Armour Poll

[Omega Haxors]

I wanna gauge people's opinions on what the best armor in the game is.
Make it subjective, and justify your decision with a comment.

EDIT: Here is the wikipedia page if you wanna see stats
https://wiki.vintagestory.at/index.php?title=Armor

Personally I voted for Hard Leather because the lack of a downside compliments my trade routes very well.
I don't normally need to deal with combat (aside the odd wolf) so speed is the most important thing to me.

Edited September 8, 2021 by Omega Haxors

[Hiraku]

Gambeson, easily.

It takes almost no effort to make relative to anything else, the downsides are almost nothing relative to anything else, and upgrading from it has minimal benefit.

Armour is painfully unbalanced, and without mods to reduce the downsides I don't even bother making it.

[Balduranne]

Primitive improvised armor FTW

[Aledark]

Once flax is avail id say to end-game(most of the time) Gambeson is what i wear all the time 90% except deep caving but actually best armor would be steel chain in my book. But i hardly wear it because i cant tolerate the sound of it as i walk around(i wish we could opt that sound off to be honest.

[Omega Haxors]

30 minutes ago, Balduranne said:

Primitive improvised armor FTW

Fun fact, when I first made the VS armor rebalance mod, I actually had Ty tell me to nerf it because it was too overpowered.
All I did was port the stats over from the old system into the new one.

Edited September 8, 2021 by Omega Haxors

[Silent Shadow]

What is best will depend on the criteria used to judge the armor. I think the devs did well in balancing the pros of the armor with drawbacks:

• Steel plate offers the best protection, even against the most dangerous enemies you are nearly invulnerable and it can take quite a few hits before breaking, the downside is the large amount of difficult to produce steel required to make a set and the stat reductions.
• Linen/leather armor have little stat reductions and are easy to get material for so they make good everyday wear for the surface. These armors will not help much against more dangerous enemies though thanks to the low armor tier.
• Wood lamellar is probably the best early game armor thanks to requiring no metal to produce, just the gathering of common materials and some time.
• Brigandine is a pretty good compromise between material/time invested and protection/durability. Not as quite as good as platemail, but way cheaper to make.
• Using up Chainmail and then rolling it into scalemail/platemail makes the most of metal and leads to better armors than brigandine, but chainmail is quite inferior to brigandine.
• Improvised armor requires little to make, but it only covers your torso and it can only take a few hits before breaking. On some of the harder difficulties, there is still a good chance of being one-shot by wolves and tainted or worse drifters.
• Scalemail gets more durability than platemail for the lower grade metals, but the opposite is true for Iron and better metals. Platemail is always more protective for a given metal.
• Lamellar armors are very quick and easy to make since you can cast all the parts at once while plates and chainmail must be forged individually, but it is vastly inferior to every other metal armor except maybe chainmail which is only a bit better. You can also not make iron/steel versions, similar to spears.

I like this arrangement as there isn't really a best armor overall.

Edited September 9, 2021 by Silent Shadow

[redram]

49 minutes ago, Silent Shadow said:

• Using up Chainmail and then rolling it into scalemail/platemail makes the most of metal

Just as a little heads-up, this exploit will hopefully no longer be in effect on the next 1.15 update.  Using 'used' objects in a recipe will result in the product being already degraded in the same proportion (as I understand it).

[Silent Shadow]

Well I guess that is the end of chainmail as anything but an ingredient for platemail/scalemail. I wonder if they will do anything to make chainmail worth it.

[l33tmaan]

48 minutes ago, redram said:

Just as a little heads-up, this exploit will hopefully no longer be in effect on the next 1.15 update.  Using 'used' objects in a recipe will result in the product being already degraded in the same proportion (as I understand it).

Will this apply to, uh, perishables too?

[Omega Haxors]

3 hours ago, Silent Shadow said:

What is best will depend on the criteria used to judge the armor. I think the devs did well in balancing the pros of the armor with drawbacks:

-snip-

I like this arrangement as there isn't really a best armor overall.

