New player guide to equipment

So you’ve just cleared the rat infested warehouse and presented all the corpses to Vizra and you have a nice starting pot of money. You want to use that money efficiently because it will make your journey easier in the long run. New players commonly ask, what sort of equipment should I use and where can I get it? This guide hopes to answer those questions.

Armor

TL;DR The city smiths provide items with the best protection for a while. Mobs usually drop low prot items except for mobs you won’t kill until much later in the game, i.e, bigger prestige mobs.

Armor comes in 3 flavors, light, medium and heavy.

As a new player you should probably use light armor but it varies depending on your guild. Figure out what armor skill(s) the guild you want to play gets, and if you don’t know it is fine to get light armor.

If you're a Wilder or Gaesati, armor is not as important at the start. Wilders learn how to armor themselves in the blood of their enemies relatively early, Gaesati cannot wear most armor until deep into the guild. gaesati_cmd check shows you what slots you can have armored, and it MUST be light armor in hit slots.

Generally mobs drop junk items, especially mobs you will be killing as a new player. What makes an item junk are two things, the material and the quality. Materials like stone or lead are heavy and offer terrible protections.

The best possible light armor from the city smiths is fine steel studded chitinium silk, but it is quite expensive. The exact price varies by your race, but unless a rich uncle left you a bunch of money for a starter set it is likely not worth the money. Try copper studded chitinium silk for a very reasonably priced alternative.

cost great,fine steel,studded,chitinium silk,leggings - 777k (for a Firbolg)
cost great,copper,studded,chitinium silk,leggings     - 36k (for a Firbolg)

then use order with the same command to actually order the item. The smith will take a minute to craft each item.

If you want to dive deep on options see help utilities, help materials, help armour types. Suffice to say there are a lot of options). Look for the Armoursmiths section in help utilities to get started. These are the two commands referenced above.

cost <quality>,<material>,<style>,[foundation,]<type>[ for <race>]
order <quality>,<material>,<style>,[foundation,]<type>[ for <race>]

For medium armor fine steel's the good stuff but also carries a high price. Iron is a decent compromise early on.

cost great,fine steel,scale mail,leggings 268k (for a Firbolg)
cost great,iron,scale mail,leggings - 88k (for a Firbolg)

Note: Armour produced by smiths is not of a consistent quality. Quality adjectives can vary by an adjective up or down.

What slots do I need to cover?

Races have two types of slots, hit slots and non-hit slots. A hit slot is a place where a monster can hit you in combat. It is important to wear armor in your hit slots and ideally wear armor that provides good protections. For non hit slots you want to find gear with magical properties that help your guild commonly something like +1 strength. Slots vary by race though most of the humanoid races have the same hit slots. To see the full list of slots for any race use the raceinfo command. To find the hit slots for your race use the slots hit command:

Slots that can be hit in combat:
 Slot          How often       Protection
 Head          occasionally    none
 Neck          rarely          none
 Torso         very often      none
 Left arm      sometimes       none
 Right arm     sometimes       none
 Left hand     occasionally    none
 Right hand    occasionally    none
 Left leg      often           none
 Right leg     often           none
Slots not listed above are never struck in combat.

You can also use the aim command.

aim at pisano
Pisano has the following body parts:
Head, neck, upper torso, left arm, right arm, left hand, right hand, lower torso, left thigh, right
thigh, left leg and right leg.

These are hit slots for an Antaeun and are the same as most humanoid races. A few races including Avan, Saerka, Beholder have different hit slots.

What is Marking?

The smiths can also mark gear for you which will prevent you from accidentally selling or sacrificing it. This is highly recommended for those shiny new pieces the smiths just made for you.

How can I tell if my protections are good or not?

Use the slots command and you will see lines like: There is excellent protection on head slot. (heavy armour)

The excellent above is an adjective from this list:

adjectives rating
Rating adjectives (opinionated)
  no              minor           adequate        outstanding
  insignificant   unsatisfactory  considerable    excellent
  inferior        basic           good            awesome
  minimal         mediocre        high            marvelous
  pitiful         average         exceptional     superior
  poor            intermediate    great           maximal
  petty           moderate        major           MAXIMAL
  low             useful          superb          

The show command has a paper doll in the lower left hand corner. The numbers in parentheses are what you are mostly looking for. If there is a dash it means you have no armor there.

Weapons

Choice of weapons will vary greatly depending on guild. A few guilds have specific weapons they use and some have a lot of options. The npc weapon smith (east when you enter the smithy) can create weapons for you, see help utilities.

Army, Templar: many options
Fire priest: spear or javelin, shield optional
Mage, Air priest: doesn’t matter so much since you won’t get skills to hit things
Wilder: axe

When starting out it can be hard to tell which weapon is best for you. Weapon material and quality matter as with armor. A fine steel weapon will likely be superior to a stone one for instance. And Weapons have sizes. A weapon fit for a huge firbolg might may not fit a tiny mold man. See Weapon types for a list of weapons with their sizes. There is a Cantrip named Compare weapons that you can learn from Danton via the syntax train compare weapons from danton. Compare weapons will will show which of two items is better at 'damage potential', 'potential magic energy', 'making damage', 'scoring hits', 'hit faster', 'better made (quality presumably)', and which is more valuable. You will likely get more information as you train the skill higher.

FAQ

Where is the smith?

In Vaerlon use the map command. You are looking for Smithy in the nw corner of the city. It is X on the map.

Does gear get damaged? Do I need to repair it?

Yes it can get damaged, but it is unlikely you will need to worry about this for a long time if ever. Experienced players have said that in practice armor rarely gets damaged.

Belannaer[D] <newbie>: Should be noted also that while gear can get damaged it cannot fully break. And it can be repaired. I think there was a pretty big buffer on it until it started affecting damage or protection.

See also Equipment_damage.

I found an item with a glow. How do I identify it?

identify <item> at the general smith. He is the first mob when you enter the smithy. See also Glowing equipment.

I want to make my own gear, can I do that?

Yes, but in practice no. Yes you can join the leatherworkers profession guild and make items, and it isn't even a bad choice for non-hit-slot items like earrings and rings. But in practice it requires many skins and significant time to make anything worth using. But skinning is a great source of money so if you want to go this route then by all means join the ranks of the leatherworkers. In practice you will probably want to be able to kill monsters that drop skins before worrying about leatherworking. There is also smithing with metal to make armor and weapons but it requires a significant number of profession levels and you won't have those when starting out.