sorts of things. Look it up on bg-wiki to learn more. Also use ffxiclopedia and bg-wiki to complete the missions. Get a Rajas ring, it is worth it. Plus still a decent ring for drk.

Make sure you are skill capped on great sword, scythe, evasion, parry, dark magic, elemental magic. Samurai and dancer are two subjobs you should get to level 49. Ninja is also useful when you need utsusemi.

Good luck, and congratulations on returning to the life of an emodrk. The only gothdrk is Bloodlusty, sadly that guy left us for the motorcycle life.

Thanks for the advices. I already have Rajas ring, sparks weapon (Eminent Sickle, something like that) and the fullset iLvl117 (Sparks). I also have joined an Unity and got Apururu, love it !

But I don't know what to do from there. What's the right path to follow to upgrade/improve my gear ? I'll keep checking this guide and try to find more specific guides on the net to see if there's a main path to follow but if you have more tips, feel free to share please. Thanks !

Sparks gear, delve/reforge gear, unity gear, escha zitah gear, escha ruaun nq gear (unless you have tons of gil), reisenjima gear, back to escha ruaun for hq, omen for +2/+3

Thanks, I'll check everything out :)

Ragnarok, Apocalypse, and Liberator are three weapons that drk can use that are worth to AG3.

Same with Caladbolg, Azagarth has caladbolg and the damage from him spamming torc at 100% tp is just broken, Rag doesn't compete with it. Hence the reason I finally got off my lazy *** and did the abyssea nm's

With the recent changes to brd ( not only that but just saying that acc isnt an issue anymore ) , Caladbolg lost his most important failing.

Accuracy was it's only hold back. Just Auto attacking with caladbolg AM3 up you can break 2k dps. It is brutal.

The only "issue" i have currently with this, is the WS frequency, which isnt that great.
But the White dmg and WS avg covers it for the total dmg.

I don't see the frequency being a bad thing, you should actually be weapon skilling more often since you only need 100% tp instead of the 175% of rag/reso.

Just need enough tp in ws set to get over the single hit ws tp return and subtract that amount from the 100% tp, divide by 4 and that would be the amount of tp per swing you need in tp phase.

I.e. you get 166 tp from ws, 1000-166=834 834÷4=208.5 means you would need 209 tp per swing assuming you pulled 166 tp from torc.

Yeah there is a chance to whiff the ws, but there is a chance to whiff a swing too. Even at 1878 acc on WoC (more than acc cap) I only hit 97% acc, can't hit 100% on acc without being very lucky.

Isnt cap for 2hand weapons 95% ? ( well maybe you're just lucky because of the low samples)

Yeah cap is 95% but so far out of 8 runs since brd buff I have hit 97% each time, so lucky I guess

Finally managed to clear the Wildskeeper Reive and got some rewards from RoE challenges.

Now I'm using this :

http://www.ffxiah.com/item-sets/349862

Cannot say I'm satisfied but I made some low progress since I've returned (considering I have to kill everything with my trusts....).

I might go for the fullset from Ambuscade (NQ) next, but when I'm checking out the different sets from page 1, I just get lost too easily. (mainly using scythe)

I gave Angrboda (Escha Zitah NM) a shot in order to get Despair Mail but it was incredibly hard. Thought I had bad luck and tried again, got owned one more time...

As suggested by Thorva I'll follow this :


I should be on Unity Gear/Escha Zitah gear atm but since I cannot solo (or I'm just doing it wrong as a noob, I also have to consider this option), not sure what I'm going to do. I highly doubt shouting in Jeuno or other areas and ask for help is going to bring people as they're all busy with end game stuff, but who knows...

If you have any suggestions, that'd be great.

Thanks !

Cubia59 Drk can solo a lot but a lot of players these days level a good solo job to farm gear for there "favorite" job. Maybe suggest blu nin or dnc.

I have NIN up to 99 and sparks gear for it but not sure if I'll be able to handle Escha Zitah NM with 5 trusts to grab more gear for my DRK. Problem I'm having is trusts are using their MP way too fast and I end up dying.

I've checked youtube and I am just amazed at how a BST is solo'ing tier III NM at Escha Ru aun, hitting 17k a hit and I'm getting owned by a simple tier I NM in Zitah because its casting Stonega V and my trusts just can't survive :/

I won't give up and try to get better stuff. Just gotta figure the "what, where and how". ^^

Edit : trusts I'm using are :

Zeid II
Apururu
Valaineral or Gessho (tried both)
Tenzen II
Kupipi or Koru Moru

tank should be
august for physical dmg nms, amchuchu for magical
whm should be
cherukiki, yoran-oran, or apururu (anyone that gets out of range, using more than one is very beneficial as trust have terrible AI)

I wouldn't take tenzen or zeid as you will be the majority of dmg anyway, they will try to close skillchains giving less dmg than you can close. The only real perk would be zeid is a better stunner than half the player base.

Soloing melee takes a bit more gear since you have to deal a lot of dmg fast and still be able to survive, which is why most people opt to solo on sch or bst. Nin is a great solo as well, so you will really want to work on sets to increase potential.

The difference between 117 and 119 gear is huge, I would definitely look into making af/relic/empy reforge gear ASAP and work that into your sets.

Agreed on Zeid being the best stunner you'll ever see. Use him on NIN, especially vs NMs that need stunning

Also something to note: Ragnarok can still work under uncapped ACC, including situations where you still have major issues Whiffing. When you manage to go over that hurdle though, Caladbolg will be worth the AG with capped acc.

(I must sound like a broken record right now.)

The really easy thing at this point is to go to Mhaura and join an ambuscade party. (go around and get as many homepoints as you can for this) The Gallantry points can be used towards Sulevia +1 items which is still used for a lot of endgame function.

Anyone got a screenshot of this? I gotta see this. I haven't been on much lately due to my wife and I having a lil dark knight being born soon but I need to see a screen shot or something. That sounds amazing as hell. Looks like after I finish ag my apoc I may have to work on this next.

I've finally spent the 120M to finish off Apoc, and was following a few different gear guides.

1. I got Caro necklace because front page here says to. I also have Fotia, which a lot of other pages say to get. Is one or the other better for Apoc? What is the reasoning?

2. The group of people on my server cannot currently do t3 Reisenjima, I'm using Sulevia Plate +1 body for almost everything. I don't have access to Valorous, Emicho, or Nzingha bodies. I have the +1 fallen, +1 heathen, and +1 Ignomy, I'm trying to set up a body, I could get a merc for Argosy body but can't afford +1 abjuration atm, any recommendations for primarily Apoc DRK? I'm working on Ignomy +3 but it's hard to get an Omen pt if I don't at least look like I have my body choices under control on DRK, so most of my Omen cards are for GEO, because a noobtastic GEO is better than a fully upgraded Apoc with Sulevia +1 body apparently.

3. I have a Karieyh ring, which has WS ACC and WS damage, paired with Refescent for WS. Is Shukuyu STR+7 going to outdo the WS ACC+5 and WS Damage+3% for Catastrophe? I notice the guide only has Karieyh for Torc setup and was wondering if I could find out why without reading through 117 pages of this post.