Is there an armor (or weapon) guide available?

Hey guys!

I'm working on upgrading my armor and have received some advice from Mr. Pebbles, but still have a few questions. Is there a guide or resource that lists or describes the different attributes that are available on armor and weapons?

Mr. Pebbles helped me determine that my current goals are to find Cloth Armor and Fire Attunement so I have been looking mostly at that lately, but am interested in knowing the differences between the different types of light armor as well. I have discovered the Armor Set Bonuses, so would there be any benefit for me to upgrade to all leather items? I am mostly a crafter, but I do okay in 3 skull combat, using mostly Fire Spells and maybe one Sun and one Air Spell.

I do know that different kinds of materials have different kinds of bonus, but I have questions on some of the terms used in the names. For example, what does Epic mean? What does Augmented mean? Etc.

I have been searching the forums and google to find this info, but it's defintely possible that I have not been using the right keywords or terms.

Thanks for any info or links that you can share.

 

@Pebbles, the various armor types are grouped by skill and material.

Heavy armor encompasses plate and chain armor types. Wearing either as a chestpiece allows you to use skills in the Heavy Armor skill tree.

Light armor is cloth and leather armor types. Wearing those as a chestpiece allows you to use skills in the Light Armor skill tree.

Beyond that piece, you can fill in the other armor pieces as you like. To get a Armor Set Bonus (which is currently always the same, but will be changing based on armor type), you must wear all armor of the same material (plate, chain, leather or cloth).

Each recipe has a base set of bonuses. For example, a Cloth Chest Armor always has Damage Resistance 2, Damage Absorption 0.3 and Damage Avoidance 2. However, based on what type of cloth it is made of and what type of strap is used, it will get additional bonuses. It takes 6 cloth and 1 strap to make that armor, so if you use Carapacian Cloth pieces each of those 6 would add 1% Focus and 0.2% Spell Critical Chance. Using a Fustian Cloth Strap would add an additional 0.1% Focus.

Augmented and Epic Cloth Armor are just different recipes, which have different mixes of materials to allow you to make armor with more modifiers.

Attunement is added by creating a gem and socketing it to armor or weapons; jewels can also be created and socketed to rings and necklaces. For Fire Attunement, you want a Sorcery Gem. You can add up to two gems to a chestpiece or two-handed weapon.

Weapons and armor can also be improved using Masterworking and Enchanting, which is probably too much to get into here. But this is how items get those "pluses" added to them, and can have more powerful effects than just material bonuses.

 

Awesome. Thank you!

 

Maybe it has not been updated in awhile, but www.sotacraft.com is still very useful for seeing the epic, augmented, and base recipes quickly. Plus the material bonus page is very helpful.

I can give you my excel spreadsheet that compares materials and bonuses depending on material type if you want. It needs a touch of work to finish if you are not excel savvy, but you can modify to your needs if you are.

P.S. - fustian cloth straps are not worth the resources unless you have focus over 500 already. 0.1% of 500 is 0.5. Cloth straps give 0.5 at 4 times less the materials (and no suet).

 

Cool! Thanks for that, too!

 

Now I have a weapon question, if anyone has any advice.

I have been using a +7 sword and my stats show 5-16 damage. I have built my blade skills up again.

When I look at staff and wand weapons that have stats that I am looking for like Fire Attunement, Focus, Etc, I notice that they only show 0 or 1 damage. Is that because the damage from the wand is a different kind of damage? Or is that because I have to work on my Bludgeon skills? Or something else?

Edited to add: are wands one-handed and staffs two-handed?

Thanks!

 

Yes. A wand isn't going to do much bludgeon damage whatever your bludgeon skills are at, if you're using a wand you should be standing back and casting spells not running into melee range and trying to poke things

As you raise your bladed combat skill that will increase the damage you do with any sword. The stats shown are the base damage for the sword, your skills will modify it. Party up with someone who has GMed bladed combat to raise it up faster (provided you have XP in your pool). Blade Mastery will also increase your sword damage but that has significantly higher XP costs so lock it off at 80 if you are not regularly farming XP.

Yes. You can have a sword in your main hand and a wand in the off if you want to reduce fizzle but still do swordy stuff.

 

Wands and staves greatly reduce the spell fizzle rate and are suited to heavy magic users. Most of these guys wear light armor - predominantly cloth (no fizzle rate, bonuses to focus).

 

Pebbles; If you plan on crafting and farming materials for it then I suggest to continue with swords as I did. The main areas of the swords tree to work first to 80 then further as time allows are Bladed combat, Thrust, Double Slash, Swirling Blades and Coup De Grace. This will help you drop mobs faster which in turn will get you to raise your xp pool and adventure level. It will also help you inderectly to get to the resources you need much faster.

I would recommend and actually use Bronze Augmented Copper set for the dmg bonus you get when using the complete set and the lower fizzle chance from chainmail vs Plate. The heavy armor "Body Slam" skill coupled with Thrust will help you drop things quick. If later on you want to work the subterfuge tree in order to get to "Sneak Attack" that can be deadly especially once you get those skills higher. Keep an eye on your adventurer pool and only raise enough skills at a time that will still increase your adventurer pool even if just slightly. If your adventurer pool starts to drop then turn off some extra skills going up. At the moment, I just raise one skill at a time and keep my adventurer pool at about 1 million xp, same for my crafting pool. It will take time to get xp pool that high but just work on it a bit at a time.

If you really like what swords can do for you then contact @Sara Dreygon for more advise on defensive skills to raise along with your offensive skills or send me a PM and I will list it for you as she did for me months ago. If you need to gather high level ores (Gold/Silver) then Elysium should be your final destination but these are Tier 5 mobs in the mine and in the Twin Foothills you have to go through to get there.

I enjoy mining and normally get about 150 ores per hour while cleaning out the mine at the same time. It took me time to get to 120 bladed combat/120 thrust, GM Body Slam and Sneak attack but the results are well worth it.

Good Luck in your endeavors.

R/Boris/El Pirata

 

Last night I experimented with the telethon Thorn Staff and had a lot of fun. It didn't even occur to me to try one hand with my sword and one-hand with a wand. I am totally going to try that next time I am in the game. Weeeeeeee!

For some reason, auto-attack with an ignited weapon on little crunchy ceitters is very satisfying.

 

Experimented last night in a three skull scene with a new +12 dagger (thank you @adamcrow!) and +12 wand from New Britannia Market (my favorite place!) and all of monsters are now green and super easy. I am going to try a few four skull scenes and see how I do.

Thanks for the advice and info everyone, I really appreciate it. It has been a huge help!

 

To bad this person wasted all that time typing a response to Pebbles question yet neglected to actually read it. This response has hardly any bearing or relativity to the question she asked....

 

@Pebbles

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