Equipment (XC1)

Equipment refers to the clothing and armour that can be worn by party members in Xenoblade Chronicles. Equipment forms the basis of a character's defensive statistics, provides up to five gem slots, and alters the character's appearance.

Characteristics
Equipment has the following properties:
 * Class - Equipment can be classified as light, medium, or heavy. Anyone may wear light equipment, while anything bulkier can only be worn if the correct has been learned. Some characters cannot learn such skills, and thus can only wear bulkier armour via skill linking.
 * Defence - Equipment have a rating for physical defence and another for ether defence, which are added to the character's total physical defence and ether defence. Light armour tends to have higher ether defence, medium armour tends to have slightly higher physical defence, and heavy armour tends to have significantly higher physical defence.
 * Weight - Heavier armour tends to have higher weight. Each point of weight lowers evasion by 1% and accuracy by 0.25%. As a result, characters who need high agility probably do not want heavier armour.
 * Type - Equipment goes on one of five body parts: head, torso, arms, legs, or feet. Armour tends to be grouped into sets that share a name; within these sets, the torso piece is often the most expensive, followed by the leg piece (~0.8x), the foot piece (~0.6x), the head piece (~0.5x), and finally the arm piece (~0.4x). The relative amount of defences is often similar to the cost.
 * Appearance - Armour changes the character's appearance. This has no effect on the character's stats, but is simply a visual feature. For a list of possible armour appearances, see List of armour appearances (XC1).
 * In the Definitive Edition, characters can set their appearance independently from their assigned equipment. Each appearance is assigned a name, most from a piece of equipment that has this apperanace which can be obtained somewhat early, while others are named with no basis at all. Appearances available are based on what equipment has been owned at any time across any save files, even if the game was not saved after getting a new one, so the player can buy armour and reload while still keeping its appearance option.