Smithing Metal Armor

[Roland of Atlantic]

Hi all,

I want to say straight off, that I have spent a couple hours searching through the forums and anything on Stratics I could find for smithing prior to posting here to understand as much as possible beforehand.

My issue is that I want to have armor created for my sampire. I recently got the insane tinker legs, and using them will require a total armor overhaul.

I know everyone wants to use leather armor (for some idiotic reason, leather is as good as platemail nowadays), and this is part of the reason that I want to be a little unique (and nostalgic) and use plate armor. Since making metal armor has become a lost art due to being replaced by leather, naturally it has become difficult to find information. Also, while many people in my guild have smith characters, it seems that none of them know about anything other than BODs. LOL

The questions I have:

Other than the issue of weight (platemail will weigh a whole 9 stones heavier than my current leather armor with the tink legs) are there any disadvantages to using platemail for a sampire?

Is there any real benefit to using any of the various metals besides regular iron, that will make a better base set to imbue from? In other words, when all the pieces have been made and imbued, why should I use, say valorite instead of iron? Equally, is any benefit to be had from enhancing iron armor with other metals? (I wont be burning millions in pof and ingredients imbuing before enhancing, though) If all things were equal, I'd like to have everything be the same color as the tinker legs, which I think would be dull copper.

After the armor is made, how would I select the pieces to imbue to reach all 70s using as few imbues as possible, leaving more property slots available for mods? I know that usually, crafters use 2 of the 5 property slots on a piece for resists, leaving 3 available for mods. If one was to get lucky, is it possible to create a set of pieces that only needs 1 slot per piece to get all 70s? If so, that would leave 4 useful mods that could be imbued on each piece, which would be great.

A side question related to smithing but not armor, is it possible to create an exceptional weapon that doesnt come with a percentage of damage increase? I could think of many better mods for that slot...

Thank you all in advance for any info given. It is very much appreciated!

 

[Silverbird]

One of the disadvantages of platemail is the high strength requirement. I dont know your sampires template but many run without magic resist. That would make a requirement of 95 for the chest piece a lot. *g*
Depending on the race of your char, wooden armour or dragon scale could be better choices. (Wood has 'more interesting' properties and you can reach really high fire resists with red dragonscale.)
When I am looking for those informations, I usually pick up the fitting pages from the uoherald:
- Mythic Entertainment | Ultima Online - Play the 14-Day Free Trial! (base properties fo armour parts)
- Mythic Entertainment | Ultima Online - Play the 14-Day Free Trial! (material bonus properties)
(Base properties for elven and gargish armours are missing but I usually play human chars.)

 

[Basara]

If you're willing to break a few things, It's better to craft in Iron, Imbue, then enhance. (of course, with dragon armor, metal has no contribution). Note that Valorite has one more total resist than barbed leather. Iron armor typically starts with much more durability than leather, too (less POF used).

As most sampires go without mage armor, and rely on regens and leeches, you'll probably not want mage armor, but the option is there in the SE plate armor types.

Each exceptional piece will have 35 base resists as iron - if you choose the lowest resists on each piece to imbue, it will have 47-50 total resists (probably two pieces with fire, the other 4 resists 1 per). Enhancing with valorite successfully (after you imbue all the other properties) will raise it to 60-63. You might even go with a mixed suit, because the different metal armor types have different base resists (Helmets have different resists, that the three categores, and Bascinets have a REALLY big bias to Physical, that could be useful; each of the three suit types are different, but only plate covers all 6 slots - while requiring the most strength)

This is theoretically enough (360-378 if you were doing it with all normal armor, not the tinker legs) to give all 70s (and even 75 in energy resist, if an elf), but getting that to just balance out as all 70+ (let alone with a lot of the extra being in fire) will take a lot of crafting to get those imbues to line up (and failures of enhances after the imbues). With the tinker legs (I'm not familiar with them, as I've not seen one in game yet), use its resists to figure out which one resist to imbue per item, and you might get away with not having to imbue physical and/or energy, from the combination of base resists+EX bonuses+valorite.

It can be done, but don't expect it to be quick or easy. But, when done, it will be one hell of a suit.

 

[Lord Frodo]

Nice write up Basara. I like to use low end spine or horned kits and up to bronze hammers to make armor. Sometimes you get what you want and do not need to imbue. Mixing metal or leather types can also help.

