SOTA Guide to Legendary Armour

Greetings All

There are other posts about clothing, and the Community has indeed excelled itself in finding a whole stack of images sufficient to give the developers plenty of inspiration. Scanning through these images however, I can't help but feel that what is illustrated may suffice for the layman, but is not generally suitable attire for the top echelon of "Legendary Heroes".

If you are going to take on the biggest and most evil of beasts, then you are going to need to be kitted-out in some proper armour.

To help explain what I mean by "proper", I will present a few examples of armour and analyse them for you.


Unfortunately, this rather fetching young lady is dressed in what only be described as half a suit of armour:
- Some half-hearted, wingless pauldrons provide little protection to the neck or armpits. A nice pair of besagews would be beneficial.
- No gauntlets so those fingers will not last five minutes.
- On the plus side we have very good couters on the elbows. Get one of those in the face and you would know about it!
- For the lower half little or no effort has been made because we appear to have a "woollen skirt".
- One sideways swipe to the legs or a hearty crack on a tibia would finish her off.


I am afraid ladies and gentlemen that there is not much here, but what we do have is as follows:
- 1 no. vertical steel banded corset
- 1 no. "war-skirt"
- 1 pair of vambraces.
It does give the enemy one quandry though - with so much flesh on show, which part of the body do you chop off first?


I am terribly sorry, I don't know why my young assistant has included this one. NEXT!



Ah - this is much better! What we have here is a really nice suit of armour, so let me run through the constituent parts:
- Closed-face helmet with plume.
- A gorget for the neck, which is further protected by upstands on the pauldrons.
- Nice round "spiked" besagews for the armpits.
- Good arm protection - couters (elbow), vambraces (forearm), gauntlets
- Good leg protection - cuisses (thigh), poleyns (knees), greaves (shins) and sabatons (feet).

There are a couple of ommissions though. One presumes the picture is incomplete as there is no chain skirt or steel codpiece in evidence - there is just black space around the nethers. One hearty kick in the privates with a pointed steel sabaton would deal with the wearer quite easily!

The second point is where is the colour? The livery or heraldry? At the moment it is just a faceless suit with no indication as to whoem the wearer is. A nice surcoat emblazoned with a coat of arms would soon sort this out.


This lady definately means business. Full protection with no weak spots. A set with quite a bit of design expression and a bit of colour. Note the accessories:
- Nice cloak for weather protection.
- Hearty broadsword.
- Longbow & quiver to limber-up your enemies up with a ranged attack.
- Thigh-mounted lockpick

Definitely ready for some derring-do, and welcome in my party any time.

An important note: decent padded underwear is essential. Without it, a suit of armour like this is really going to chafe!


An now we come to a "Legendary set". A full suit of masterwork armour with elaborate decoration on practically every piece denotes the wearer as a true legendary warrior and paragon of virtue. Thick plate steel, adorned with golden trim and smooth gemstones. Some noteworthy features:
- Epic winged helmet.
- Big thick cloak that can probably turn second-rate blades by itself!
- Outer garment of "dragon-skin" effect steel scales.
- Interesting blunt toe-capped sabatons with deep tread steel soles.
- The sort of sword that looks as though it could slice through a dragon's neck with one swing.

The only thing left for this fine warrior to do is to walk up to the mouth of the dragon cave and shout "COME AND GET IT YOU WHELP!"**

** I have to qualify that statement a bit as this is not the best strategy for dealing with dragons. For that, I may be posting a "dragon-slaying masterclass" sometime in the coming months.



One little footnote:

There are those of lesser virtue that think that they do not need a proper suit of armour because they are quite satisfied gallivanting about shooting things at range with a little bow & arrow. Such smart-alecs are best dealt with by a simple "hold" spell, and then you can stride up and take them out at your leisure.

There is no escape from Justice!

 

LOL well maybe I would be considered the one with lesser virtues then since I don't care as much about the realistic side of the armor. I just want to play a beautiful warrior character. Not clunky with armor up to her adams apple, well unless it is still feminine looking. I want to be able to turn off the helm and cloak to not show at least if I want to. I believe in choices for the masses. So even if it's taking aspects of the different armors and incorporating that would be cool. I do think females should be able to look feminine, maybe we could distract our male opponents j/k

 

Very Pretty Armor

 

I agree with Majoria70. I am all for realistic armor if that's what people want but personally no matter if I am playing a male or female I want to be able to see my character, I spend to much time creating them to cover them up and never see them again. For example I spent hours making sure my commander shepherd was right and then again when playing the second game to ensure she was the same.

