Armor-Weapon Grade vs Player Level question

[Terrapin]

Pardon my newbie-ness.

To explain my question, say a level 10 player wears C grade armor and arms a C grade weapon.   Does the character get penalized in any way as that equipment is out of whack with what his level would normally use?

If I roll an alt, I'm just trying to understand what to give him to help him catch up to my main.

Thank you.

[Devoid]

As I currently play on Taiwan and there are no 'Expertise' passives in here, I'll try to respond based on what people playing on JP and EU/RU reported, but still take this post with a grain of salt.

Innova (RU) has expertise runes specifically for newbies - you can buy a 30-day C grade set (incl. weapon) and a 30-day C grade expertise rune to kickstart you on their old servers. With that rune, you can use C grade equipment before level 40 without any penalty.

I haven't seen these runes available in other regions, and I know both JP and EU have the 'Expertise X' passive skills. As with weight penalty, there are several levels of both types of grade penalty.

1. Weapon grade penalty
   Decreases accuracy, critical rate, critical damage, attack (but not casting) speed and P.Atk.
2. Armor grade penalty
   Decreases evasion, attack, casting and movement speed.

There are four levels of grade penalty. With weapons, equipping a D grade weapon on a level 1 character will give you weapon grade penalty level 1, C grade - level 2, B grade - level 3 (and A grade in the future - level 4).

With armor, equipping two D grade items on a level 1 character will give you armor grade penalty level 2, same as equipping one C grade item. You get the point.