Armor Refinement

[Stussywear]

I'm a returning player and know nothing about how it works. I would love to learn more obviously to allow myself a better chance by using this. Could anyone explain in detail, or direct me somewhere that can give me a better idea please? Thanks in advance!

 

[Basara]

Short summary:

Only works on non-med armor (note that non-med armor now gives a LMC-like bonus)
Depending on Refinement type, it changes either max resists or the DCI cap - at the expense of the other.
The types of refinements are specific to the non-med armor types, and drop on various bosses' corpses (champs, boss fights, etc.), in Treasure map chests, and in SOS chests.
They come in various strengths: Defense, Protection, Hardening, Fortification, Invulnerability.
You can get an amalgamator from the Clean up Britannia system, that allows 2 like Defense refinements to be combined into 1 Protection, 3 protection into a Hardening, 4 Hardening in to a Fortification, and 5 fortification into an Invulnerability. For purposes of storage, it's usually a good idea to have a couple of amalgamators handy to combine refinements whenever you get enough to combine. I've had 10 refinements before, for one armor type (1 less than needed for the first 4 categories to combine), that with the addition of 1 Defense refinement, became just 1 Invulnerability through 4 sequential amalgamations, freeing up a lot of lockdowns.

As for their actual use, I've not actually gotten around to doing it yet, but it involves special materials you get from certain NPCs (malleable alloy for metal armor, etc.)

 

[-Josh-]

@Basara - Do you know if you have an armor piece for example, has +1 to max for fire and - 1 DCI , can this refinement be removed to make the piece just a non med piece of armor?

 

[Tabin]

In case you need an in depth explanation, the official uo wiki explains it very well. I like guides with screen shots too!

Armor Refinement – Ultima Online

 

[Lord Arm]

sorry cant explain why they don't stack lol

 

[Basara]

If you really want them to all "stack", then get a bunch of amalgamators and combine them as you get them. As, combining two like "of Defense" get you 1 "of Protection", there's no need for stacks, unless you only have "of Invulnerability", as 2/3/4/5 of the lesser types combine to one of the next.

As for not stacking individually, I've had too many uncommon/rare things over the last 15 years that accidentally used the whole stack when trying to use one, or that accidentally stack because they are completely different, but share a base item type. And, I understand that kind of bug was even worse pre-AoS, with even common items. Since 2-6 armor types share the same base item appearances in refinements, and each of those has 5 subtypes, not having them stack prevents that bug from coming back into play (which it occasionally does when new items are added that look like older items).