Armor and Protection

An Introduction and Guide

Overview

While much of this information is gathered from Tubine's Q&A page and other sources, it is often nice to have the information presented in one place, in an organized fashion. This document aims to provide this information.

This document attempts to answer questions like "why is everyone wearing a matty coat" and "why are so many people running around in faran robes?".

Damage Types

Damage Sources : Physical Vs Magical

There are two methods to cause damage to an opponent. One is to use a physical weapon (ie a sword, axe, or bow/arrow). The other is to cast a war spell.

Damage from a spell cast at you is very different from damage from an opponent's physical attack. This difference can be summed up as the following: damage from spells ignores armor (ie armor is useless against damage taken from spells).

Your only method of protection against magical attack sources are the seven resistance spells, which are discussed later. Both the armor self spell, impenetrability, banes, and all armor have no effect on damage taken from magical spells.

That is, if someone attacks you with a fire sword and does 15 damage, the damage will be lowered depending on how much your armor protects you against fire damage. It will also be lowered further if you have a fire protection self spell on you (or are wearing an item that casts fire protection self on you). If someone casts a firebolt III spell at you, the only way to lessen the damage it inflicts upon you is if you have a fire protection self spell active. The same applies to a dagger strike vs a force bolt (piercing damage). Armor protects you from the dagger strike, but not from the force bolt spell.

How do I tell what the source of the damage is?

There are two ways to discover this. First, did the creature cast a spell at you? That is ususally obvious in that you see your opponent actually cast the spell, magical effects in the air, and a firebolt slams into you.

The second is to read the damage message. "Banderling Raver cuts your lower leg for 13 slashing damage!" indicates that the attack was a physical one. Text in blue color usually indicates a spell cast at you, text in red color indicates physical damage.

The Seven Damage Types

The seven damage types are bludgeoning, slashing, piercing, fire, cold, acid, and lightning. Every attack in the game comes in the form of one of those damage types. If you take damage, even from a fall, you take damage of the appropriate damage type.

How do I tell what type of damage I am taking?

Read the damage message. "Banderling Raver cuts your lower leg for 13 slashing damage!" indicates that slashing was the damage type.

Armor Protection

As described above, armor only protects you against physical damage. Physical damage includes damage from weapons (ie sword, fire dagger, frost axe),

There are two parts to armor protection: armor level and element protection rating.

There are two spells that can be used to increase the protection that your armor gives you: impenetrability and banes, which will be discussed later.

Armor Level (AL)

This is the base number to begin the calculation with. It is both the most important number and the least important at the same time. A high AL is desirable on a piece of armor, but if its armor protection rating is low against a damage type, it is reduced, maybe even to zero!

It is both interesting and important to note the following statement on the Turbine Q&A page:

"The mapping of AL to damage protected against is not a linear relation. While point increases at lower levels are more noticable, there are dimineshing returns at higher AL levels."

What does this mean? It means that having 600 AL isn't three times as good as having 200 AL. The difference between 100 AL and 120 AL is much higher, probably, than the difference between 500 and 600 AL.

Another notable quote:

"Every player and monster has an armor level on each part of their body. The armor level for each body part is: your natural armor (which is zero for humans, but non-zero for monsters) plus/minus any "armor" or "imperil" spells you have on, plus whatever physical armor you are wearing at that spot. (Your physical armor value is modified by the armor's attribute for the given attack type. For instance, if your armor has Unparalleled protection from cold, your armor's AL is effectively doubled when you receive a cold attack. But if your armor has Poor protection from cold, the armor level is effectively reduced to 1/5th or so against cold attacks.) "

Armor Protection Rating

Every single piece of armor has a protection rating against each of the seven damage types. This rating modifies the armor level of that piece of armor to result in the actual armor level against an attack type.

To calculate the protection a piece of armor gives you against an attack, take the armor's AL and multiply it by the modifier in the table below, depending on it's protection rating. (You can find the protection rating against each of the seven damage types in the description of the armor).

For example, a mountain rat breathes fire on your lower leg. You happen to be wearing your copper yoroi leggings, which have an armor level of 147, and are below average protection against fire. Below average is listed as 0.4-0.7 in the table. The lowest AL would be 58 (147 * 0.4), and the highest AL would be 102 (147 * 0.7). There is no way to know exactly what modifier a piece of armor has within the range, but it is helpful to know the range. Taking the average number results in an AL of 80 against fire. Those great yoroi leggings don't seem so great anymore, especially after that mountain rat burns your legs off!

Some armor provides no protection at all against some damage types. This results in absolutely no protection against that attack type on the part of the body protected by that piece of armor. Wearing plate mail leggings with no protection from lightning is like wearing no armor at all when attacked by the lightning breath of an ash gromnie!