 

[Roland of Atlantic]

Right now my (elf) sampire is running the following stats with his suit on:

120 Str (125 Hit) I think this should be good to keep my suit on.
150 Dex (190 Stam)
25 Int (73 Mana)

Since the leather legs he's running now has stam increase 8, mana increase 5, and LMC 8, I'm going to lose quite a bit of stam, down to 182 when i switch to the tinker legs. He is running the mace and shield glasses which are heavily biased towards physical resist (25, 10, 10, 10, 10). The tinker legs are (17, 15, 7, 15, 2).

Part of my problem is that I want a good suit, but since I dont have a blacksmith, I'm limited to asking one of my guildmates to craft the pieces, and I wouldn't feel comfortable having them do it, instructing them HOW to get it done, enhance, break, repeat, make it out of this metal, now try that one... I would feel better if I could just ask them to make a whole bunch of such and such pieces from such and such metal, and I'll sort it out and imbue it on my own time.

Looking at the stats of the M&S glasses and tink legs, I can see that physical wont be a problem at all, and fire is not great considering the build, but a good start. Poison is pretty good as well. Cold is pretty bad, and energy is dismal. I have 4 pieces to work with, gorget, tunic, arms and gloves. I'll probably have to imbue energy on 2 pieces and fire on 3, so probably getting all 70s with just one imbue per item will be nearly impossible.

If I did stat targeting the resists i really need, like fire and energy, and wanted to use different metals to get closer to what I need, I suppose the best to use would be agapite, since it has bonuses in fire and energy. Would it be best made out of agapite, or made out of iron, and enhanced with agapite, or made out of agapite and enhanced with agapite. Thats really confusing! Lets assume I got it made out of different colored metals. Now I have a suit that looks clownish becasue of the mismatched pieces. Are there dyes to compensate for this? I'd like it to look like the dull copper tink legs.

 

[Basara]

Yes, there are dyes from the second Treasures of Tokuno, that will dye metal that color (the dyes were for DC, Shadow, Copper and Bronze tones). Those will be fairly hard to come by.

Easier to find are bleach and neutral dyes, that will decolor all the pieces (so you could make every piece look iron, including the tinker legs).

 

[Petra Fyde]

The plain plant dye may also be useful? Staining

 

[Saunders]

You can't make in agapite and enhance with agapite. Just saying.

 

[Roland of Atlantic]

Well, it looks like staining will do the trick for the colors, so that's solved, but what about the really complicated stuff? So it can't be crafted and enhanced with the same metal, so what would be a good combination to craft and enhance get the best results?

Having never made armor, I figure that I need an average of like 12 of each resist over all 6 pieces. I have a deficit of 25 on fire due to vampiric essence, so I need an average of 16 on each of fire resist, and with the M&S and tink legs, I'm already short (25). On my 4 remaining pieces I'll need 18 fire on each. Is my math correct, or are the mechanics of the game different?

Anyone have an idea how I'll come close to the numbers I need with as little imbuing as possible?

 

[Obsidian]

You can only enhance iron armor. So start with iron, POF, then imbue. Enhance with your desired metal type. Check to see if the metal adds luck or lower requirements. If not, imbue your resists then enhance. Then you can go back and imbue the other mods. That will save you from loosing special ingreds if you fail the enhance.

-OBSIDIAN-

 

[Roland of Atlantic]

You can only enhance iron armor. So start with iron, POF, then imbue. Enhance with your desired metal type. Check to see if the metal adds luck or lower requirements. If not, imbue your resists then enhance. Then you can go back and imbue the other mods. That will save you from loosing special ingreds if you fail the enhance.

-OBSIDIAN-

So you create a bunch of exceptional pieces of armor. You look through them and toss any of the pieces that are low in too many resists? Or are they all the same, just the distribution of the numbers are in different places? So that if you add up the resists, they equal a certain number?

After I have the pieces, POF, imbue up the lowest resists so that I have all 70s. Then I have a suit that is all 70s, then I enhance it with any metals that dont give garbage buffs, and half the pieces are destroyed by failures. Go back to the pile and select replacement pieces and start over?

Why do I imbue the resists before I enhance? Does the enhancement clear the resists as imbue slots, so I can imbue 5 more properties after I enhance? It must, otherwise I couldn't see people even using POF, let alone imbuing anything before they enhance.

