A Most Complete Guide to Armors (2020 Edition)

In June 2017, MindArk released Loot 2.0 which changed how the loot system calculates how much loot you get. In order for these new loot calculations to make sense, MindArk had to make defensive costs cheaper for everyone and so many changes were made to how Armors absorb damage and how they decay. Here is MindArks’ statement regarding these Armor changes from VU 15.15:

Bertha Bot said:

Notice
Armor Changes

• Armor now decays significantly less per point of damage absorbed.
• Armor no longer has a minimum decay based on total protection, it will now always decay proportionally to the amount of damage absorbed.
• Armor now absorbs all incoming damage, instead of the previous 1.0 damage taken when a full hit was absorbed. Such cases are indicated by a Deflected message in the chat window.
• Armor and armor platings now decay independently based on the amount of damage they each actually absorb, rather than both decaying as if absorbing the full amount of received damage.
• Armor decay is now linear per point of damage absorbed, rather than increasing in cost per damage absorbed.

Originally Posted Here

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Armors in Entropia have always been of great interest to me, ever since I first started learning about how they really work from reading Jimmy B’s 2008 thread: How Armor Works. It was around that time that I first started collecting various Armor sets and experimenting with them. Although his thread was a true inspiration to me and many others I’m sure, much of the information which it contains has become irrelevant since Loot 2.0. Such concepts as ‘over-protecting’, ‘minimum decay’ or the whole bit about the damage being offered to both the plate and the armor piece separately just no longer apply.

However the subject of Armor protection as a whole is still quite vast and I think it’s fitting that we should have a Guide such as this one where the entirety of the subject can be covered in one place. It is for that reason that I have decided that I would try my hand at writing a completely new Armor Guide.

But my intention with this is not only to share with the community what information we do have but also to identify those areas which we are still fuzzy on and solicit collaboration on doing further research. Throughout the guide I will note those areas and discuss them in more detail at the end. Here is how I have organized the information which will be covered in this guide:


In this first post, I will start with 'The Basics of Armor Protection' where I will go over what armors do for you, how they work exactly and what armor protection costs relative to the alternative which is healing. This first section is more likely to prove useful to newer players as opposed to seasoned veterans and as such it is written with that target audience in mind. More experienced players may wish to skip ahead to the later sections.


Introduction: Why Armor
All avatars have a limited amount of health which regenerates at a fixed rate of 4 points every 20 seconds (without any buffs). Creatures inflict damage which will take away your health at a rate which is faster then it regenerates, therefore, something has to be done in order to restore this lost health, or to protect it so as not to lose it in the first place. There are only a few options for this:

1. Restore your health using a healing tool / life steal
2. Protect against the creature's attack with Armor
3. Hire someone to heal you while you hunt

Many hunters use a combination of the above, and each one of these have their own advantages and drawbacks, probably the most studied aspect of which is their relative economy.

The benefits to using Armor
As a general rule, Armor is very practical to use for a few reasons:

1. Very economical to use right out of the gate:
The base cost for Armor protection amounts to 20 hp / pec (determined by its Durability, which will be covered in the next post below), whereas for healing tools, well, if you go to Entropiawiki.com and compare all the Medical Tools currently available, what you are likely going to notice is that the majority of healing tools that have an economy higher than 20 hp heal/pec are unlimited and cost thousands of PED (tip: click on the 'Eco' column to organize them from highest to lowest eco, descending).

If we wish, we can compare individual healing tools and see how they stack up against the most basic of armors, Adjusted Pixie:


2. No need to stop shooting to heal yourself:
If you are going to go the healing route, it will always be necessary to stop shooting or swinging in order to equip your healing tool and heal your hp, and this process will afford the creature more time with which to deal you more damage, which will in turn increase your defensive costs. When your strategy is to just protect your hp using adequate armor protection to absorb all of the damage that the creature is going to inflict, there is never a need to stop shooting.

3. No professional requirements on Armors:
No skills required for using any armor, even high-level armors. This means anyone can use any armor that they wish to use, to their full capacity. This is not the case with healing tools, which all have professional requirements. It’s not possible for a new player to use an Adjusted Restoration chip for example, as it is required that you be level 5 in Biotropic in order to do so. However a new player fresh off the arrival ship can jump into a set of Angel armor and benefit from it’s full protection capabilities.

