Life is Feudal Official Forum

[JDresdin]

I'm trying to understand the reasoning behind tier 3 armour being blueprint locked.

I understand that the devs want heavy armour to be a rare thing (which it would be if it still required regional mats), but why would anyone in their right mind ever bring out such a currently rare piece of armour in a fight? Especially with the drawbacks of heavy (speed), and a naked with only moderately higher skill being able to take one down with piercing weapons.

This would be fine if we had more variation on armours, but as it is now 1/3 of all armour in the game (I'm not even considering Royal here, blueprints make sense regarding royal) is effectively not worth taking out in a fight and will never be seen outside of safe RP scenarios.

I'm sure someone will be able to tell me what I'm missing here, please do.

/Also considering how easy it would be to destroy a priceless set of armour, simply by looting, dropping, deleting.

[Gruber]

Do not think in YO scales.

- Big guilds want to have more than one armor smith. Just to push a few guys to skill 90, they will make a few hundreds of armor pieces.
- Just to equip a big guild once they need over 100 full armor sets
- Beeing in war needs a steady resupply of equipment, easily leads to a few hundreds of armor pieces a week.

And with that we are not even close to a mass production to force t3 equipment. Big guild have t3 blueprints as byproducts while fullfilling the usual t2 demands.
Even with bad luck blueprints for 10 sets of t3 armor a week should be possible, if the guild is big enough. And that while blueprints are simply a byproduct.
A mass production streamlined for t3 production should easily result in enouph blue prints for 50 sets of t3 armor a week. With reusing armor pieces, this do not even cost much resources.

Give it a few weeks and t3 armor will be more and more common. At least in a siege the defending site will want to equip everyone with the absolut best available.

[Hodo]

Again this is a matter of guild size and organization.

The guild I am in on NA has about 100 people, of which 60 are active most nights. We have about 8 blacksmiths who do armor currently.

We have NO issue cranking out high tier armor, outside of high quality iron ore and regional resources. But those are problems everyone will face.

If you are in a smaller guild (less than 30 active), you will probably never see the higher tier armor, and you shouldnt to be honest. If you want to get it, buy it from one of the bigger guilds.

To give you a rough idea what a large guild can do for you...
In one night (5 hours of work), we as a guild had 20 members working together, while 20 others worked on another project, and we managed to get over 9000 shaped stone done and in place in our walls. Along with the terraforming and the clay, needed for them.

[Velius]

To give you a rough idea what a large guild can do for you...
In one night (5 hours of work), we as a guild had 20 members working together, while 20 others worked on another project, and we managed to get over 9000 shaped stone done and in place in our walls. Along with the terraforming and the clay, needed for them.

I am constantly amazed by just how much players can accomplish in such relatively short amounts of time when they band together on a project, be it felling, uprooting, and carrying back well over 100k units worth of lumber in logs, or literally making a mountain out of a mole hill. When the call goes out, a guild will go full-on army ant mode.

[JDresdin]

I understand the pooling of resources for big projects, but I still don't understand why that justifies tier 3 armour requiring blueprints.

We don't have 1/3 of all weapons locked behind blueprints, why do it for armour? It makes grinding up to 90 armoursmithing (which I've done) in a smaller group feel almost pointless, quality and horse armour aside.

If it required only regional mats, they'd still be rare, but not so rare that a smaller sized group (100+) would mind risking them in a fight.

[Hodo]

I understand the pooling of resources for big projects, but I still don't understand why that justifies tier 3 armour requiring blueprints.

We don't have 1/3 of all weapons locked behind blueprints, why do it for armour? It makes grinding up to 90 armoursmithing (which I've done) in a smaller group feel almost pointless, quality and horse armour aside.

If it required only regional mats, they'd still be rare, but not so rare that a smaller sized group (100+) would mind risking them in a fight.

Weapons are a little different.

A Swordsmans Gross Messier isnt any better or worse than a War axe, or a Partisan, or even a Bardiche.

They each have their strengths and weaknesses. Unlike armor. Tier 3 armor is just that, HIGH end armor. The resistances on it are so much better than tier 1 it is almost comical.

[Velius]

I mean it does mirror the period in which this game is set. Fine armor, platemail in particular, was extremely rare and usually only owned by the richest nobility. A suit of jousting plate in this era was worth more than a small fiefdom and all the people who lived on it. It makes sense it would be rare from both a lore/history point of view as well as a game mechanic point of view since it's basically encasing yourself in a wall.

[JDresdin]

I understand the pooling of resources for big projects, but I still don't understand why that justifies tier 3 armour requiring blueprints.

We don't have 1/3 of all weapons locked behind blueprints, why do it for armour? It makes grinding up to 90 armoursmithing (which I've done) in a smaller group feel almost pointless, quality and horse armour aside.

If it required only regional mats, they'd still be rare, but not so rare that a smaller sized group (100+) would mind risking them in a fight.

Weapons are a little different.

A Swordsmans Gross Messier isnt any better or worse than a War axe, or a Partisan, or even a Bardiche.

They each have their strengths and weaknesses. Unlike armor. Tier 3 armor is just that, HIGH end armor. The resistances on it are so much better than tier 1 it is almost comical.

Are we playing the same game? There are certain weapons which are absolutely better than others, and of course all are situational.

Armour also has clear trade-offs. Heavy armour requires a stat investment to use effectively, it slows you down, makes you a larger target, and appears to affect your horses stamina as well (could be wrong on that last point).

My issue has more to do with the fact that half of all armours in the game are locked behind blueprints. It's the lack of variety in everyday armours that we will see which bothers me.

[JDresdin]

I mean it does mirror the period in which this game is set. Fine armor, platemail in particular, was extremely rare and usually only owned by the richest nobility. A suit of jousting plate in this era was worth more than a small fiefdom and all the people who lived on it. It makes sense it would be rare from both a lore/history point of view as well as a game mechanic point of view since it's basically encasing yourself in a wall.

Full Plate would still be rare if it required regional materials to make, and the realistic arguement doesn't really fly in face of many of the games other mechanics (i.e a guild of peasents which are all decked out with gold jewelery, a regional board of wood being worth more than a bar of gold, praying home, skill insurance, etc. etc.).

[Velius]

Full Plate would still be rare if it required regional materials to make.

It... does. Blueprints traded between allied guilds of complimentary regions allow those guilds to make as much full plate as they want so long as they can trade their blueprints for ones requiring their own region's resources.

Getting blueprints isn't the hard part, getting blueprints for your region is. Once you have a healthy trade agreement, however, it becomes quite easy for kingdoms to outfit their soldiers.

[JDresdin]

Full Plate would still be rare if it required regional materials to make.

It... does. Blueprints traded between allied guilds of complimentary regions allow those guilds to make as much full plate as they want so long as they can trade their blueprints for ones requiring their own region's resources.

Getting blueprints isn't the hard part, getting blueprints for your region is. Once you have a healthy trade agreement, however, it becomes quite easy for kingdoms to outfit their soldiers.

That was my bad for not wording it well, I know that they require regional materials, I think that would make them plenty rare on it's own.

Basically I'm saying I wish that tier 3 armour blueprints were much rarer, but were not consumed when you made the armour (its also my understanding you don't get blueprints requiring regional materials from the region you discover them in).