Above are various low level weapons in Palace of the Dead. Pink is a lower level, and green is approaching powerful for the floors you are on. Bright White is appropriate for the levels where you are playing.
When you start playing in the Palace of the Dead, your weapon is pink or green and eventually, as you trigger more Silver Chests, it turns White. I could not find any place that this was carefully described.
Here’s a play guide for the Deep Dungeon aka Palace of the Dead.
As you play on floors 1-50, you’ll undoubtedly play with folks with dark red weapons. These are higher level – in PoD at least. I asked several times to see how to do that. Folks were not clear about how to do that. One person said that both the Armor and Weapon state needed to be 60 or larger.
Notice the little squiggle at the bottom left of the Armor and Weapon Icon. This apparently means that these have been Down Leveled for playing on this “Floor” meaning that these have higher ratings than are required for this floor.
Now that I have reached level 60 with weapons on two of my characters I can confirm that you only need to level the weapon to level 60 and that the armor has no bearing on the Dark Red color of the weapon.
Dark Red Weapons
Here are what the Dark Red weapons look like.
Left is a Grimore for Summoner or Scholar and on the right is a Lance.
Here are some more:
The jobs are White Mage, Red Mage, Black Mage, Dragoon and Paladin.
And Bard and Summoner.
Once you reach 60 with a weapon on any job, all your weapons show this way on all floors of the Palace of the Dead.
How to Reach Level 60 for your Aetherpool Arm
You will need to repeat the first three or so floors a few times to get your gear leveled up. Remember that you are looking for Silver Chests, and you will lose your progress on a set of 10 floors if you fail at any time, including in the Boss fight at the end.
Floor 50 is the toughest fight toward getting your weapon. Edda Blackbosom, whom you have seen in the cut scenes along the way, is the boss on floor 50 and she is quite scary. She has some quirky mechanics that you will need to know so search youtube for some guides and study them. You may have seen these mechanics before in other dungeon bosses, and you’ll need to be on your toes and have a good group. Thankfully, you are quite likely to end up with some experienced folks in your group who have powerful gear, so if you avoid dying and do at least some damage, then you’ll only have to do the 41-50 floors a couple of times.
Once you clear floor 50 and talk to the quest giver back in Quarrymill, then you can skip Edda each time and go straight to floor 51. Happy days.
Ahhhhh Isn’t she cute?
Floors After 50 Aren’t That Tough
I was worried that after Edda things would just keep getting harder. They don’t. So don’t worry. Just keep trying her until you get a good group and have your gear leveled to around 20-30 or so and you’ll be fine. Most folks running floors above 50 have Red or Capped gear anyway.
Don’t Take the Weapons Out of the Dungeon
When PoD was introduced, the Item Level 235 weapons that you could acquire were pretty cool. And there is a way to trade levels for items that you can trade for weapons outside the dungeon. However, these weapons are no longer very powerful since Squire weapons available for Tomestones in Idlyshire are more powerful and easier to get since all you have to do is spam the daily Main Scenario Roulette which is a walk in the park. You get about 600 tomestones for each daily run and this buys one or two pieces of armor or a weapon for one of your jobs. So just keep your PoD Red Weapon inside the dungeon for leveling your jobs in PoD. While you can take them out, you lose stats when you do that and have to level them again inside PoD. I never see them running around in the world, even as Glamour.
You can level from 1 inside PoD
After I leveled my weapon to 60 with one job, I tried to start a new job from level 1 and then go to PoD. It worked fine.
Here I am starting a Lancer job and queuing up for floor 51 when I’m level 1. It works.
The problem is that you really should have more skills available to you and it’s impossible to set up your skill bars before you get into the dungeon.
I suggest using Floors 1-30 a few times to level your character to level 30, and your next job, before going to floors 51 and beyond. You get just as much XP for the lower level floors as far as I can tell. Also it helps to belong to a Free Company with an XP buff. I’m getting (+100%) XP for my toons that belong to FC with the buff up.
Enjoy,
:ww
Windy Weather 