4. Nice Buffs available on some sets:
Many armor sets offer very attractive buffs which improve your hunting performance. Such buffs include: 20% increased Dodge chance, 10-20% increased Evade chance, 3% faster reload speed, 5% Acceleration, 1-4% Block chance and many others. Other than ‘Heal over time’, there are no buffs available on Healing Tools at this time.

The drawbacks to using Armor
It wouldn’t be fair to only discuss the benefits of using armors and omit completely any of their disadvantages, so here are the main ones:

1. There isn’t really any ‘One-size-fits-all' solution with armors:
The biggest disadvantage that Armors have when compared to using a healing tool is that an Armor set only protects against certain damage types and so while one particular Armor might be considered very good, it will not work for all creatures. This often causes hunters to have to own several sets of Armors and Armor plates, and to switch between them depending on which creature they are hunting. This also means that a good amount of research as to what creatures do which types of damage is essential.

Healing tools on the other hand will restore your health no matter what damage type the creature is inflicting. As such, any Healing tool can be used for any creature, whereas armors just do not work that way.

2. Using armor does not give you any skills:
Skills in Entropia have value and can be sold, and while most activities performed in the game increases your skills, wearing and using armor does not. In contrast, using Healing tools does.

3. It's not possible to achieve the high levels of Economy some Healing tools offer:
There are a number of Healing tools that are capable of restoring >100 hp/pec, and a few that can do >200 hp/pec. While some of them are prohibitively expensive, they do exist and can be acquired and used, whereas such economy is just not possible with armors which seem to only go up to a maximum of 25 hp/pec at this time.

Limited vs Unlimited armor
I’m sure that it is well understood by all that Limited armor parts and plates cannot be repaired and re-used, while Unlimited parts on the other hand can. However these 2 differ in other ways as well and I think it could be of benefit to some that I quickly go over the main points.

1. Unlimited Armors provide less and less protection as they decay:
One particular feature that MindArk introduced (VU 9.1 I believe) for Unlimited Armors is that they will provide less and less protection as they decay. You still only pay for the damage that is absorbed by the Armor, so this doesn’t affect your protection costs in any way, but it can sometimes be an inconvenience and require that you heal more often (using a FAP which in many cases is less economical then Armor) as your hunt progresses, or that you travel back to a repair terminal to fix your Armor so that it will provide full protection again.

2. Limited has 10k more points of Durability:
The research on this isn’t complete yet but according to all observations so far, 10k more points of Durability is equal to a 10% reduction of the costs of protection, i.e. about +2 hp/pec, or expressed yet another way, will provide a 10 PED savings per 100 PED of armor decay. The subject of Armor Economy and Durability will be covered at great length in the next post.

3. Pay-as-you-go model vs large upfront costs:
Nice Unlimited Armor sets such as Angel, Mayhem, Shadow and many others can bear huge upfront costs, in the tens of thousands of PEDs. Limited versions of these armors on the other hand will require only a smaller commitment in the form of markup paid on the armor piece. This markup can be anywhere from <101% of the TT value, up to >300% of the TT value on some harder to find Shadow (L) parts. Still, the 300% of TT value is a much easier pill to swallow than the 25k or so PED that’s usually asked for a full set of Unlimited Shadow.

Types of Damage
An Armor will absorb the damage which is inflicted by a creature (mob) and in doing so will preserve your hp, eliminating the need to heal. When you look at the 'Detailed Information' panel of an armor part, you can see exactly what damage types an armor is capable of absorbing. There are 9 different damage types in total, and these can be grouped into 3 major categories of damage like this:

Close Damage: Impact, Cut & Stab
Ranged Damage: Burn, Penetration & Shrapnel
Special Damage: Acid, Cold & Electric

Mobs inflict different damage types and this is a subject that has been extensively researched since it is so vital for hunters. Most of the mobs' damage types can be looked up on Entropiawiki.com with a certain degree of accuracy and reliability, though it's important to note that sometimes different maturities will deal this damage in varying proportions and sometimes will deal different damage types altogether. A good example of this would be the Shubs on Monria which have been documented to deal Electric from level 43 and above, but not below 43.

A mobs' damage types are always expressed in percentages on Entropiawiki.com. This makes it easy to see at a glance which damage types are more important. For example the Entropiawiki.com page for Feffoids shows us this information:

Under the specs for Feffoids we see that the Damage they deal is composed of 35% Impact damage and 65% Cold damage.