Anyway, assuming I get the items POF'ed. imbued and enhanced, then I go back and imbue my buffs like lmc and stam inc?

Let me know about the questions with the red marks, because they are the big holes in my knowledge. Thank you all for helping me out. Sorry to be a pain, but I can't find this info written down anywhere. If I could, I wouldn't be begging you all for information! lol

 

[Basara]

Armor pieces made with a normal crafting tool, have the same resists.

A normal smith armor piece has 15 resists, set in specific spots.
An exceptional smith armor piece has those 15, plus another 15-20 (15 base, plus 1/20 your Arms Lore, rounded down). The 15-20 is applied randomly over the 5 resist types.

Imbuing removes ALL the resist in the imbued resist, except for the normal item base. If you have an item that normally has 3% fire resist, and it has another 5% fire resist from the random exceptional bonuses, then another 3% from the material enhanced with, it will display 11% Fire resist. HOWEVER, if you imbue fire resist, the most you can take it to is 18% (the base 3% + 15%), not 26%, so that you LOSE the 8% that exceptional and material bonuses that were already present.

The best way to pick items for enhancement is to find iron items with high resists in the resists you need most, and nearly minimum resists in the others. use POF to get it to a comfortable resist amount (melee sampires really need them to be 255). Now, Imbue the hardest non-resist properties first (never after enhancement - I suggest starting with the LMC). Then, imbue the resists that are the lowest, as resist imbues are cheaper to fail on.

Remember that the LMC cap is 40% total, so any LMC on your talisman and jewelry is that much less that you'll have to add to your suit.

For example, if you have 4 pieces of plate mail gorget(made Exceptional with GM Arms Lore):

A. 9/12/5/8/6
B. 10/5/4/10/11
C. 8/8/8/8/8
D. 9/7/15/5/4

You'd not want to do the all-8s piece (C) at all.

B Would probably be your best bet, imbuing Fire Resist, Cold Resist or both (and only putting LMC and whatever property would fit), as both are only 2 over minimum in their resists. So, you could imbue it to 10/18/17/10/11 if you did both, plus whatever other properties will fit. However, with those high resists, it is likely to break. Remember to hold and use an Ancient Smith Hammer to enhance, as you get +1% to success chance for every 10% over GM Blacksmith.

D. would be your second-best choice, especially for Imbuing with two resist properties (poison & energy), or just energy.

A. Would be best for just cold or just energy, as the two lowest resists being imbued would cost you a third of the bonus you got for exceptional quality.

Now, you enhance, to take the total intensity over 500%.

 

[Roland of Atlantic]

Ok, NOW it's all coming together for me. Now if I'm getting this right, the final enhance does nothing but push the resists a little higher in the areas dictated by the type of metal you use, am I right? It doesn't free up the property slots used by the resists you just finished imbuing. I suppose it's really not worth doing assuming that you can get all 70's beforehand, and the only thing that would make it worthwhile is if you ended up lacking a couple points in one resist or another. You can enhance with the appropriate metal to give the resist that didnt quite make it.

That about sum it up?

 

[Basara]

yep...

 

[Lorax_Pacific]

If I were to make you a suit I would advise woodland armor, but if you insisted you would end up with either 25 less DI and 182 stamina or 174 stamina and 100 DI using metal armor.

The artifacts I would use for your suit would be M&S, tinker, stormgrip, conjurer's trinket, and cloak of augmentation.

The crafted pieces would be neck - platemail, tunic - chainmail, and arms - ringmail. Each piece would have +8 stamina and +8 mana. There would be three resist imbues each

neck - 0/15/0/6/12
tunic - 0/15/0/5/15
arms - 0/15/4/15/0

You would be imbuing then enhancing with agapite. If the right pieces were selected you could go with two resist imbues, but you would have to use some selection processes.

I just used base resists in my spreadsheet. This comes out to
70/93/52/69/70. This means all the selection pieces you would need about +18 cold on three pieces, which is very easy to get.

You could only get to 68 fire resist in vamp form so you will need the fire earrings of protection or something for +2 fire.

