Paintball Gear - Quick Buying Guide

• First, get the main piece of paintball equipment; this is your paintball marker or paintball gun.  Ranging widely in price, there are also many styles and brands to choose from.  Pump action guns and semi-automatic paintball guns are popular.  The most popular paintball marker nowadays is the electronic style; all the great brands offer them now... Tippmann, Spyder, 468 and even competition markers; Dye, Proto Matrix, Planet Eclipse and many more come with or upgrade to an electronic trigger.
• Next, choose the correct face mask to play paintball.  The face mask is one of the most important parts of your gear.  It's important to make sure that the face mask covers your whole face and your ears.  Face masks also have different types of lenses; the most popular being the anti-fog lens.  It is crucial that the face mask fits properly so that it doesn't slide down your face or fall off during a game.  It's also important you use paintball masks that have a safety rating.  The V-Type, Hawkeye and Tippmann paintball Goggles all have high ratings.
• Pick clothing as another important element of paintball equipment and gear. Purchase a paintball jersey that doesn't fit too tightly.  If it's loose, it will absorb some of the velocity of incoming paintballs, thus helping to minimize bruising during a game..... yes, there's bruising involved in paintball sometimes.
• Wear pants for a paintball game that have pads built in for sliding, kneeling and sudden drops to the knees as you play.  Get knee and elbow pads, too.  It's also important to buy paintball gloves as part of your gear to protect your hands.
• After you've got all of the above, then you can start upgrading different parts of your paintball gun to improve performance, add to your experience or make your paintball marker much cooler looking.  These are thing like a Flexi-Air Buttstock - to carry your tank inside the buttstock or attach a Remote Line to a better position on your gun (that's more out of your way).  After-market barrels like a tactical rifled barrel or 22 Inch Flute Sniper Barrel are nice additions.  You can also upgrade the internal parts to your paintball gun to make it lighter and more efficient.  You can also speed up your gun by getting an electronic hopper; the Pinokio Hopper is fast, light and can hold up to 400 paintballs!
• Finally, consider adding different kits to dress up your paintball gun for a special occasion or just give it a different look and feel.  It's like getting a new paintball marker for half the price!  Kits are available for most brands of paintball guns and range from different snipers, M4 Carbines, AK47's, M16 or sub-machine guns. 
• You can also just add a few rails to your gun or handguard; or get a handguard with rails built in to it - like the RIS.  This is probably the cheapest way to spice up your paintball marker.  This way you can add paintball gun scopes, sights, vertical grips, flashlights, lasers or anything else you can think of.