In the table which lists all of the maturities for Feffoids, we can see how much total damage each one deals exactly. So if I take the Feffoid Raider as an example, it can deal up to 40 points of damage. Now if I want to know how much of that would be Impact and how much would be Cold, I just have to solve for it like this: 40*0.35=14 Impact, and 40*0.65=26 Cold. What this means is that when I get hit for 40 by a Feffoid Raider, 26 points of that is Cold damage and the other 14 points is Impact. If I'm using Liakon Armor, its 31 points of protection against Cold will have no problem absorbing those 26 points of Cold damage from the Feffoid Raider, and its 21 points of protection against Impact will also absorb the 14 points of Impact damage with ease. This then results in a 'Deflected' hit and I do not lose any health points.

3 Broad Categories of Armor
1. Close damage Armors:
The great majority of Armors in the game defend first and foremost against Impact, Cut and Stab damage. Some of the more popular ones would include:


2. Range damage Armors:
There are many Armors which primarily defend against Range damage creatures such as Robots. These Armors all have better protection for Burn and Penetration. Shrapnel, which is also a Ranged damage, is not a common damage type for Robots or any other creatures for that matter, in fact it is unlikely you will ever be subjected to Shrapnel damage unless you are attacked with a rocket launcher by another player in PvP. So if you are not planning on participating in Player-vs-Player activities, you needn’t worry about the amount of Shrapnel damage protection an armor has.

Some of the more popular Range Damage Armors would include:


3. Specialty Armors:
These typically have some very high protection against only one or two damage types. Thunderbird for example is a specialized Armor which has a high level of protection against Electric damage. Polaris is another good example, it is highly specialized as it has no Impact and no Burn, the 2 most common damage types in the game. Instead, Polaris has a high level of protection against Penetration and Cold damage, which are never found in significant proportions together on the same creature. Therefore using Polaris efficiently would require knowledge of what creatures it would best be suited for, of which there are only a handful in all of Entropia Universe really.


How much protection you need
In the same way that your weapon will deal damage to a creature within a given range, so too will the creature’s damage fall within a range. If Entropiawiki.com says that a creature will deal 40 points of damage, that is the maximum amount of damage it is capable of inflicting in one attack. The actual damage dealt will be random and fall somewhere between 20 and 40.

Let’s go back to our previous example with the Feffoid Raider, which was capable of inflicting a maximum of 26 Cold and 14 Impact, and let’s ask: would your Armor really need to have that much protection? Actually no, it doesn't. How much protection you will need exactly in order to be safe is going to be very difficult to answer because there are just so many variables that come into play here, such as how many times will you actually get hit by the creatures before you kill them? (which will depend on several factors such as your Evade level, your DPS, etc…), and do you want to heal yourself from time to time to skill up Paramedic or would you rather avoid healing altogether?

As a general rule, I try to protect sufficiently so that when I do receive a hit with the maximum damage amount from the creature I’m hunting, I won’t lose more than 8 hp. This strategy allows me to hunt continuously without having to heal and usually allows me to also take advantage of free health regeneration along the way. But this again can vary greatly from one hunter to the next, depending on several variables such as how much total health you have, how fast the creature’s attacks are, and if you have any buffs active that increase your health regeneration.

If we look over the Armors I’ve listed in the Close damage Armors table above, we should be able to quickly identify which Armors might work for the Feffoid Raider, and which ones would not. Jaguar with it’s 13 points of Cold damage stands out as being the strongest one, while Ghost, with 12 points of Cold damage is a close 2nd choice. They both have ample Impact protection, more than enough against the maximum 14 points that the Feffoid Raider can inflict. That only leaves the Cold. If I receive a full hit while wearing Jaguar armor, 13 points will get through the armor and my health will drop by that amount (26 - 13 = 13). If I’m wearing Ghost and I receive a full hit, 14 points will get through (26 - 12 = 14). So on their own, these armors are good, but they might not be enough for me.

Increasing an Armor’s protection values using Armor plates
Just like there are attachments for weapons, such as amplifiers and scopes for example, there are also attachments for Armors. These are called Armor Plates and they offer their own protection, which when attached to an Armor piece combine with the Armor piece’s protection. Since a set of Armor is composed of 7 parts, it is required to have 7 Armor plates if one wishes to increase the protection for each one of the parts in the set.

