Mages Equipment
Weapons:
Mages the only weapons that mages can learn at half decent rate are staffs and knives, due to the fact that there are no great knives and mages learn staff slightly faster, using staff for a weapon would be best.
For advancing weapons I would suggest to use Blackvelvet library or IONSTAR homepage for evals, so you would know what staff is the most appropriate.
Here I would like to point out just 2 staves that are excellent for mages:
Glimmer (Unique) - It the staff mage can find - changes its diff according to the level of a mage and each time it gleams you get addional study hours, using glimmer mages can gate study hours up to 3 times faster than usual.
Black staff - This staff gives +dex -con
Armours:
Mages can use only 2 defence modes: none and dodge - with high dex you will find dodge very effective. But the more you carry, the worth you dodge, so mages rarelly use armour. The best way as I found out is to put all heals in deeppockets, where they do not weight anything, and to have out only staff and pipe. The only armours I use are those who add int:
Nightblue cloak : +2int, and makes you more evil
Spidermedallion : +2int
Thinking Cap : +2int -1dex
Also:
Bracers of Skill: If you fight wearing those bracers you will gain skills faster. With high skill you will be able to kill faster.
Misc:
Another very usefull item is a map - that way you do not get lost and get to any area even if you do not know exact dirs.
Plus you can get maps to guide you to specific area from hanza.