Items & materials

[Jumping Jack]

A mage spent a couple of months sleeping in his bed. Every 7 days he visited his friends the blacksmiths with the help of Portal. Here's what he found out.

Items have base item types with a certain damage or armor rating. Then what material it's made of gives a bonus. In addition different types of enhancements can be generated on items, similar to what you get out of alchemy. +Stats, HP, MP, resistances, but the mage didn't keep track of those.

The mage has no idea how items are generated into shops, there might be price caps or stuff and some item/material combos might be impossible. This is just info on what stuff is and does if it does exist.

First, let's look at the materials. Most weapons and heavy armor are metals and light armor cloths, but there are exceptions.

Code: Select all

Material               Bonus dam/ar

Hemp                   0
Hide                   1
Leather                1
Boiled Leather         2
Studded Leather        2
Reptile Hide           3
Studded Reptile Hide   3
Dragon Skin            4
Spun Admantium         4
Ancient Dragon Skin    5

Copper                 0
Bronze                 1
Iron                   1
Steel                  2
Tempered Steel         2
Dwarven Steel          3
Tungsten               3
Mithril                4
Adamantium             4
Divine Ore             5

The more expensive/heavier material offering the same damage/protection is more durable. The highest quality is very rare and you might never see them in shops unless you keep resting checking in every 7 days.

The wooden table might be incomplete or just wrong...

Code: Select all

Material               Bonus
Pine                   0
Birch                  1
Oak                    2
Maple                  2
Walnut                 3
Burly oak              3
Hickory                4
Mahogany               4

...WEAPONS...

-Cleaving

Code: Select all

Item                   Base damage
Machete                2
Hand axe               3
(Double) Battle axe    4
Great axe              5
Grand axe              6

-Bludgeoning

Code: Select all

Item                   Base damage
Cudgel, Quarterstaff   1
Hammer, Mace           2
Spiked mace            3
Warhammer              4
War maul               5

-Swords

Code: Select all

Item                   Base damage
Short sword            2
Long sword             3
Two-handed, Long sword 4
Great sword            5

Yes there are two different types of Long swords. One is sold earlier in the game at value 60 and the other later on at value 240, made of bronze ITMRC. That's nothing, just you wait...

-Piercing

Code: Select all

Item                   Base damage
Knife, Dagger          1
Stiletto, Dagger       2
Short spear            3
War spear              4

-Comments

Cleaving weapons are light in weight and the most damaging, and you get a pretty good one as a reward for one quest. But the lvl 10 feat sucks, you don't want to get surrounded by enemies when fighting.

Bludgeoning weapons are heavier and less powerful. The unique Splitsunder isn't very good. But they're the best at bashing objects, and IMO the lvl 10 feat is the best of the bunch.

Swords are the heaviest, but the lvl 10 feat is interesting. Two unique swords in the game are pretty good, one of them gives an armor bonus and is the only weapon which does so!

Normal piercing weapons aren't all that great, but the unique ones you find are arguably the best weapons to be had at the times you find them, and weigh just 1.0. Double strike isn't bad either.


...ARMOuR...

-Shields
Shields are metal, except bucklers are wooder. You'll probably only be seeing pine and birch buckler's as only one merchant seems to stock with them. Ara was seen stocked with a dwarven steel tower shield, not bad at that point of the game; probably you'll only ever top that by 2 AR...

Code: Select all

AR | Shield type
1  | Small, Buckler
2  | Large
3  | Tower
4  | Lord's

-Heavy
Heavy armors are metal.

Code: Select all

AR |         Head         |      Back      |     Chest    |      Waist     |
1  | Half-helm/Chain coif |                | Chain Jerkin |                |
2  |       Full helm      | Military Steel |  Chain Armor | Plated belt    |
3  |      Lord's helm     |                |  Brigandine  | Warlord's belt |
4  |      Great helm      |                |  Scale Armor |                |
5  |                      |                |  Plate armor |                |

AR |       Legs      |     Feet    |          Hands         |
1  |                 |             |    Chain gauntlests    |
2  | Chain leggings  | Scale boots | Scale gaun./Plate brac.|
3  | Brigandine leg. |             |    Plate Gauntlets     |
4  | Plate leggings  | Plate boots |                        |
5  |                 |             |                        |

-Light
Light armors are cloth, with a couple of exceptions causing confusion marked with Asterix(*). Also several different base types are identically named. Gotta love the headgear especially... The mage didn't care for 'junk' items with no protection enough to put them in the list.

Code: Select all

AR |   Head    |     Back    |         Chest         |     Waist    |
1  | Skullcap  | Light cloak | Jerkin, Studded vest* |     Belt     |
2  | Skullcap* | Heavy cloak |                       | Studded belt |
3  | Skullcap  |             |         Armor         |              |
4  |           |             |                       |              |
5  |           |             |         Armor         |              |

AR |       Legs       |     Feet       |    Hands       |
1  |     Leggings     | Sandals, boots | Bracers/Gloves |
2  | Studded Leather* |     Boots      |                |
3  | Studded Leather* |     Boots      |                |
4  |                  |                |                |
5  |                  |                |                |

-Comments

Theoretically, using heavy armor versions in all item slots would grant 6 more AR than wearing all light armor. In practice the difference is a little bigger because some high-end light armor types are hard to find, such as high quality gloves and cloaks. This is because when stores decide to sell "better" versions of those base items, instead of higher-quality materials/base item types they usually opt for magical equipment: meditation&stealth cloaks, repair/lockpick/etc. gloves. Then again abusing knowledge of the placement of certain non-random light armor loot can guarantee some ancient dragon skin pieces, whereas top of the line divine ore stuff can be hard to find.