Armor plates, like Armors, also come in the Limited and Unlimited variety. They obey the same rules when it comes to Durability, and they also usually fall under one of the 3 broad categories I spoke of earlier. Some of the more widely used Armor Plates at this time would include:


The only plate here that offers any Cold protection is the Mk. 5D plate which has 12 points of Cold. If I were to add one to each of the parts of a Jaguar Armor set, I would end up with a total of 25 Cold protection, and since the maximum amount of Cold that the Feffoid Raider is capable of dealing is 26, a full hit would only make me lose 1 hp. If I added the 5D plates to a set of Ghost armor, I would end up with a total of 24 Cold protection, which means that a full hit from a Feffoid Raider would cause me to lose only 2 hp. This amount of protection would be more than sufficient for this particular creature and maturity.


What is the first armor I should get?
The first armor you should get is the one you are given once you graduate your discipleship. To get it, you must have a Mentor and you must graduate. The planet you are on at the moment you graduate determines the armor you will get, i.e. each planet has it's own Graduation armor which has it's own unique look and set of protection stats.

Which Graduation armor should I get?
The best Graduation armor used to be the Musca Adjusted awarded on Arkadia, however since the introduction of the Atlas armor on NI, it is debatable now which one is the best. Though Acid protection isn't that usefull for low level hunters, the Atlas does have 10 Impact, 9 Cut and 9 Stab, which actually makes it pretty strong compared to all other Graduation armors, not to mention it looks pretty cool. So I predict the resale value should maintain itself pretty well versus the others.

I have now outgrown my Graduation armor, what is the next armor I should get?
Have you bought yourself a set of 5B and/or other armor plates to use with that armor yet? If not, that's what you should do. Adding a set of 5B plates to your Graduation armor will make it go a lot further. If you have already gotten a set of 5B and/or other armor plates, then you have a few options, depending on what you like to hunt:

Gremlin: This is by far the most versatile armor in the game for your level; it can be used for hunting practically anything that your dps will currently allow you to hunt, with the right set of plates of course.

Nemesis: This set has the advantage that it's parts are upgradeable to Adjusted Nemesis. Nemesis has 15 Impact, 15 Cut and 15 Stab, which is somewhat comparable to Ghost, but it lacks the Cold and Electric protection. Still, it should be considered here as it could be part of your long term strategy as a hunter. Some may choose to skip ahead and just go straight to a set of Adjusted Nemesis and though it isn't really necessary yet, if you can afford it, it's probably not a bad idea (but this is primarily a robot armor, so if you hate hunting robots, then don't get it).

Ghost: The most protection you can get for the money, bar none. Almost every single hunter in Entropia will at some point or other own this armor set. Ghost with the right set of armor plates makes pretty much all of the old-school mid-level Entropia mobs possible to hunt, including but not limited to: Atrox, Argonaut, Allo/Estos, Feffoid, Ambulimax, Longu, Mulmun and Longtooth. The Ghost is the most sensible purchase of the 3 options discussed here.

I have now outgrown Ghost+5B, what is the next armor I should get?
Have you bought an Adjusted Restoration chip yet? If you haven't already, that may be what you want to do at this point since this is practically a must for any hunter. An Adj Resto chip will allow you to go much further with whatever armor setup you currently have and postpone the need for you to get a stronger, more expensive armor set.

If you already have an Adj Resto chip and you find that your Ghost isn't doing the job anymore, I'm sorry to inform you, but there is a bit of a gap here in the line up. Or depending on which way you want to look at it, there's a big spike in the costs of protection. From the +300 ped or so that Ghost cost, we now find ourselves looking at options ranging from +2.5k to +10k:

Adjusted Nemesis: This is not a very big upgrade from Ghost but don't underestimate this armor set; if properly matched to the mob, it can take you a very long way, even above level 50 probably, you'd still find it usefull for hunting certain mobs, especially certain robots. It is quite versatile since it has both a decent amount of close damage protection and ranged damage protection.

Lion: A very nice mid-range armor with the Impact, Cut, Stab protection strengths inverted (normally Impact always has the highest protection value but in the case of Lion, Stab has the highest protection value). Lion armor parts drop in Robot Beacons. A full male set costs approximately 8500-11,000 ped these days.