I suspect you would want the 182 stamina so this means you will need 25 DI on your weapons. This would give you gloves that would be imbued with extra stamina or if you have a pair of pugilist with +8 stamina imbued that would open up more options on jewelry or no crimson in the discussion below. The imbued pugilist would also lower your weapon DI to only 10 required. Also, having four imbued armor pieces would open up more discussion points on resists and imbues. The imbued pugilist could be used to remove the 7 dex on the ring and add turquoise ring for another +5 SSI or increase HCI.

If you did woodland armor you would not have a problem increasing your HCI to 45 or your DI to 100.

I wouldn't POF the pieces because you could fail during enhance and they are fairly cheap to make since no LMC and you wouldn't have to make bags and bags of selection pieces. You can remake them when they break.

Your finals would be something like
70/95/70/70/75
SSI = 15
DCI = 30
HCI = 25
Dex = +25
Int = + 24
stamina = + 24 or +32
mana = +24
SR = +2
HPR = +2
DI = 100 or 75

I don't see any way to get 45 DCI with the M&S, but if you had a crimson and aegis you could then get the DCI. THis would put HLD on your weapon then, but 30 HLD still requires about four swings on average so 34 HLD is right for three swings. I think you could with a smart selection process get all your resists where you need them and 45 DCI with the aegis of grace.

-Lorax

 

[Roland of Atlantic]

Before I was running this suit which a guild member gave me:

M&S Glasses
Leather gorget: Stam Inc 8, Mana Inc 5, LMC 8
Resists: 9, 19, 9, 18, 12 (2 resists imbued)
Leather sleeves: Stam Inc 8, Mana Inc 5, LMC 8
Resists: 6 ,19, 18, 9, 11 (2 resists imbued)
Leather tunic: Stam Inc 8, Mana Inc 5, LMC 8
Resists: 7 ,19, 18, 13, 11 (2 resists imbued)
Leather leggings: Stam Inc 8, Mana Inc 5, LMC 8
Resists: 17 ,19, 9, 10, 0 (2 resists imbued)
Leather gloves: Hit point Inc 5, Stam Inc 8, Mana Inc 6, LMC 8
Resists: 7 ,9, 9, 11, 16 (1 resist imbued)
Ring: Str bonus 3, Dex bonus 8, hci 15%, DCI 15%, DI 25%
Bracelet: Str bonus 3, Dex bonus 8, hci 15%, DCI 15%, DI 25%
Ranger Cloak
Crimson Cincture
Talisman: Conjurer's Trinket (switching for Primer of Arms or Flame Slayer depending what I'm fighting)
Arcane Boots

With that setup I have all 70s (in vamp form), 190 Stam, 5 SSI, 50 DI, 30 HCI, 30 DCI, 40 LMC. There is no way I would sacrifice the LMC, especially not for another resist imbue, and while I might have been a little low on HCI, DCI and DI, I did rather well. The DI I didn't stress over because I could swing the ornate at cap, which hits like a Mack truck. Besides, putting a slayer weapon on more than makes up for any missing DI, especially when combined with hit lightning or whatever my target happens to be weak against. I wish I could figure out how to have an exceptional weapon without having any DI on it, because there are always more interesting and damaging properties to put on a weapon than DI. The DCI goesn't worry me much because of the wonderful daishos (feint) I have made for tough things. Also, I can't stand how often my gear needs to be repaired at 255 durability. I would go insane if it only had 60 or so. I'll definitely stick with the POF.

I like the M&S for the HLD Str and Dex, and besides, they are ironically stylish. The Tink legs , despite having Dex bonus (Dex caps at 150, after that Stam only, lowered my sSam to 182, but gave me 10 SSI and 10 DI in trade. The biggest problem with the Tink Legs is the 8 LMC I've lost. I keep gassing out mana, especially against casting monsters and bosses.

I'm interested in plate because nobody wears it, and since I don't wear a robe, ALSO like every other person in the game, I want to look nostalgic, like we used to back BEFORE the buff robes and leather armor that was *somehow* just as good as platemail. After all, what middle ages warrior would be caught dead in a robe on the battlefield? I do realize that plate wasn't the norm in the middle ages because it was incredibly heavy and cut down on reaction speed and manual dexterity and had a tendancy to cook the occupant, but hey, it's a video game, and I'm opting for the Camelot look since we can have our cake and eat it too. LOL

Besides the above, the woodland armor takes making a whole mess of pieces to randomly roll the DI mod AND exc. quality at the same time. Besides that, it sometimes wastes durability when you try to repair it and fail. It also looks kinda awkward with the tink legs...