So it's probably best to have one point in each skill and use whatever you find is best and can carry.


EDIT:Damn, in the preview the tables looked fine but in the actual post they got screwed up...

[fudgemaster]

Interesting...

[edge]

it doesnt always work out that way. i have a character with ancient dragon skin boots, base armor rating +6, as well as a pair of "regular" dragon skin boots, base armor +7.

also keep rare/named equipment in mind...

[Kreador Freeaxe]

There are a couple chests around Book II with predefined items that scale in material based on your level, however, the names and the ratings don't seem to scale together (and the money seems not to scale at all). That's one way in which you get items (like the ancient dragonskin boots) that aren't as good as supposedly lesser materials.

[Jumping Jack]

it doesnt always work out that way. i have a character with ancient dragon skin boots, base armor rating +6, as well as a pair of "regular" dragon skin boots, base armor +7.

also keep rare/named equipment in mind...

If you look at the light armor table under 'feet', you can see that there are different base items called 'boots' that have armor 1,2, or 3. Let's call them "early game boots", "midgame boots", and "endgame boots". I'm guessing your ancient dragon skin boots are from the Western Kessian Basin coffin, picked up at a high character level, and they are cheap at value, while your dragon skin boots are from the Pickaroon Isle shop(or loot from a late game dungeon) and are expensive.

Early game 'boots'(cheap) AR 1(base) + 5(ancient dragon skin)= armor 6
Late game 'boots'(expensive) AR 3(base) +4(dragon skin)=armor 7

Unique equipment is here http://www.basiliskgames.com/forums/vie ... 040#p27040

Again I have no idea how the game works, these are just conclusions drawn from what items I saw generated in shops.

Also mad props to WorBlux for laying in the ground work viewtopic.php?p=38882#p38882

He even bothered to look at the weight multipliers. They could be something like this:

Base Weight multiplier
Copper 1
Bronze 1,1
Iron 1,2
Steel 1,3
Tempered Steel 1,4
Drwarven Steel 1,5
Tungsten 1,6
Mithril 1,5
Adamantium 1,6
Divine Ore 1,7

I'm not sure of the price modifiers, but prices don't really matter when you can farm for herbs ad infinitum with trained forage+rings. Although I guess ancient dragon skin/divine ore is *100 or *50 (the ancient dragon skin cloak in eastwillow well is value 100).

There are a couple chests around Book II with predefined items that scale in material based on your level, however, the names and the ratings don't seem to scale together (and the money seems not to scale at all). That's one way in which you get items (like the ancient dragonskin boots) that aren't as good as supposedly lesser materials.

Don't know about money, but in my experience the loot with predetermined item types where the material quality scales work just fine. With high character level:

-The same Western kessian basin coffin with the ADS boots has Divine Ore chain coif AR 1+5=6 and Divine ore Studded vest AR 1+5=6.
-The eastwillow well has ADS boots/cloak with armor rating 1(base)+5(material)=6 and a DO knife with damage 6=1+5.
-Port Kuudad blacksmith's back room has DO hammer&short sword, both base 2+material 5 = damage 7.
-The dwarftown chest with the key has DO warhammer damage 9 (=base4+material5) and DO scale boots AR 7(=2+5).

etc..

BTW in addition to scaling with character level, there is a random element in choosing the material for the loot with predetermined item type. Trying a couple of reloads on the bandits' chest in Farrock caves and the axe and sword ranged quite a lot from bronze to different types of steel IIRC on one character of mine, can't remember what level he was though.

[KillingMoon]

There are a couple chests around Book II with predefined items that scale in material based on your level, however, the names and the ratings don't seem to scale together (and the money seems not to scale at all). That's one way in which you get items (like the ancient dragonskin boots) that aren't as good as supposedly lesser materials.

Yes, that's how you find items like this:

This one's from a chest. Open this chest early in the game, and it'll be just a Bronze Machete. The longer you wait before opening - while your hero upgrades - the better the Machete becomes. This Mithril Machete with damage 6 would have become an Adamantium Machete with damage 7 and with even more patience you'll probably get a Divine Ore Machete. It's like wine, really.

[McSilly]

The map editor (3rd party program) lets you see the value of gear set in chests

[xolotl]

The map editor (3rd party program) lets you see the value of gear set in chests :P

That's often not true, actually... For containers that haven't been opened yet, typically the item data values will only have the generic name of the item populated; it typically won't get populated until you actually open the chest to look inside (this is how many of the items you find can "scale up" with your character, for instance if you open a chest towards the beginning of your game, versus towards the end).