Adjusted Boar: Very nice armor set with a Dodge buff and 30 Impact protection. A male set of Adj Boar costs about +8k to +10k nowadays, though it is pretty rare and so I predict the price will go up further.

Adjusted Jaguar: More balanced protection compared to Adj Boar, similar price range.

Another option is to just use cheap looted armor pieces from auction. For example most Martial (L) armor parts cost less than 110%, same goes for armor parts like Tiger (L), Hermes (L), Vain (L), Spartacus (L), even Eon (L). There is nothing wrong with bridging the gap at this point using cheap limited looted armor pieces, and even mixing and matching as needed, until you are ready to settle into something a little more permanent like for example upgrade Angel, upgraded Gorgon armor or something similar, which should last you a very very long time before it's no longer useful to you and you have to get something else.

Some people might advise you to get Modified Viceroy at this point, I just don't see how that makes any financial sense since it is avatar bound and not tradeable. In any case, if you do decide to go that route, be prepared for it to cost you about 9k ped in all.

How does Block Chance work?
Some upgraded armor plates have a percentage Block Chance buff on them, which means that you have a chance to Block the incoming damage and therefore the hit becomes null and of no consequence to you; i.e. you take no damage and your armor and plate do not decay since the hit was blocked completely.

The Durability number on a piece of armor is what determines how much it will decay per point of damage absorbed, the higher the number, the cheaper it will be. A lot of research was done many years ago to determine what the exact costs were, what was found is:

Jimmy B said:

The decay formula

Armor decay obeys a reasonably simple formula. As the function is not smooth in durability, I'll split it into two formulas for simplicity.

For armors with durability below 10000 the formula is:

Decay = (0.003 x dmg^1.75 + 0.05 x dmg) x (1 - Durability/100000)

For armors with durability above 10000 the formula is:

Decay = [0.0015 x (3-Durability/10000) x dmg^1.75 + 0.05 x dmg]x (1 - Durability/100000)

In both formulas, dmg represents the total damage absorbed by the armor piece in the hit.

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At this time it would appear that the formula for Armor Decay has been simplified in VU 15.15 to the following:

Decay = damage * 0.05 (1 - durability/100000)

I owe a big thanks to Hijacker27 who led me on the right path with his post here when I was looking into this. While doing my own testing on this I was able to arrive at the exact same results he did and thus was able to confirm his numbers and satisfy my own curiosity on the matter. However more research is required in this area in order to determine whether this holds true for Limited armors with more than 10k Durability (will discuss this further at the end of the guide).

Protection Costs of Unlimited Armor
Let’s compare some of the more popular armors using the above formula to see what that will translate to in terms of protection costs:


Using a set of Angel as opposed to a set of Ghost would result in a savings of ~2 PED for every 100 PED of decay incurred, or 2% savings in protection costs.

Protection Costs of Limited Armor
Although the formula we have right now might not hold true for Limited Armors, let’s use it for now and take a look at some of the more popular Limited armors and see how they compare (once the research has been completed on this I will come back and revisit this post to make sure that everything is accurate):


The last column on the above table shows the difference in the costs of protection (in the form of armor decay) when compared with Ghost armor which only has 2000 points of Durability.

Defensive costs returned in loot
However this is far from being the whole picture, there are a few more things to consider when it comes to the Economy of Armors. One very key aspect of this has to do with this statement which was made by MindArk back when Loot 2.0 was released in June of 2017:

Charlie|MindArk said:

Most of the decay from healing and using armor is now compensated for in the loot of the mob. On top of this the actual amount of decay to the armor per damage absorbed was reduced greatly. Overall the cost for healing and armor usage is less than 5% of what it used to be.

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What this means is that at least 95% of your Armor decay is returned to you in the loot of the mob (this assumption could be wrong and research on this is still lacking). So if at the end of a hunt, your Armor repair bill is 100 PED, at least 95 PED of that was returned to you in the form of loot and so the actual cost to you is only about 5 PED.

If the majority of the decay is returned, then the savings which are gained through increased Durability will be greatly affected. Let's take an example of how this would work:

I went on a hunting run with a set of Unlimited Tiger (M) Armor which has a Durability of 3500. At the end of the run, my Tiger had decayed 100 PED.