Anyway, I figure that the extra SSI will help balance the 8 points I'm losing on stam, I can get rid of some of the dex on the jewelry (6 points of it is extra and doesnt help my end stam) and I can also get rid of all the Str on both pieces, and work my LMC and Stam back in there.

With my current setup just swapping the tink legs for my leather ones, I'm only missing 4 fire resist to hit 70, and I'm missing 8 energy resist to hit 70, but being an elf, I'd like to be 75, in a perfect world.

If this is do-able in plate armor, what's my easiest path to get there, keeping my current number of imbue slots the same on each piece? What would be the perfect pieces to look for in the pile that I have crafted for me? I plan on having a guildie just make 25 of each piece exceptional in iron, then weeding through them and POFing and imbuing them myself, then taking the back to my friend to be enhanced.

 

[Lorax_Pacific]

I don't get why you are running out of mana. I have 0 LMC, 78 mana and never run out. Are you using a special on every swing? If you add in two LS's between each special you wouldn't get hit with the double mana cost penalty.

You can't beat the rune beetle carapace for LMC. I only use that for my archers and mainly for a pvp suit to AI or use a special every shot. For archer pvm I still special/LS/LS/... and then it is easy to run out of mana because ranged weapons are half leech.

Why the LMC discussion is probably for the warriors forum, but I just don't get it.

I think all the advice everyone else gave was right on the money and the easiest path seems obvious. My advice sounds contrary to your desire, but doesn't require any difficult work and any novice crafter could make that suit (the pieces I suggested) if they have the funds for the artifacts.

-Lorax

 

[Roland of Atlantic]

Well, even with slayers, honor and massive DI, eventually one encounters monsters with very high defense, like the reknowned pixie in the abyss mini champ south of the tree of life, or forgotten servants and some bosses that you can't hit for enough damage to leech enough mana to keep up. In times like those, you end up tanking mana, and then you have to stop using LS to be able to keep up, which causes other problems.

I tank mana a lot in Mel, if I don't have her honored. That combined with the fact that feint lasts about 6 seconds, and when she does that nausea attack that makes you fight like you're underwater, your swing speed is like 2 swings every 5 seconds, and you have to keep feint and consecrate and EOO up, you can't have 2 LS between every special.

Also consider Stygian Dragon. You fight with a group, and that thing is chasing a different target every second. You take a hit from a special without having feint up, you're done.

Also, large spawns of casting creatures will mana drain you until you don't have the mana to use whirlwind. You can't stay vertical for long in that case. With lmc, you can leech enough on one normal hit to start spamming whirlwind again.

Also, when you die you rez with 0 mana, then you have to wait for that mana to get to the point where you can cast vamp and heal up. With no LMC, that's a long time. With LMC, vamp costs 14 mana, without it it's 23. Add to that the 2 or 3 confidence heals to get your health up and the divine fury to get your stamina back to cap, and thats a long recovery. The same if you rez someone with noble sacrifice.

In any case, I can't give up my stamina and LMC for random arties. I also don't want to have a paperdoll that looks like a patchwork of refuse since I won't be wearing a robe. I want something crafted with purpose for the task at hand. I knew going into this that it would be a pain, so I'm going to just keep plugging away at it until I get it right.

A guildie and I were messing around with his smith last night trying to create some suitable starting material. His smith is 120 smithing and 99.9 arms lore. All his exceptional pieces were coming out at 34 combined resist. Is his .1 deficit in arms lore really taking away 6 resist points? I was under the impression that GM exceptional pieces were supposed to be 40 total resist. Am I wrong?

 

[Lorax_Pacific]

Basara already explained arms lore in this thread, but maybe this link will say it the way you expect.

Armslore

Also, it may be known already from this discussion, but LMC, stamina, mana increase have a 1.1 multiplier. So if you use 100% of LMC, SI, MI then that is 330 weight. You will have 500-330=170 for the two resist imbues, which means you can't max out one of them. You will make trade-offs between resists and MI and shuffle LMC on the jewelry possibly.

-Lorax

 

[Roland of Atlantic]

So the short answer looks like a yes, it is affecting the resists of the armor he's making.

