Silk burns easily.
Description
The Silk Shirt is an early game light armor piece in Final Fantasy IX that everyone but Steiner, Freya, and Amarant can wear. It teaches Cure, which lets Dagger and Eiko heal allies and damage undead enemies, and Thunder, which lets Vivi deal lightning damage. The Silk Shirt is used in synthesis. It halves Thunder damage to the wearer but weakens them to Fire.
Obtain[]
The Silk Shirt is received as a reward in the beginning of the game from Queen Brahne if the player impresses 80-99 nobles. However, the player should aim to please all 100 nobles as well as the queen to get a Moonstone instead.
The Silk Shirt is stolen from Steiner and Black Waltz 1. It is bought for 400 gil in Dali, Treno (when Dagger and Steiner visit with Marcus), Lindblum (second storyline visit), and Black Mage Village (before entering the Shimmering Island portal).
Mechanics[]
The Silk Shirt provides 7 Defense, minorly mitigating damage from physical attacks. It halves Thunder damage to the wearer; if the character also wears a Reflect Ring that weakens them to Thunder, they take ~75% damage from Thunder attacks.
As hinted by the flavor text but not visible with the help menu, wearing the Silk Shirt weakens the character to Fire so they take +50% damage from Fire attacks. The player can see this by using Scan on the character while in battle.
Use[]
The player can equip the Silk Shirt onto Vivi and Dagger to learn Cure and Thunder faster. They can skip wearing the Leather Shirt altogether. The Thunder-halving effect helps against the Black Waltzes, but the Fire weakness is a detriment.
Vivi and Dagger can wear the Silk Shirt for all of "disc 1" content: Evil Forest, the world map exploration after, Ice Cavern, the events in Dali, and the Cargo Ship. At this point Dagger will leave the party, but Vivi can continue to wear the Silk Shirt for world map after leaving Lindblum, Qu's Marsh, until the superior Bronze Vest can be found in Gizamaluke's Grotto and bought in Burmecia.
The Silk Shirt can be used in synthesis to make the Silk Robe when the party gets to Black Mage Village.
The guest characters from Tantalus can also wear the Silk Shirt. Cinna is in the party too early for the player to be able to equip him with the Silk Shirt in a normal playthrough, but Blank and Marcus can wear it though there is no obligation to outfit them.