Example using 2 identical hypothetical hunting runs:
Decay on Tiger (M) Armor = 100 PED
Decay on Ghost (+1.5% increase in decay costs for same protection) = 101.50 PED

95% compensation received in loot:
For the Tiger decay, 95 PED is returned
For the Ghost decay, 96.425 PED is returned

Net Armor protection costs:
Tiger: 100 - 95 = 5 PED
Ghost: 101.50 - 96.425 = 5.075 PED

This hunting run would have lasted a few hours at least, perhaps as much as 10 hours. If a person hunts 20 hours/week for a year, they will have saved themselves 8-16 PED if they used the Tiger instead of Ghost.

Limited vs Unlimited economy & taking markup into account
Let's now compare an Unlimited armor with it's Limited counterpart with the exact same protection values but 10k more points of Durability. Here's what we get:

Example using 2 identical hypothetical hunting runs:
Decay on Tiger (M,L) Armor = 100 PED
Decay on Tiger (M) (+10% increase in decay costs for same protection) = 110 PED

95% compensation received in loot:
For the Tiger (M,L) decay, 95 PED is returned
For the Tiger (M) decay, 104.50 PED is returned

Net Armor protection costs:
Tiger (M,L): 100 - 95 = 5 PED
Tiger (M): 110 - 104.50 = 5.50 PED

This would amount to a savings of about 10 pec/hour BUT, there is yet another factor at play here which we really need to take into account and it has to do with this next statement which was also made by MindArk upon releasing Loot 2.0 back in 2017:

Charlie|MindArk said:

The loot system never accounts for markup. Not on markup spent on things like enhancers or limited weapons, nor on markup gained from loot such as oils, items and ESI etc, markup values are just transactions between players.

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So as you can see, we need to consider the markup that we had to pay on this Limited Tiger armor, which is not going to be returned by the loot system.

If I paid 108% markup on that Tiger Armor overall, then that 100 PED of decay actually cost me 108 PED and here's what we get:

Net Armor protection costs:
Tiger (M,L): 108 - 95 = 13 PED
Tiger (M): 110 - 104.50 = 5.50 PED

So although at the end of the day, my overall expense for protection was 2 PED cheaper using the Limited Tiger, I only got about 88% of it back in the loot and so my net protection costs were more than double that of the Unlimited Tiger.

On its own, the higher Durability value of a Limited armor would not be enough to justify choosing it rather than it's Unlimited counterpart. A much more likely reason would be that it's a 'pay-as-you-go' option rather than the large amount of PED that's required upfront when purchasing a nice Unlimited Armor set.

Conclusion
Since the changes to armor in 2017, Durability means almost nothing. All armors 'efficiency' now falls somewhere between 20-23.5 hp/pec, and since the majority of the decay is compensated in the loot of the mob, the difference it makes to the bottom line is so minuscule as to make this Durability parameter totally inconsequential and useless.

As such, it goes without saying that the Durability an armor has should never have any bearing in the decision process involving Unlimited armor acquisitions. Such things as the protection it offers and the way it looks should be much more important to you then the prospect of saving ~1 pec/hour.

When comparing Limited armors, if the goal is to reduce defensive costs, then one should pay particular attention to the markup costs of the armor as this will bear the most significant impact on your overall defensive costs. And as is the case with Unlimited armor, here too the Durability value can be disregarded completely without fear of it impacting your bottom line.

Now let's talk about Armor Enhancers and what they can do for you. When it comes to Armors, there are only 2 types of Enhancers available: Durability and Defense. In order to get the most benefit from each one of these, it's important to understand how they work and what they do exactly.

What Armor enhancers do could be expressed quite simply in this way:

Durability enhancers reduce protection costs. For UL armors, the decay
savings amount to ~0.3%/tier, for (L) armors, they add up to ~1.3%/tier
~ • ~ ~ • ~
Defense enhancers raise protection values on all armors by 5%/tier​

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Allow me to explain how that works exactly:

Durability Enhancers
When you add a Durability Enhancer to a piece of Armor, it increases the Durability of that piece of Armor by 10%. So if you are adding a Durability Enhancer to a Tiger Helmet (L) for example, the Durability on that helmet will go from 13,500 to 14,850 (because 13,500*1.10=14,850). As we have seen in the previous post, 1000 points of Durability is equal to approximately 1% in protection costs, therefore this additional 1,350 points of Durability will amount to approximately 1.35% reduction of the protection costs.