I noticed the multiplier last night when I was trying to add up the imbues I was going to do on one of the pieces we made out of shadow metal. All I wanted to imbue on it was adding up to 530. Plus, I could only get the fire resist to go to 18, not 19 like it is on my current armor. What gives? Surely the leather armor can't be better than the metal... Is this where I have to do some enhancing to push the imbued resists higher than what I can imbue them to? And that aside, what about the imbuing? Why cant I manage to get everything on there?

 

[Lorax_Pacific]

So the short answer looks like a yes, it is affecting the resists of the armor he's making.

I noticed the multiplier last night when I was trying to add up the imbues I was going to do on one of the pieces we made out of shadow metal. All I wanted to imbue on it was adding up to 530. Plus, I could only get the fire resist to go to 18, not 19 like it is on my current armor. What gives? Surely the leather armor can't be better than the metal... Is this where I have to do some enhancing to push the imbued resists higher than what I can imbue them to? And that aside, what about the imbuing? Why cant I manage to get everything on there?

I think all the information you need is in this thread. If you notice the pieces I chose there was a ringmail, a platemail and a chainmail. Each of those pieces had a purpose. The chainmail tunic can go up to 19 fire and the other pieces had base resists allowing other resists to go up to a level that would get you what you want. There are only three chainmail pieces so the tunic will be the only one for 19 fire imbued, but my method was to imbue then enhance giving you 22 fire on that piece.

The ringmail piece I chose for your poison imbue and enhance. On that piece you imbue 18 fire and 20 poison. Enhancing that piece gets you 21 fire and 22 poison.

Look through this thread all the answers are here. You either need to become an expert crafter to make the pieces you want or have someone else do it...up to you, but it is possible to make what you want. You will probably need to use a spreadsheet to figure out how to maneuver the LMC around the 6 non-artifact pieces. It will be a puzzle.

-Lorax

 

[Roland of Atlantic]

I think all the information you need is in this thread. If you notice the pieces I chose there was a ringmail, a platemail and a chainmail. Each of those pieces had a purpose. The chainmail tunic can go up to 19 fire and the other pieces had base resists allowing other resists to go up to a level that would get you what you want. There are only three chainmail pieces so the tunic will be the only one for 19 fire imbued, but my method was to imbue then enhance giving you 22 fire on that piece.

The ringmail piece I chose for your poison imbue and enhance. On that piece you imbue 18 fire and 20 poison. Enhancing that piece gets you 21 fire and 22 poison.

Look through this thread all the answers are here. You either need to become an expert crafter to make the pieces you want or have someone else do it...up to you, but it is possible to make what you want. You will probably need to use a spreadsheet to figure out how to maneuver the LMC around the 6 non-artifact pieces. It will be a puzzle.

-Lorax

How unfortunate that the custodians of this game have relegated physically superior armor to the scrapheap. But I suppose if realism were to be observed, platemail would come with stamina penalties in exchange for higher resists than could be achieved with leather.

I just hate that I can't have as good a suit in plate as I can with leather because of fire resist. But apparently leather and wood are king in this world. So we have an entire game of clones walking around in leather sets with buff robes. Only the names and colors are different.

How did my suit get the resists and the mods that it has? As far as I know, you can't enhance leather, so how did two max resist imbues and 3 x 1.1 multiplier buffs get on there? Is there no way to get the same resists and mods on a entirely platemail set?

 

[Lorax_Pacific]

It is considered magic and metal apparently has only so much ability to absorb certain magical properties. Sosaria isn't the same as it once was and things that once made sense fell to spells and wizardry where things no longer carry the same properties as they once could.

I don't understand your point about not having as good of fire resists since you have been given methods to get fire resists to 21 or 22 with metal. You can make a sampire suit out of plate if you want and each fire resist can be 21 with enhancing after imbue.

Did you look at this page yet? It shows that all the base properties do vary and you can imbue to +15 any of those base properties.
Items: Base Properties

Most of the pieces in your suit are weight of 489 and one more MI would put it above 500 to 503. Sorry to not include how the points work...
LMC 110
SI 110
MI 69 : 5/8*110
FR 100
CR 100
total 489

-Lorax

 

[Basara]

You enhance leather with the special leathers on a tailor.

As I noted before, different armor pieces have different base resists. So each of the maximum imbuable resists is the base +15. See my new sticky post for a table of Human & Elf wearables and their maximum imbuable resists (which I had to track down from a reply in a thread from February).