Increasing your Armor's Armor Level

Impenetrability raises the armor level or your armor. That is, if you cast impenetrability IV on your mattekar hide coat (120 AL), the armor level of the coat increases by 100 (220 AL). The amount of increase varies depending on the level of the impenetrability spell you cast on it. If you cast impenetrability VI on the same coat, the armor level of the coat increases by 200 (320 AL).

Increasing your Armor's Protection Rating

Bane spells increase the protection rating of a piece of armor against a specific damage type. There is a bane spell of each level corresponding to each of the seven damage types.

*(This table is an estimate, and will be verified)

The benefit of the bane spell is that it increases the protection rating of a piece of armor. Casting Bludgeon Bane V on your mattekar hide coat increases its effective AL against bludgeon attacks.

Stacking Your Armor

It is useful to know that you can stack your armor protections. For example, if you cast impenetrability V (adds 150 AL) on your satin shirt, and wore that under your mattekar hide coat (120 AL), your effective armor level for your chest and arms would be 270 AL. Some people cast impenetrability on their underwear, to get even higher levels of protection when hit in the girth area.

Other Protections: Armor Self and Resistances

Aside from armor, you can protect yourself with a further 8 spells: Armor Self, Bludgeon Resistance Self, Slashing Resistance Self, Piercing Resistance Self, Fire Resistance Self, Cold Resistance Self, Acid Resistance Self, and Lightning Resistance Self.

The Armor Self Spell

The armor self spell gives your natural skin an armor level, depending on the level of armor self cast. Your skin has a normal armor level of zero.

It is important to note here that, like armor, your skin has armor protection ratings. Unfortunately, these ratings cannot be changed. See the section on protection ratings in the under the armor section.

The following table lists your skin's natural protection ratings against each damage type:

Your skin's natural armor rating has no effect unless you have armor self cast on you, in which case they modify the effective AL you receive for each attack type.

The Resistance Spells

Resistances are great spells. They affect all damage of the appropriate type for both physical and magical attacks, as shown in the following table:

When you have bludgeon resistance self V on yourself, all bludgeoning damage taken by you is reduced by 50%, as seen in the table. If someone were to hit you with a club for 10 damage, you would only take 5, which would be further reduced by any armor you might be wearing at the hit location. If someone were to cast shock wave III at you and hit you for 28 damage, you would take only 14 damage, and of course armor would have no effect, as it is a spell.

Some Examples

The mattekar hide coat is AL 120, and has the following protection ratings:

The hooded faran robe is AL 0, and has the following protection ratings:

Casting the seven level V bane spells on the robe results in the following protection ranges:

This is interesting. The protection rating range for average is 0.9 to 1.1. Unparalleled is 2.0. A level V bane doubles (100%) the protection rating. This indicates that the protection rating against bludgeon was between 1.0 and 1.1 (in the high end of average), since it's new rating after being doubled is 2.0 or higher (unparalleled).

However, the rating for slashing and piercing, both also listed as average, is excellent after the level V bane, indicating that the original rating was under 1.0 (ie between 0.9 and 0.99, not not 1.0). It is quite close to unparalleled however, since we know that it was at least 0.9, and twice that from the bane is 1.8, so the new protection rating for slashing and piercing is between 1.8 and 1.9, in the high end of excellent.

Another interesting discovery is that while the other four attack types (fire, cold, acid, and lightning) are all listed as poor protection rating, after level V banes on each type the acid type does not achieve an above average rating, as the other three did. There are two discoveries here. First, is the obvious: that the robe's acid protection is less than it's cold, fire, or electrical protection. Second, and more perplexing, is how it achieved average and above average ratings starting from a poor rating. A poor rating is between 0.1 and 0.3. Double that from a level V bane, and the best you could expect is below average (0.3 x 100% = 0.6). So how did something that was 0.3 at best end up in the range 0.8 to 1.1 for acid, and 1.2 and 1.5 for fire, cold and lightning?

This, I will attempt to answer with some tests later. There could indeed be another, hidden factor being applied here. This factor would allow something with a "none" protection rating to improve with a bane, which would not normally be the case (ie 0 x 100% = 0).

One guess is that when a bane is applied, you add x% of 1.0, and add the original protection rating, where x is the modifier of that level of bane spell. In this example, a level 5 bane starts with 1.0 (1.0 x 100% = 1.0) and adds the protection rating. The rating for fire, cold, and lightning would be in the range 0.2 to 0.3 here (the upper range of the poor protection rating) because they became above average (ie 1.0 + 0.2 = 1.2). In this way, a piece of armor with a protection rating of "none" would become 1.0, or average, in that damage type. This can quickly be tested by casting acid bane V on a piece of armor with a protection rating of "none" for acid, for example.