This 1.35% may not seem like much, but it adds up, especially on Limited armors that have a high markup. For example, if you had let's say a half tt set of Perseus that was tier 4 and added Durability enhancers to all the pieces, your savings when factoring in a 140% markup for Perseus would add up to approximately 50 PED. On Supremacy (L), if we assume an average markup around 150%, the savings could easily add up to well over 200 PED, depending on how fast the parts tier up.

However for Unlimited armors, we get a completely different picture. If we were to add a Durability Enhancer to a piece of Adjusted Jaguar, our Durability of 3700 only goes up to 4070 and that would reduce the decay costs by only ~0.30%. But is it possible to realize a savings by using Durability enhancers on Unlimited armors? In order to answer that, we need to understand the following:

a) MindArk has stated that all defensive costs are now compensated for in the loot of the mob at a rate of approximately 95% since the launch of Loot 2.0 in June 2017 (that includes both armor and FAP decay)

b) The tt of enhancers is refunded with shrapnel when they break

c) Enhancers break randomly and it is not possible to predict the break rate with absolute certainty

Since Durability enhancers seem to cost on average 250% these days, we will need to accomplish a savings of at least 90 PEC otherwise it would not be worth using them. In order to accomplish that savings, we need the armor to decay at least 18 PED before 1 Durability enhancer breaks (18*0.05=0.90 PEC of decay not returned in the loot of the mob).

I am not sure that the research has been done yet to determine what the average break rate is for Durability enhancers, but I think it's unlikely that any net savings can be achieved. (I will discuss this again in the Further Research section at the end of the guide)

Defense Enhancers
A Defense Enhancer will increase the protection values of an armor piece by 5%, so for example, if we were to add Defense Enhancers on Tiger armor, we get this:


Defense Enhancers are the better option for unlimited armors, and they are very useful on limited armors as well, especially the high-level ones where a 5% increase to the protection adds up to a lot. For example a tier 10 Perseus Harness, when filled with Defense enhancers, will give you 75 Impact, 60 Cut and 64.5 Stab protection, which is like wearing both Chronicle (which currently has the highest Cut/Stab protection available in the game) and Carramone (which has the highest Impact) at the same time. Here's what Perseus looks like with Defense enhancers:


One thing to keep in mind however, is that you will pay for that extra protection, at the same rate as the rest of the protection on the armor. What that means for Limited armors is that it might only last you about 67% as long as what you are used to, because they will be absorbing a lot more damage and therefore decaying faster (depending on how much damage the armor is absorbing of course).

And what it means for Unlimited armors is that adding a bunch of enhancers on Tier 4 or 5 Ghost for example, though it might give you a nice boost in protection values, will be a very expensive setup for hunting in the long run because of the low Durability on Ghost armor which is only 2000, so you can expect your decay bill to be significantly higher than what you are used to.

Which Armor Sets are worth Tiering up
Since Tiering up an Armor set is a big investment both in terms of time and PED (in the form of hunting losses assuming a hunting tt return of about 96%-97%), then a good question to ask is "what armors are worth the time and money to Tier up?"

Though I haven't really researched this very thoroughly, I have given it a lot of thought. There are a few things to consider in order to give a complete answer:

1. Is the set useful, versatile and popular?
2. Is there an upgrade mission associated with this set?
3. Does that set have a decent Durability stat?
4. Is it Avatar bound?

So for 1 above, I would not waste my time tiering up a set of Dragon armor for example since it isn't useful really, it's more of a vanity/collectors item, so it's very unlikely that anyone would ever recognize any added value from it being tiered. For 2, I'd stay away from tiering up sets like Vigilante and Nemesis since most of the buyers are interested in just upgrading it to Adjusted, which means they will not recognize any added value for tiered pieces since the tiers are lost when the upgrade is performed. For 3, if the Durability is low like on Ghost (2000) or Hunter Mentor Edition (1680), it's just not a good investment because the added protection will just be expensive in the long run. And for 4, obviously if you can't sell it, then it would be impossible to get your money back from the investment, but of course for your own personal benefit, Stolen Imperium and Modified Viceroy are very useful sets and are worth tiering up.

Some Unlimited Armor sets I think are worth Tiering up would be:

1. FEN Angel
2. Mayhem
3. Shadow
4. Lion
5. Liakon
6. Tiger
7. Ghoul
8. eMINE

And of course rare uber Unlimited armors like: Ethereal, Carramone, Supremacy, Modified Shadow, Modified Angel, Rx OpTac, Eon, Imperial Hazen, Wormslayer, Vain, ...

