What's an arsenal?
An arsenal, alternately your or a realms armory is the stuff you need in order to fight. It includes all of your weapons/shields/polearms but also the equipment that you need to fight with. Your arsenal needs to include any and all safety gear that you need when stepping out onto the field. In most cases it includes the garb and any armor that you'll want to wear. I also tend to include things that I'd want to have on hand at an event like sunscreen and a water bottle. If you're a veteran or running a realm I also recommend having a med kit on hand to take care of the usual scrapes and bruises. Certain items are more important then others when putting together an arsenal. So, let's get to it.
First things first
More important than any other piece of gear is the stuff that you need in order to keep yourself safe. If you get injured fighting the other stuff won't matter much. For that reason the first thing to get into your arsenal is your safety gear.
Starting with gloves. The most important feature of a set of gloves is that it protects your knuckles. You can do this pretty cheaply with a set of heavy bag gloves or MMA gloves. Those usually run around $30. This gives your knuckles soft protection and padding. For slightly better protection you can get something with hard knuckles. Ideally you'll get something that also covers your second finger joint as this is nearly as prone to injury as your knuckles. Motorcycle/BMX gloves often provide this additional protection to your hands. After years of trying different sets of gloves my personal favorite for hand protection thus far is modified lacrosse gloves. Lacrosse gloves provide a good grip on a weapon while also providing each joint of your hand good protection. I say modified because normally lacrosse gloves cover your wrists. A glove which covers your wrist (which is a valid target area) will often cause a person to sluff shots to that target location. My personal favorite presently is the brine lacrosse gloves. I got a set off amazon here. I remove the strap with a pair of scissors and then clip off the outer flaps to expose my wrist.
Next up is knee protection. While you may not always need knee protection it's often a good idea. In addition to protecting you when you drop to a knee hard knee pads can increase your mobility when legged. The basic split for knee pads is between having something that offers a ton of protection but has a lot of bulk or is heavy and between a more minimalist knee pad that offers up less protection but is lighter. You can also get a hard or a soft knee pad. Heavier knee pads tend to work better if you're a slower moving fighter. In addition to providing plenty of protection to move around and rotate on your legs, if you do have to take a leg suddenly you don't have to worry about the drop to a knee. If you tend to prefer being fleet of foot then you may want a lighter set of knee pads as heavy knee pads tend to slip when you start sprinting. For a heavier set of knee pads you can often find a set of workman's knee pads from a place like home depot. These tend to be soft rather then hard. For a hard set a set of catcher's knee pads tends to work well. These are particularly favored by amt fighters. For minimalist knee pads people commonly pick up either paintball knee pads or volleyball knee pads.
Minimal weapons kit
A basic weapon set is going to be whatever your primary weapon is and a backup. For most people (and this is also what I'd just personally recommend) start with 2 blues and a shield. This setup will allow you to fight florentine if you'd like or fight sword and board. Should one weapon fail you'll still be able to fight sword and board which means that you'll be ready to go to an event so long as you keep your weapons in decent repair. If you fight exclusively with polearms then have 2 polearms so if your main weapon fails you'll have a backup. When fighting with a polearm I recommend having a secondary weapon as well so that if someone closes you can still defend yourself. After you've got this set up then you'll be able to move on to additional weapon sets (a second florentine set) or branch off into other weapons. If you're primarily an archer then I recommend having at LEAST 6 arrows up and running at all times. You can probably get by with 3-4 in a quiver but having more on hand will allow you to be more effective.
Main hand
When it comes to your primary weapon there's a lot of variables to consider for its construction. The first variable is the weight of the weapon. A lighter weapon will cause less fatigue when used and will allow you to throw more shots then a heavier weapon. However, a lighter weapon will do a poor job of blocking incoming shots. In addition to being easier to blow through if your blocking technique is poor you are more likely to injure yourself. A heavier weapon will make it harder to swing quickly and after a long period of time it'll certainly cause more more strain then a lighter weapon. The advantage being that even with poor body mechanics a heavier weapon will absorb the force of another swing much easier then a lighter one. Additionally so long as you can aim your shots well having a bit more weight behind the weapon means it will deliver more force making it more likely to get through a block and be considered a good swing. That's sort of the cliff notes version of a discussion over weight, a longer discussion can be found here.
The next important piece when picking weight is to make sure that the weapon fits you. Never get a weapon that's heavier then you have the ability to wield effectively even if you think it's in your best interest. The next thing to figure out is the length of your weapon. A longer weapon gives you more reach but means that the closer you get to a person the less effective you become. A shorter weapon means you can swing and block faster but have to be very efficient with your footwork in order to actually get anything done. A longer weapon also tends to be heavier, so as before make sure that you get a weapon you can handle. A longer discussion of long vs short can be found here.
The final bit of the weapon to determine is its balance point, that is to say whether the weapon is tip vs pommel heavy. A weapon can also be neutral, which is to say that it's neither tip nor pommel heavy. People who favor tip heavy weapons tend to throw lots of stabs and slashes. Having the weapon's weight be towards the tip makes the weapon's initial swing and bounce back go faster. However having the weight of the weapon towards the tip means that wrap shots are a bit more awkward. A weapon that is back weighted (balanced towards the pommel) puts the rotational point of the weapon towards the center of it. This causes the weapon to more adeptly rotate allowing for faster and deeper wrap shots. However because the weight is towards the back of the weapon the initial weapon swings won't have the same acceleration as a weapon that's tip weighted.
While the above discussion has been about a single blue weapon the general physics and concerns apply to any wielded melee weapon. Assuming you've gotten all that figured out you can move onto secondary weapons/gear. For the sake of the above example let's talk shields briefly.
Shield
I favor two particular kinds of shields (though to each their own). The first kind of shield is a punch shield that's square. Having a square shield gives you corners that you can work with. Having those corners allows you to quickly manipulate another person's shield. I tend to build a square punch of this shape to cover my "box" (the area bounded by my shoulders to my hips). This allows you to not only protect your own body but it also allows you to open up another person's body. The other kind of shield that I favor is a round strap shield. Since a strap shield isn't as maneuverable a a punch shield you want the extra area around the edges to be able to swing around. Similar to the configuration of a punch shield a round shield should have enough diameter to cover from my shoulder to my hip plus probably an inch or two to absorb wrap shields.
Garb/Armor
For most places you'll go you can get by with pretty minimal garb. A pair of wrap pants, a tabard and a belt. You can wear this over pretty much anything else. So long as you've got a neutral colored t-shirt underneath the tabard and are wearing a pair of shorts you'll be good to go about anywhere. If you're a new fighter just starting out I absolutely recommend staying away from armor. Learning to take hits is something that is time consuming in it's own right. Learning the intricacies of if you were hit, when you were hit, how hard you were hit and by what you were hit is all sufficiently difficult BEFORE you start trying to figure out whether that shot landed on armor or not and if the armor at that hit location was still intact. Armor is useful, but make sure you get your hit taking on point first.
Etc
In addition to everything above I also keep some generally useful things in my bag. To keep myself hydrated I keep a water bottle on hand. I eventually also got a camelbak so that I could keep water with me on the field at events. That's probably overkill for most people. If you spend any time fighting outdoors having sunscreen in your bag is often useful as it can prevent you from getting burned. Keeping some snack food in your bag may also be helpful so that after heavy fighting you can avoid the crash that comes when adrenaline flows back out of your system.
Fin
Assuming you manage to get all of that into a bag you should be in pretty good shape to show up anywhere and fight.
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