For example:

A bascinet has base resists 7/2/2/2/2; other helmets have a different set of base resists.
Plate armor pieces have base resists 5/3/2/3/2 (hence, the max fire of 18 from an imbue -- 3+15 = 18)
Leather armor has base resists of 2/4/3/3/3 (so could be imbued to 19 fire resist).
Chain has base resists of 4/4/4/1/2.

Consider that if you want a suit that doesn't look mismatched, gloves and gorget typically are the least distracting (as well as more logical) for being used with metal armor - plus you can use a leather dye tub (vet reward) to color them the colors of the special metals, so that it's not obvious that they aren't metal. The down side is that if you enhance them with the special leathers, the best leather type only gives 12 resists (and is weakest in fire).

 

[Roland of Atlantic]

Aah, I was under the impression that you were suggesting the chainmail and ringmail as an alternative method of achieving what I was looking for because the platemail enhancement wouldn't stack with the 18 maximum fire imbuable.

Also, I have a feeling that when I was playing with one of the pieces we crafted and adding up the mod costs I unintentionally maxxed out the mana increase to 8 instead of placing it at 5, which let to my wondering why all this fit on the leather item, as it would have been exceeding the 500 cap.

Another guildie has 120smith with GM arms lore, and I'll try to catch her on tonight and see if she can make me 50 of each piece that I'll need. From that point, I'll select the pieces that most closely resemble my current leather pieces while also keeping in mind the points that I need to make up. I need to pick up 4 points in fire, and 8 points in energy, or if it will fit, 13 points to reach my elven potential of 75. The Tink legs have 6 points over what would get me to 70 in poison, so I would be able to divert some of that excess to the energy side by selecting the right pieces.

Any other words of advice before I get started?

 

[Roland of Atlantic]

So Basara, it looks to me that the deck is already stacked in the favor of leather because it's more balanced across the spectrum.

Considering the Plate base resists of 5/3/2/3/2, the individual maximums are 20/18/17/18/17. I guess if I have a piece that comes up say 7/5/5/8/12, then I could imbue it to 7/18/17/8/12 then enhance it with agapite, and end up with 9/21/19/10/14. Does that sound right? Or if I end up with the numbers a little lower in energy than I would like, I could enhance with a metal that gives more energy, like shadow. Ok, I can deal with this.

Now I have to imbue the item with all the resists and buffs I want on it to get it as close to 500 as possible before I enhance if I want the total weight with the added resists given from enhancing to pass 500. If I enhance before imbuing, the item will take on added weight from the added resists, making less space for the buffs.

 

[Basara]

If you want to go for the metal armor look, like I said, you can go for a few leather pieces that aren't obvious. After all, Chain doesn't have sleeves or gloves, Ringmail doesn't have a headpiece, and neither have a gorget (and even plate isn't noticably different if you use leather gorget or gloves).

If you aren't going to have a meditation compatible suit, remember that Studded leather has 1 more resist than all other human/elf armors. You could therefore make those pieces as studded leather.

So if you're using M&S glasses and tinker legs, you could have a chain tunic, and studded gorget, sleeves and gloves. That way you wouldn't have the suit any more mismatched than what most real historical suits belonging to front line soldiers were (only nobles and their guards wore plate, from its expense). It also allows you to have one piece that takes advantage of the differing resist layout from the studded leather. Or, you can go all-studded.

One thing to consider is that if you're going to use POF, leather types typically have 25-50% less durability than metal (requiring more POF), and seem to damage more easily, in my experience.

 

[Roland of Atlantic]

Ok, last night I had a guildmember craft me 50 pieces (exceptional) of plate tunic, arms, gorget and gloves and after going through all of it, I dont see any single piece that would, after enhancing, match what I have. I could find a couple pieces that would come close on a couple resists, and fail dismally in the others. Is this really so damned hard? I mean, I can't even pass the selection stage here! I think I'm done with armor. This is the most frustrating thing in the game. I'd rather train taming for hours or solo stygian dragon with no weapon.

Next question, does anyone either play in atlantic or know someone in atlantic that wants to make this for me for a healthy profit?

 

[NuSair]

I'd be interested to give it a go.

 

[Roland of Atlantic]

I'd be interested to give it a go.

