Heavy armor

Tier 5 in-game earnable Kaelar plate armor 3D renders.^[1]

Heavy armor is predominantly plate metal, but may incorporate other influences, such as leather.^[2]

Heavy armor typically has more HP than lighter armor.^[3]
Heavy armor is geared towards physical damage mitigation.^[4]

List of heavy armor

This section contains potentially outdated information from Alpha-1 testing.

Item	Type	Rarity	Level requirement	Set
Ethereal Plate Gauntlets	Gloves	Rare	1	Etherial
Ethereal Plate Spaulders	Shoulders	Rare	1	Etherial
Faded Breastplate	Chest armor	Poor	2	Faded
Faded Plate Boots	Boots	Poor	2	Faded
Imposing Plate Belt	Belt	Rare	9	Imposing
Plate Belt of Dragons Protection	Belt	Legendary	15	Dragon's Protection
Plate Boots of Dragons Protection	Boots	Legendary	15	Dragon's Protection
Plate Cussies of Dragons Protection	Pants	Legendary	15	Dragon's Protection
Plate Gauntlets of Dragons Protection	Gloves	Legendary	15	Dragon's Protection
Refurbished Plate Boots	Boots	Uncommon	8	Refurbished
Refurbished Plate Gauntlets	Gloves	Common	7	Refurbished
Transcendent Plate Helm	Helmet	Legendary	15	Transcendent
Worn Breastplate	Chest armor	Common	1	Worn
Worn Plate Boots	Boots	Common	1	Worn
Worn Plate Cuisses	Pants	Common	1	Worn
Worn Plate Helmet	Helmet	Common	1	Worn
Worn Plate Vambrace	Wrists	Common	1	Worn

Armor characteristics

Kaelar armor.^[5]

You're not going to get one set of armor that's going to be situationally relevant for every encounter you might face- that's crazy- and as a result of that you're going to have to succeed in acquiring sets that are situationally relevant for the types of encounters you are intending to face.^[6] – Steven Sharif

Light, medium, and heavy armor weights have different characteristics.^[7]

Stat values will be predominately the same but may be able to be adjusted by crafters who are capable with that type of armor.^[7]
- Physical Defense Mitigation.^[7]
- Magical Defense Mitigation.^[7]

The stat values on armor can include both damage dealing and damage mitigation stats.^[6]

Certain armor types are going to have certain type of predominant stat values. So there's going to be certain waterfall stats and/or certain primary attributes that are available on certain armor types; and then if you want to have the one that's not more prominently available- those will be rare to get- you'll have to elicit the services of a crafter who's very capable within that particular type of armor in order to get the non-traditional stats and/or waterfalls available. So there's still the ability to get whatever on these but they're going to be more predetermined for certain types of stats and waterfalls.^[7] – Steven Sharif

Set bonuses are granted to wearers of exclusively one "type" of armor, for example: all cloth, or all plate.^[7]^[7]^[8]

There'll be certain types of set bonuses granted across specific full sets or partial sets of armor types. There will be a similar function in how damage is mitigated based on the type of armor you're wearing and how that relates to physical or magical incoming damage. So that's something to keep in mind. It's going to be situational what type of adversarial foe am I facing and what armor is the best against that to mitigate damage.^[7] – Steven Sharif

The "type" of armor (cloth, leather, plate) a character is predominantly wearing is visible in their nameplate.^[7]^[9]
- There will be strengths and weaknesses for armor sets that opponents can exploit with gear enhancements, for example.^[7]

You're going to have certain strengths and weaknesses of armor sets and those can be specced into by your opponents. For example, I might place some type of elemental enhancements on my weapon that horizontally changes my outgoing damage and that's going to reflect based on the opponent on my target opponent and what type of armor they have available to them to counter that.^[7] – Steven Sharif

Itemization choice may potentially play into universal skill sets such as Dodge, Parry, and Active blocking.^[7]

We're playing a little bit with the idea of these universal skill sets, such as dodge, parry, block, active blocking, stuff like that; and progression within those areas. There is something to be said I think for incorporating itemization choice as part of that system as well; and how it might affect that system. That's something that I think is going to be coming up in the pitch phase here shortly from design as we implement those universal skills. So you can look out in the future for more information on that.^[7] – Steven Sharif

Class weapons and armor

Weapons and armor are not class locked, but certain archetypes or classes are more synergistic with certain types of weapons or armor.^[10]^[11]^[12]^[13]

This also applies to weapon skills.^[14]

Weapons are intended to be somewhat agnostic in the sense that you can find a way for a weapon to be utilized by different classes. Not just the rogue is going to be able to use daggers. Because if you restrict equipment through that, it makes the economy more difficult to have sustainability across the market of items.^[13] – Steven Sharif

Certain abilities require certain items to be equipped.^[15]

Q: We had stated that we were going to allow people to use any class combination, which would be both your archetypes together, being able to use any weapon. Do we see problems that could occur with that, for instance like a bow tank, or an orb tank or things like- will there be some strangeness there, or are there problems that you first are foreseeing in the future?

