Wearing it will make you popular.
Description
The Headgear is a light armor headgear in Final Fantasy IX. It is a weak hat that everyone but Steiner and Freya can wear. Its notable trait is that it halves Water damage, making it potentially good to wear to the Gizamaluke boss battle at Gizamaluke's Grotto. The Headgear teaches the Undead Killer passive ability to physical attackers.
Obtain[]
The Headgear can be bought for 330 gil in Lindblum (first and second storyline visits), Burmecia, Summit Station, and Black Mage Village (before going through the Shimmering Island portal).
Mechanics[]
The Headgear provides 2 Defense and 6 Magic Defense, minorly mitigating damage from both physical and magic attacks. It halves Water damage. If the wearer concurrently equips the Desert Boots (which make their wearer weak to Water), the character takes ~75% damage from Water.
Use[]
The Headgear is early game gear that may be useful to equip onto Zidane, Vivi, Dagger, or Quina. It teaches Undead Killer to Zidane and also Amarant later on, though this is not among the useful killer abilities as the undead are easily dealt with resurrection items and spells.
The Headgear's ability to halve Water damage can be useful against Gizamaluke; the party will be Zidane, Vivi, optionally Quina, and Freya. By this time the party can already have a superior Water-halving equipment piece, however, the Glass Armlet. Distributing Headgears and the Glass Armlets to everyone who can wear them means everyone but Freya could halve Water damage (and she can use Jump to shield herself). Equipping both will not stack the effect. After the Gizamaluke battle, the Headgear will be mostly obsolete as better gear is available and Water is a rare element for enemies to use; the enemies in Qu's Marsh areas are not too hard to defeat even without Water resistance.