How to Build a Suit?

[Caelas]

I want to learn how to build a suit...what to look for, how to know what will be affected by swapping out pieces...right now the whole process I find annoyingly difficult to balance. It's like trying to play Jenga in an earthquake.

So, to those that are good at it, how do you put together a decent suit? What do you focus on, what tips do you have? Do you take a couple good pieces and build the rest of the suit around it, or just play with every piece? What's the secret?

 

[Quinn1969]

Depends on what kind of character you are using it on. On a mage suit you want LRC (Low Reagent Cost) to equal 100 and LMC (Low Mana Cost). You also want a high number on your Mana regeneration as well and faster casting.

I'm new at putting suits together too so I'd appreciate some feedback as well.

 

[Black Sun]

Here's how I go about suit building, so far it's worked well for me, but it can take some time to get what you want.

Now, before I launch into my suit building methods, let me just say this. I keep a small notebook at my desk. This is my UO book. I am a visual person, and need to see things spelled out in detail to fully understand them. So this book is full of diagrams, chicken scratching notes, half thought out templates, lists of stats, and my ideas regarding UO.

That said, here's what I do: (yes I am 100% serious about this.)
I draw a stick figure with the outline for each armor slot, and a box that goes with it. In that box I write down (in pencil) what my character is currently using in that slot. Underneath that box, or along side it, I write (in pen) what my dream piece of armor would be like. At the bottom of the page, I make a short list of what this suit needs to look like (all 70's, medable, Mana Regen, Luck, LRC, night sight etc.). Lets say I'm building a 100% LRC suit. I take 100 and divide it by the number of pieces I want to use, (and do the same for resists usally) and then I go out in search of armor using those numbers as my base value. If I am able to go over that, bonous. But I never drop below that magic number (unless I already have a really good piece that affords me a little room to play if necessary.)

When it comes down to jewelry, is where I really try to kill myself. I usually try to create suits that are not dependant on jewels. This is often harder than you'd think. The jewels I try to keep available for skill enhancments. I know of an awesome jewelry mall on my shard run by Jelinidas (Sorry, I forget the name. Westbough or something like that? I just know the house by location.) That is THE place to go on my shard if you need jewels for a suit.


Now, the final, and most important advice I can give when it comes to suit building. Set a price limit. You can easily drop a couple mil when suit building. This is not necessary, unless you want to wear nothing but artifacts. Generally, I try to avoid artifacts when suit building. That way if something should happen to get lost for whatever reason, I'm not out a large house and a trunk full of rares. Try to avoid luna and it's inflated prices at all costs. Post in the trade forums and see if you can find a smith/tailor to hire. I'm sure you'd be able to get your wares at a much cheaper rate that way.

 

[GFY]

My suit building is pretty much a work in progress. I start with resist (all 60 +) then I look for specials based on my template. I'm not big on 100 LRC. I carry regs and arcane clothing so I can get back to my regs if I die.

The specials I look for are tailored for the template I'm playing. Magery I like 40 LMC, mana regen and increase, FC/FCR, & DCI to name a few. I also have skill bonuses to help my templates a bit.

For a dexxer, I usually swap between my archer and swordsman, I like HCI, DCI, LMC 40, HLD, and all 60+ resist. Some pieces I do swap back and forth depending on what I'm doing at the time.

I usually build a suit around 1 or 2 arties. I usually start with a Rune Beetle Carapise. It's the best chest piece in the game. (IMHO)

Lastly I'm usually never finished with a suit. I'll look at armor shops and if I find a piece that can improve my armor I'll buy it if I can afford it. I also get lucky sometimes making a piece or enhancing a piece found as loot.

 

[Farsight]

It does go differently for different people and depends on what you're trying to accomplish in a suit. What I do is start with either artifacts that I have or artifacts to build toward. For example, on my warrior I had an ancient samurai helm, heart of the lion and fey leggings. From there, I filled out my resists (except poison) with my arms, gorget and sleeves, coincidently adding MR in the process, and luckily finding stormgrip for my gloves. Then I added a primer on arms damage removal talisman. From there, I just needed traits for my jewelery, which I bought from the jewelery mall that Black Sun already mentioned (and I can't remember the name of either). The jewels include HCI, DI, FC/FCR and poison resist.