When, where and how much? I can do the POF and imbuing, I just need the pieces made, and enhanced. I should even have the ingreds.

 

[NuSair]

Can do it now actually.

 

[Roland of Atlantic]

Can do it now actually.

where?

 

[NuSair]

I'll meet you at Brit moongate... character will be The Empire.

 

[NuSair]

I think I got it, but it might be close, my mind is jello atm- shoot me a pm and let me know how it goes on the imbueing.

 

[NuSair]

I've been playing around a bit more with this, because I really can't let go when I really get into something.

Using the tinker legs and mace/shield glasses, you start with resist of:
42 / 25 / 17 / 15 / 12

That leaves 4 pieces. To get the resist to:
70 / 95 / 70 / 70 / 75

Well, physical is pretty much a given. Fire, with 25 fire in the 1st 2 pieces, you are going to need 70 fire in the last 4. So, that means you'll need 17.5 per piece, or 2 imbued to max and 2 imbued to 17.

Now, at this point, there are a couple of ways to approach this. You know that you won't need to imbue Physical and Fire is going to be imbued, so any material bonus in that is just a waste. If you take out those 2 resist in looking at material bonuses, you will get:
Dull Copper: 0
Shadow: 5
Copper: 7
Bronze: 7
Gold: 4
Agapite: 6
Verite: 6
Valorite: 9

So, Valorite is by far and away the favorite here. With Energy starting off at 12, you are going to need energy to average 15.75 per piece. Which means you will need to imbue it a few times as well. Imbueing it 3 times will give you an energy resist of 63, with 12 needed the last piece.

Now, if you take Physical / Fire / Energy out of the picture, that leaves you with Cold / Poison:
Dull Copper: 0
Shadow: 0
Copper: 5 (0/5)
Bronze: 6 (5/1)
Gold: 2
Agapite: 4 (2/2)
Verite: 5 (2/3)
Valorite: 6 (3/3)

Valorite still looks like the best choice. Although depending on how the resist work out, Copper or Bronze might not be a bad choice either. And, there is the fact that it is quite a bit cheaper than Valorite.

If you have the patience, you can sit and smith near perfect pieces. For me what I look for is 1 or 2 points above the min to make sure that I get the most use out of the arms lore bonus points. Granted, that might take forever in looking a piece with 3 resist like that, but you can find them. So, you are looking at 7 or 8 resist imbues to get to 70/95/70/70/75. And that's from crafting from the material to begin with.

 

[NuSair]

Just more numbers.

To get Cold to 70, the pieces will need to be 13, 13, 13, 14 (or something along those lines).
For Poison, it would need to be 11, 11, 11, 12 (again, or something along those lines).

So, looking at that, Valorite (3/3) or Bronze (5/1) seems to be the best bet.

The base for plate:
Valorite: 9 / 3 / 5 / 6 / 5
Bronze: 8 / 3 / 7 / 4 / 3

 

[[JD]]

honestly its better to use leather (Barbed or Horned) over plate.

If you want the look, its probably best to make your own crafter. It takes a lot of work and resources to continually make pieces to find the proper resists.

You can buy 60k iron ingots for 1 mil on my server. That's enough to get you 110+ in skill, and enough to make the pieces you need.

One problem with using too many arties is you wont be able to imbue enough stamina. So if you're using M&S and tink legs, stop. No more arties.

I decided against tink legs in my template. I have a 5ssi ring and 30ssi on my weapon. That's enough to swing my double axe at cap and have a small stamina reserve. Tink legs just would have complicated things for me. They're very nice, but not "need to have".

The only arti I use is the M&S glasses. I imbued the other 5 sets of armor, so I had incredible versitility with resists, got +40 stamina out of the deal, and more.

Imbuing 5 pieces of leather you can do: 19+19+19+19+9. Add 10 from M&S and you're at 95 for Sampires.

You won't be running DI on stormgrip so put enough DI between your M&S/Tink Legs/Weapon/Jewels that you have 100.

If you're an elf, consider heartwood armor instead.

Leather is cheap enough to get going though. With a Dragon slayer in Fel as a human you get 44 barbed leather per regular dragon or 66 per greater.

In just one hour I had thousands of leather. Take a bag of sending and a butchers war cleaver, if you can get one. Or better yet, the turkey cleaver adds 10% resources (I missed out on that, QQ).