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I have a shield now but I have never gave it any major thought. But where can I buy a sword that can equip and level 6.

you'll have to wait until lvl7 to equip a Xiphos, and lvl9 for a Spatha. You can also get Leather Armour at lvl7. The swords you will have to buy at the ah because they are not available from any npcs as far as I know >:3 (the xiphos is crafted and the spatha is a quest reward/crafted/sold in sandy only)

The lvl1 Bronze Sword should also be bought at the AH (not sold in windy, damnit)

aww ~ i think you are a little confused ^.^; beastmen seals are "exclusive" - meaning that they cannot be traded or sold at all - neither to the ah, npcs, or fellow adventurers directy (you can see that some items are "ex" by looking at their description and checking for a little green circle with 'ex' in the top right corner)

you may also come across items which are "rare" (denoted by a little orange circle, top right corner, saying 'rare') which means you can only hold one of that kind of item at any one time.

Many items are both rare and exclusive, and we tend to go on about them as being rare/ex

each server has an entirely different economy so you'll have to judge how much you want to part with and how much its worth depending on the price history as you have seen.

the auction houses works like this:

- A player places an item on the AH and specifies the minimum amount of gil they will sell it for.
- A buyer comes along and wants to buy the item. They can see how many of the item are for sale, and the price history, but they cannot see how much the buyer has actually put their items up for.
- The buyer offers an amount of gil. If the amount offered is lower than the price specified by the seller - the buyer will get a message saying "you were unable to buy the item for that much".
- If the amount offered is the same as or greater than the sellers price, then the buyer buys the item, and the seller recieves all the gil in their delivery box in their mog house.

If there is more than one of the same item up for sale, then the lowest priced one will be sold first. If there are two or more items of equal price, then the oldest one on the ah will be sold first.

~*~*~*~*~*~

If the PH says 1-2k, I would start at 900g and work upwards towards 2k in ~200g increments. If you cannot buy the item for 2k (or 1.8k or whatever, depending on your own budget) then you can always come back the next day when there might be more for sale.

Don't forget that once you've finished with the sword, you can put it back up for sale on the AH and will, in all likelihood, get most (if not all) of your gil back again.

Are there any items that I should be buying to use on the field?
And how do I cure poison?

if you're a mage you might like to carry some juice drinks (apple, orange, pineapple or yadugo drinks) which cause a refresh effect (make your mp slowly increase over the course of a couple of minutes, the time and amount recovered depends on which drink you get) - just to save resting, and to help you out in difficult situations perhaps, if you took on a bit more monster than you can chew ^.-b.
Unfortunately these don't stack, so it isn't feasible to carry a, absolute ton of them at a time, if you want any space for your armour and drops that is ^.-b

Other than that you didn't really need to consider food until you start partying (around lvl10-13 you can head to the valkrum dunes) and even then it doesn't really matter that much because you'll probably be dying a lot anyway x.x; (your food effect is removed if you die - this can become rather expensive, espiecally for brand new players).
if you're a mage definitely take some Cookies with you though - they increase +mp rate while healing, and they stack to 99 so they don't eat up your inventory space.

If you're in a good party, and you're a melee DD you might like to eat some lower end attack food like Meat Jerky. If you're tanking (although war/nothing tanks make me cry) you can consider eating foos such as boiled crab.

Weapon/Magic skill (as in the numbers) has to do with accuracy and damage delt. The higher the number the less chance you'll miss when you swing your sword, or get resisted when you cast a spell. Also the higher the number the harder you'll hit with both weapon and spell. If the spell is a beneficial spell such as Barstonra, The higher the skill the more it will protect against earth based attacks. This unfortunitly isn't true for Protect and shell, which has a set ammount it adds to your defense and lasts for a set ammount of time.

Weapon Skill (as in Burning Blade or Wasp Sting) Doesn't mean a whole lot at lower lvls, but later on you'll be getting much more powerful weapon skills and as you start partying with compitant people you can make Skill Chains. A Skill Chain is when 2 or 3 weapon skills are used in a row against the same mob (By yourself or different members of your party). For a skill chain to work there has to be a 2-3 second gap between each weapon skill.

Each skill chain has an elemental base. This is where being a mage will really shine. After a skill chain is complete, lets say its a fire based skill chain, you can cast Fire on the mob and you will get a "Magic Burst" which basicly means your spell just did a little more damage then normal. To get a Magic Burst you need to have casted the spell within 2-3 second of when the skill chain finished.

I hope that doesn't make things too complicated. I'm not that good at explaining things.

I almost forgot, here is a link to a skillchain chart (Also known as a renkei) http://www.adennak.com/blog/wordpress/?page_id=82