Gambeson vs all other T2 bronze armor

[William Huang]

So yesterday I discovered a HUGE spider cave and after roughly 5 in-game days, I cleared it up at the cost of two sets of armors (one Gambeson and one Bismuth Bronze Brigandine), one iron sword, and all my healing items in reserve.

What I learned in this experience was that for all the effort and resources put into making brigandine, it doesn't justify the result at all.  Gambeson is just as powerful albeit with slightly lower protection and durability.  The difference between the flat damage reduction is so minimal that it doesn't make a difference when facing bunch of spiders.  But Gambeson has less movement / hunger rate debuff and much much easier to make (the materials are infinite whereas brigandine isn't).  PLUS, it has bonus damage reduction against higher tier attack. 

There is really no incentive to make any brigandine, scale, or plate unless you are swimming in iron ingots.

On the side note, there is also really not much of a difference between bronze or iron sword damage wise.  It takes roughly same amount of hits to kill a spider except iron has double the durability.

I'm curious what you all think about the current armor system and whether I missed something?  Are brigandine, scale, and plate (bronze) worth making at all?    

I'm currently on 1.13.4 stable.

[Streetwind]

Gambeson really is very strong for its cost. It actually got nerfed a bit in 1.13, IIRC - it used to be even better.

Brigandine isn't really the best comparison point though, as it is easily the worst of the advanced metal armors. It is the cheapest, true, but chainmail gets the same performance for much smaller downsides, scale gets better performance for the same downsides, and plate outperforms even scale by a big margin if you can stomach being that slow. Additionally, bismuth bronze is the worst bronze as far as stats are concerned.

I wager that if you wore chain or scale, and perhaps made of tin bronze, the comparison to gambeson wouldn't have ended up quite that one-sided.

Finally, metal armors further improve with iron, and come 1.14, improve again with steel. Gambeson, meanwhile, isn't getting any new tiers.

 

Edited November 13, 2020 by Streetwind

[William Huang]

You make very good point in terms of the stat comparison, but looking at the materials and potential time needed to make chainmail / scale / plates, I still find it hard to justify the cost-effectiveness of the effort:

so here is the table on the wiki:

Armor Type	Flat Damage Reduction (HP)	Relative Protection (%)	Healing Rate	Hunger Rate	Ranged Accuracy	Ranged Charge	Movement Rate	High Damage?
Leather Jerkin	0.25	40%	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%	No
Gambeson (Cloth)	0.7	70%	-17%	+3%	0%	0%	-2%	Yes
Chain	1.1-1.4	80%-86%	-10%	+7%	-3%	-6%	-3%	No
Scale	1.3-1.6	84%-90%	-17%	+12%	-10%	-20%	-7%	No
Plate	1.5-1.8	90%-97%	-33%	+24%	-10%	-20%	-17%	Yes

 

gambeson chest armor (durability: 900) -> 8 linen sheets.  Plus you have a bonus buff (High damage tier resistant) Which can be easily farmed with big flax field.

assuming we are making tinbronze variant, which is more accessible to people.

chainmail (durability: 700) -> 12 leathers for leather jerkin, 9 chains (that's 18 tinbronze bars, which cannot be helvehammered.  So you have to painstakingly hammer each of them manually). The end result is you get an armor that's lower in durability, 4% increase in hunger rate, and 10-16% more relative protection plus 0.4-0.7 more flat damage reduction.  

If you want to upgrade to scale (durability 1200), that's another 5 tinbronze bars that needs to be manually hammered into scales.  At this point, you boost the the durability by... 300 comparing to Gambeson, still no high damage tier resistant buff, 14%-20% more relative protection plus 0.6-0.9 more flat damage reduction.

so in total:

Gambeson chest armor

1. 128 flax fibers that can be crafted in inventory

scale chest armor:

1. 12 leathers that need to be treated from lime solution -> weak tanning solution -> strong tanning solution
2. 414 copper nuggets
3. 46 tin nuggets
4. and all the manual labors to turn tinbronze into chains

I understand this is still early access and everything is subject to change.  But hopefully whoever read this can give both armors a try and let me know if it is cost-effective at this current stage of the development.  I'm curious to know if there is any incentive to go through the trouble unless you are making everything in iron which brings the armor up to tier 3.  

But then, why bother with tier 2 bronze at all?  

Also, for the effort I put into making leather jerkin, I personally feel leather jerkin and gambeson should be in the same tier category (whether it means nerfing gambeson or buffing leather jerkin).  What do you all think?

 

Edited November 14, 2020 by William Huang

[Streetwind]

3 hours ago, William Huang said:

Also, for the effort I put into making leather jerkin, I personally feel leather jerkin and gambeson should be in the same tier category (whether it means nerfing gambeson or buffing leather jerkin). 

Small note: leather jerkin isn't meant to be used on its own. In fact, there isn't even a headpiece to complete the set, just body and legs. Leather jerkin is primarily a crafting component for advanced armors. Instead there is a set consisting of leather leg armor, leather body armor, and leather helmet. This is distinct from the jerkin, has better stats, no downsides at all, and cannot be used in crafting. It's the best you can get if you just want a little extra protection in everyday gameplay.

[William Huang]

Ah yes, I totally forgot about that.  Thanks for pointing that out!  

[redram]

It's worth pointing out that the intent originally was that there be a linen set of 'under-armor' to start your chain with.  Arming doublet or whatever.   However the linen set didn't get made in time for the armor update, which is why we're left with just leather for under-armor.     At some point, the armor system will get revisited and updated.   It's just not priority atm.   It was rather rushed in along with tiered drifters, so that players had some way to survive them.   Even if not perfectly balanced in terms of gameplay.  These discussions are useful, as they'll probably inform the end balancing.  

I'll also point out that things like copper and bronze were never really intended to compete with other 'serious' armor.  Copper was almost not included at all, as there's little or no historical precedent.  But we like to provide options.  In the early game, flax has a lot of other demands on it, aside from armor.  Also it's very easy to make certain judgements as seasoned experience players, but newbs sometimes make fun and interesting choices.

[William Huang]

@redram thank you so much for putting it into perspective.  I only bought this game about three weeks ago so I didn't know much about the various intentions and decisions that led to the current stable build.  I am glad you clarified it up for me, appreciate it.

I look forward to seeing the game develop as this is easily the best game I've played in a long time.  I think that's also precisely why I uncharacteristically decided to make posts on game forum - I actually found a game that I care about.