A: We're giving a lot of flexibility to the crafters in our game. They get to help define the stat block that a particular item, weapon, or gear has; and that stat block can be relevant to any particular class or archetype combination. So in that sense the idea is, no not to see any strangeness there or not to see any elements that would dissuade a person from that customization perspective.^[16] – Steven Sharif

Racial weapons and armor

Armor racial appearances in early Alpha-1.^[17]

Violet light and myself are wearing exactly the same armor set right: Same stats, same everything, but it drops for her it looks one way, it drops for me it looks another way; and... a small part of that is gender, but then the other part of it is race. So because I was a Vaelune in that playthrough my armor was in the Vaelune style; and when she picked it up it was in the elven style because she was an elf. So that gives you an example of sort of the breadth of looks that we're going for and how we try to capture like who you are as as a character and allow you to build your look that way.^[18] – Jeffrey Bard

Dünir and Empyrean racially styled armor concept art by Keith Kovach.^[19]

We have essentially sets that exist across all races; and each race that dons those armor sets is going to have their own racial influence on the presentation of those particular sets. So that's something that's unique in how each of the races get diversified.^[20] – Steven Sharif

Weapons and armor are not race locked, but armor will take on a racial appearance.^[20]^[21]^[22]

The customization of equipment per race is really focused on Armor sets not Weapon props. Weapon props will, from a model standpoint, will translate pretty one-to-one across the races.^[23] – Steven Sharif

Racial appearance of gear is focused on Armor. Weapons will not change in appearance but will scale in size based on race.^[24]^[23]

Let's say for example you have the Eagle set or something, right: The Eagle set has in art, it has a thematic design that's going to include certain attachments to the armor. It's going to include color palette and theme. It's going to have some aspects to it that define it as the Eagle set, right. When a Elf wears the Eagle set or when an Orc wears the Eagle set, you obviously have two different cultures there; and you don't want to stomp out that culture by assigning a de facto 'This is the Eagle set and this is how it looks on everybody.' What we want to have is cultural influences play a role in showing how that set looks.^[23] – Steven Sharif

Racial appearance of gear sets is tied to the character model of that race.^[25]

When you say, what if I'm an Orc but want to look like an Elf and I want my Eagle set to be the Elf representation? Well the issue becomes there that Orcs have a different organic model. You know, their body is different than that of the Elf. So, from a scope-creep standpoint, it's one thing to add different influences that represent the cultures that are donning the armor; it's another thing to adapt each influence as a matrix that can be worn pretty much by everything. From a scope perspective, that's a very difficult task for the character artists to tackle. So instead what we've done is, in order to facilitate a variety of cultural representation between the races but allow for the sharing of assets like different armor sets, we give different representations of those armor sets to each race.^[25] – Steven Sharif

Q: Since a single armor set will look different on each race, how will we have large varieties of in-game achievable gear for each race if we have to make nine different looks for each set?

A: The approach for that is to create a modular piece set for armor creation; and the way we achieve that is by two steps: So, on the modeling side, each race has these geo sets basically where you're creating pieces of the armor for heavy plate armor, for medium, for robes; and you get to grab those modular pieces and mix and match as design makes a request for a particular set to the art teams. So, design comes along and they say, "hey we have a theme for a set that we want to create", so let's use Carphin in that example; and that theme from design's standpoint is going to include color, it's going to include materials, it's going to have an etymology for the set to give a background so that they can incorporate certain types of attachments- whatever they want to include on the art side. Then, the character team says, "okay let's take our base sets of geo and let's mix and match those pieces to create the Carphin set and then we're going to do a materials pass on it, and then we're going to do a color pass on it"; and that way we have a lot of essentially pieces of the puzzle to create these many different unique sets. Now we can also deform pieces across from race to race. So, even if we create unique geo on a per-race basis, we can grab the pauldron from the Human set and put it onto the Vek representation; and the end game there is that we have a particular set, for example Carphin, and that Carphin is communicating the theme; and when you don the armor for the Carphin set- you've acquired the Carphin set and you put it on- it is going to look Vek if you're a Vek. It is going to look Kaelar if you're a Kaelar, but it is still going to have the identity and the theme of the Carphin set.^[26] – Steven Sharif