And at the end of it, I have all resists over 60, 90% DI, 2 FC, 4 FCR, 6 MR, 140 dex (no stamina increasing items), max DCI, 15% HCI and I do pretty well in any situation. Eventually, I traded my samurai helm in for mace and shield glasses, and I hope to soon trade in my gorget for jackal's collar.

For my mage suit, I started with only a rune beetle carapace, pendant of the magi and totem of the void. I filled in the rest of the suit with runic pieces focussing on LRC, LMC and MR. I got lucky in finding pieces and got about 50% SDI (Kasa of Raj-in, scrappers and SDI ring) in addition to 4/6 FC/FCR (spellweaving caps FC at 4, very useful indeed). It took 8 months to do and I spent about 14 million gold, but it was very worth it. In the last 8 months, I've only found one piece of armor which improves on what I have, and I did pay millions to buy it.

For my tamer suit, I used only runic pieces and focussed on resists, LRC and luck (in that order). It isn't the best suit, but I didn't pay much for it and it took a day to make. When my taming gets good enough to ditch the taming ring and bracelet, then I'll get FC/FCR and a lot more luck from the luck jewelery set.

I have a new archer on Drach who also has a nice suit, and that one I bought from a vendor and will add a couple of well placed artifacts when I find them. It has max stamina increase (8 points per piece, 48 total) and max resists on a human, but has no HCI, DCI, MR, or any other benifit. It makes for a good suit for my purposes so far. When I can find a ring of the vile and leggings of bane, then I may consider that suit "finished".

 

[Frarc]

I build all my suits around a few good items (Artifacts). Then fill it up with self made runic armor. Not even the highest runics, bronze, copper or horned runics. I do have Armslore for the resist boost. Depending on the Character skill i will look what benefits them most for the aim of the armor.

Then finish it up with nice jewelry and talismans .

 

[Caelas]

Ok...I think I'm pretty much set...

I was able to find a RBC and Brightsight Lenses.
So now, my suit is...

70/70/59/49/75 (Yeah...poison is low, I know)
HCI 20
DCI 35
LMC 35
MR 8

Stats are 104/98/90. Gonna lose some HP for Dex. Left myself room to grow...and this doesn't include a bow OR totem. Just armor and jewelry.

 

[envinyatar]

Ok...I think I'm pretty much set...

I was able to find a RBC and Brightsight Lenses.
So now, my suit is...

70/70/59/49/75 (Yeah...poison is low, I know)
HCI 20
DCI 35
LMC 35
MR 8

Stats are 104/98/90. Gonna lose some HP for Dex. Left myself room to grow...and this doesn't include a bow OR totem. Just armor and jewelry.

Something that the above posters have not mentioned, but I usually always make use of is the two magery spells reactive armor and magic reflection ... now if you don't have magery, get yourself some jewels and maybe a spell book with +magery skill and get scrolls of these two spells. Put on your suit and pull up your status bar so you can view your resists. Reactive armor will increase your physical resist by 15% and decrease all elemental resists by 5% each. Magic reflection will decrease your physical resist by 25% and increase your elemental resists by 10% each. Either one of these spells or both combined (depending on your current resists) will enhance your total resist value. I would recommend, seeing as you have 70 in phys to cast Magic reflection on yourself and see the result. The great part about these spells is that they are permanent, you must cast them again to shrug off the effect. Also if you have inscription, that will enhance the effects of these two spells, so you can soul it on temporarily and still benefit from this increase.

Hope this helps!

 

[Locker]

Very good post full of useful information. Thank you to the providers.

Peace,

-L

 

[Bouche835]

I use excel to build mine. It is really helpful so that I can see everything. I have a attached a copy.



I have too much time at work but it does help.