 

I like armors that have a military look to them.....

 

Chinese influenced Armor......... (more the in terms of the helm, the chestpiece is somewhat lacking for an emperor)

 

Just to add some examples for inspiration, I tried to find some realistic armour that was not already included in other games. Hopefully this succeeds.

 

For those who want realistic armor good luck to you but for me this is a fantasy game, it has magic in it, realism in armor is far less important than aesthetics. I am going to spend hours staring at my character so I want him and her to look like people I like to look at. Neither position is the "right" one, just give us a huge range of choices.

Just for perspective on being forced to wear a helmet all the time:
watch from 4:00

 

LOL yes who wants to wear a bucket

 

All the pictures everyone put up are real nice.

 

Don't forget your pets

 

Dude this last armor here look badass! Especially love the axe/polearm/halberd thing!

 

That's what I like to see. A dog kitted-out and ready for action!

Needs something for those back legs, otherwise 9/10.

 

I just wanted to add my two cents in here. I totally agree about the look of epic armor. I wouldn't even mind something a bit more subdued, though the last set Ravenclaw submitted is awesome.

For an elaboration on historical armor, I think something like this would suffice for mid upper level.


Much like Greyhaven, I too have an assistant who apparently thinks discussion about useful armor in SotA is some kind of joking matter and presented me with this. Do not doubt, he will be thoroughly berated and his entire collection of female armor renders will be confiscated.


Really now, what kind of protection does that offer? And don't get me started on how it would chafe.

 

Jiv... The fuchsia boobplate looks like it was made from my grandma's curtains. But, I suppose the wearer might get in a couple of 'attacks of opportunity' while their opponent was busy laughing! It would, however, be especially useful to wear when PvPing against @Amberraine ... *summons her to the thread just to see her reaction to the colour*

As for the second one - nice bellybutton target to aim at, but as soon as she bends over she's going to stab herself in both the neck and the belly with those pointy bits on the bodice. Plus I don't even want to think about what the rear of that outfit is like - she probably wouldn't even want to risk bending over! It's no wonder she has such an odd expression... Plus, why is she wearing shoes that look like they were stolen from a 70s glam rock band?

I think perhaps you should make your... assistant... wear a similar outfit for a while, so he can gain a true appreciation of how inappropriate for battle (or anything other than standing still and posing) it is!

 

I'll keep posting this as an example of near perfect women's armor until I see it in the game.

The male armor is awesome too.

 

I don't actually care how realistic it is, after all MAGIC ISN'T REALISTIC EITHER.

majoria70's post shows that they don't have to look ridiculous but still can be quite attractive (I love the corset armor )

Otherwise we might as well not have any characters because everyone will just be carbon copy bucket head, just like U8 but 1000s of them


Actually Oakwind's post shows what would really suck about everyone just having realistic armor, it makes it bloody confusing to work out whos who

 

Depends on who you talk to - I know some folks that would disagree with you.

Somewhere between 'truly realistic' and 'completely unrealistic' would be nice. Things like the corset armour (the second set, with the black lace veil) are pretty, but I wouldn't be able to stop myself wondering how the hell you put it on! She had to have been poured into that.

I'd like to see things that look nice but practical, not things that leave me scratching my head in bemusement.

 

*cast spell, armor on*

 

Well I was definitely brought to the thread ~cringes as she peeks through the cracks of her fingers and then tries not to burst into a fit of giggles~ The second outfit... makes me wonder why people think women would SERIOUSLY where that kind of insanity into battle.. seriously.. are we going to war or a lingirie party? ~facepalms~ The first one.. is what made me cringe when i first looked at it... i do not know whether to hide in fear of the curtains, laugh at the fact she is wearing curtains.. or cry at the immense amounts of PINK! she is wearing... ~holds up her chaos spoon before her like a christian would a cross to ward off the evilness of the pink~