It's an opinion poll, pick which one you personally think is the best based on how you play.

Edited September 9, 2021 by Omega Haxors

[Silent Shadow]

My opinion is that there is not a best one, even based on how I play (so I didn't vote). Almost all of the armors I use in the game are "best" for different situations and times, but there is no armor that excels in all areas.

Even after having taken another look at chain mail, I don't think it is so useless now but more like a more protective gambeson. Chain mail mostly preserves mobility and hunger rates of gambeson so if you wanted a bit more protection at the cost of slightly worse stat penalties, this is your option. Gambeson/leather is definitely cheaper, but an iron or steel chain mail could be used underground for mining if not cave delving.

Really you should ask what armors people prefer using (if any) for the early game (improvised or wood lamellar), surface traveling (exploring or on runs to traders), cave delving/mining, and everyday use (working at home or in their farms/ranches).

Edited September 9, 2021 by Silent Shadow

[Fredrik Blomquist]

I think gambeson is OP. On the other hand, i do hope they implement spindle and spinning wheel to craft flax twine and loom to craft fabric, think thats going to make gambeson less OP.

[PhotriusPyrelus]

1 hour ago, Fredrik Blomquist said:

I think gambeson is OP. On the other hand, i do hope they implement spindle and spinning wheel to craft flax twine and loom to craft fabric, think thats going to make gambeson less OP.

Why's that?  I don't follow the logic?

[redram]

10 hours ago, l33tmaan said:

Will this apply to, uh, perishables too?

Just items with durability, as I understand it (except for tools of course).  Off the top of my head, I think the armor related cases are the only current cases where its applicable.  Spoilage is different from durability.

Regarding gambeson, the economics of all things linen will potentially change quite drastically when the game moves to a 'full year' growth schedule.  In which case flax may take 3 to 4 months to mature.  Making it possible that you'll only be able to raise 1 crop of flax a year in temperate areas, without a greenhouse.  The seed and material yield will go up in proportion to the increased growth time.  But overall, you will probably get less material in a year than under the current system, especially the first growing season.

[Fredrik Blomquist]

4 hours ago, PhotriusPyrelus said:

Why's that?  I don't follow the logic?

Gambeson might not be the best - but it's definitly the cheapest. Cheaper than most amour with less protection. I should be harder to make linen fabric.

 

54 minutes ago, redram said:

Just items with durability, as I understand it (except for tools of course).  Off the top of my head, I think the armor related cases are the only current cases where its applicable.  Spoilage is different from durability.

Regarding gambeson, the economics of all things linen will potentially change quite drastically when the game moves to a 'full year' growth schedule.  In which case flax may take 3 to 4 months to mature.  Making it possible that you'll only be able to raise 1 crop of flax a year in temperate areas, without a greenhouse.  The seed and material yield will go up in proportion to the increased growth time.  But overall, you will probably get less material in a year than under the current system, especially the first growing season.

Still think making fabric more complicated to craft would be nice. If you make your farm larger you can still produce lots of flax. 

[redram]

5 minutes ago, Fredrik Blomquist said:

Still think making fabric more complicated to craft would be nice. If you make your farm larger you can still produce lots of flax. 

Yes, elaborating upon the process of making linen is planned. 

[Silent Shadow]

4 hours ago, Fredrik Blomquist said:

Still think making fabric more complicated to craft would be nice. If you make your farm larger you can still produce lots of flax.

The current bottle neck is the number of seeds you can gather, I wonder if they will change that.

[Fredrik Blomquist]

11 hours ago, Silent Shadow said:

The current bottle neck is the number of seeds you can gather, I wonder if they will change that.

Not sure if i want that. I do think farms should be a mayor food souce once you are able and wants to start farms. Sure, they are pretty plentifull at the moment but i might become to hard in the beginning of the game of they become to rare.

[Silent Shadow]

I think it would be fine if they just left it. Flax is pretty limited in the early game and there is plenty there (linen sacks, better bed, trader gears, bucket, etc.) to keep it scarce until you can get 40+ seeds and find the time to till, fence, and plant a field a few times with it. Later on once the farm is in full swing you more or less drown in flax, so having a new industry for it (tailor) and having to process it would work well to dial back the late game. If they can add automated powered looms too then all the better.

[Omega Haxors]

13 hours ago, Silent Shadow said:

The current bottle neck is the number of seeds you can gather, I wonder if they will change that.

Fastest method of obtaining twine is to mantle grind.
Dig a hole to mantle, create a large area and kill the nightmare drifters that spawn.
Nightmare drifters have a 100% drop rate of the stuff so you'll be minted in no time.

Edited September 10, 2021 by Omega Haxors

[Silent Shadow]

You are right, but you are probably using up metal to make that happen at a reasonable time (you are limited by temporal stability).

Swords are the most metal efficient way to kill nightmare drifters in less than 15 hits.  A commoner can kill around 41 nightmare drifters before breaking a tin bronze sword and about 85 n-drifters for an iron sword. You are at best getting 41 flax fiber (not twine) per tin bronze ingot and 85 flax fibers per iron ingot. Using metal armor or knives to harvest will drag this down further.

There are also the issues of not dying from the nightmare drifters and the corrupt drifters dragging down the flax return.

This is a decent way to grind rusty gears though (pun intended) especially if you sell the tin bronze sword after killing the most you can.

[ChubbyDemon]

 

It really depends on many factors.  Stage of game progression, what you're doing with the armor, the resources you have, etc.  I don't just use one armor set, I actually jave two.  For general around the base and exploration, I use hardened leather or, if you have a clothier, you could also use tailored gambaison, because of it's pretty good protection and lack of downsides.  For pure protection, I've got a set of tin bronze plate, since tin bronze is extremely plentiful due to the commonality of copper and how little tin it takes (24 nuggets for 15 ingots of bronze), so it's really just a time investment for smithing the components.  And it's ability to handle tier 3 damage without spending any iron makes it amazing for fighting temporal storms or wolves, and great to quickly swap into while exploring deep caves.

[ArgentLuna]

Tend to do without Armour till I can get farming going well and the Flax farm in particular as i prefer tailored Gambeson overall. Before the change to armour in terms of being able to repair it I didn't see the effort in making the heavier Metal ones, post change its a long term project to consider but still will preferably rock the Gambeson for general wear

[Owktree]

I have opted for two sets of armor as well.

Run around most of the time in a tailored gambeson since it's penalties are low and it's good enough protection against most of the wildlife and lower level drifters.  And it might protect me long enough to get away from a bear.

For deep spelunking or places like the Resonance Archive I fixed up a set of Blackguard Armor purchased from traders.  I've been pretty happy with the results since it's pretty good protection and was not an outrageous cost in iron ingots.

[Bumber]

For a long time I used no armor and wooden lamellar armor, relying on just a shield or kiting to avoid getting hit. This worked up until the eidolon fight, since I couldn't dodge the falling rocks.

I skipped over gambeson and made a set of bismuth bronze lamellar. Not bad, except it got instantly shredded by a double headed drifter during the first temporal storm I used it in.

I went to forlorn hope armor after I found enough gold, which was much better. It didn't get much time to shine, since I made steel plate soon afterwards. (Will probably use again if I go hunting for Jonas parts, since it has good move speed for the protection, and I don't want to be taking off my armor to move.)

I've been using broken blackguard armor and other low durability trash I found in the archives just to run around in and kill wolves. (Will probably switch back to my lamellar after that all breaks.) During temporal storms I equip my steel plate. It's slow and noisy, but I don't need to move around as much.

Edited October 7, 2023 by Bumber