I've left out Adjusted Jaguar, Adjusted Boar, Adjusted Angel, Adjusted Nemesis and Modified Vigilante because I suspect that MindArk will someday make an upgrade mission available for these, but these are all very good sets and I don't think it's a waste of time at all to tier them up. All of the armors listed above from 1 to 8 should be safe from ever having an upgrade mission associated with them.

In Summary
Armor Durability enhancers are best used on Limited armor, and the biggest savings and benefits to be obtained would be when used on Limited armors that have high markup, like Supremacy (L), Mayhem (L) and Shadow (L) for example.

Armor Defense enhancers are of benefit on both the Limited and Unlimited armors. The largest gains will be when used on the highest level armors in each category, so for example Sentinel and Carramone for Impact, Chronicle for Cut/Stab, Perseus for Impact/Cut/Stab, Pegasus and RX OpTac for Burn/Penetration and Imperial Hazen for Acid/Cold/Electric.

Armor Skill Mod enhancers would, once introduced, only be of benefit when used on an Unlimited armor.

There are many Upgrades available for Unlimited items such as guns, Armor parts and Armor plates, FAPs and even one for a Teleportation chip. For this section I've documented all of the Armor Upgrades that are currently available in EU.

1. Calypso Robot Armor Upgrades
On Calypso there are currently 6 Armor Upgrades available, these all have in common that the Upgraded Armor set has an Increased Dodge chance, which is only useful against Ranged Damage mobs, the most prevalent of which are Robots, and a 2nd buff which consists of Decreased Critical Damage, which is useful against all mobs.



Note 1: The Dodge buff is an Increased chance to Dodge a Ranged mob's attack. The strength of the buff shown is the strength when all 7 pieces are worn.

Note 2: The reduced Critical Damage buff reduces the mobs Crit Damage by that amount. Again, the strength of the buff shown is the strength when all 7 pieces are worn.

At first glance it may appear that the Range protection numbers on the Adjusted Vigilante and Modified Vigilante are really high when compared to other Armors which should have better numbers. This is deceptive because the upgraded Vigilante Armors have a high proportion of Shrapnel damage protection which as I've discussed earlier in the guide is not as useful as Burn and Penetration damage protection.

Out of all these, the price point on the Adjusted Nemesis makes it the most widely used at this time.

2. Crystal Palace Armor Plate Upgrades
There is an Upgrade available for Armor Plating Mk. 5B and Armor Plating Mk. 6A on Crystal Palace:


If you would like more information on The Hive and the Aurli bosses which drop the Mutated Bone pieces required for the Upgrades, there is a great tutorial on this here:

Info:THE HIVE: a tutorial to aurli uber bosses

In late November 2019, MA introduced an upgrade to make a 5B Augmented plate, the plate was discovered on the 14th of December 2019. It has a 4% block chance.

3. Arkadia's Avatar-bound Viceroy Armor & Upgrades
On Arkadia you can get an Avatar-bound (which means it cannot be sold or traded) Armor called Viceroy. The protection numbers of this Armor are essentially the same as Gremlin, with a slight improvement:


The Upgraded versions of this Armor looks the same but the protection is much improved.


4. Ancient Greece's Gorgon Armor & Upgrades
The stats for the various upgraded versions of the Gorgon Armor were already laid out in detail in the Ancient Greece Shares announcement from MindArk on March 4th:

Bertha Bot said:

Upgradable Gorgon Armor
Gorgon Armor and upgrade components can be looted by participating in the shared-loot Gorgon Wave event accessible through the new ‘Deliver us from the Dark Queen’ mission chain on Ancient Greece. Armor stats for all upgrades are listed below.

Name	Set Value	Durability	Impact	Cut	Stab	Acid	Total
Gorgon	15 PED	900	6	3	3	3	15
Gorgon Adjusted	42 PED	1200	14	7	7	7	35
Gorgon Improved	86 PED	1650	24	12	12	12	60
Gorgon Modified	220 PED	2000	40	20	20	20	100
Gorgon Augmented	390 PED	2800	64	32	32	32	160
Gorgon Perfected	620 PED	3500	86	43	43	43	215

Originally Posted Here

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Unfortunately the numbers in this announcement do not match the information obtained when checking the items at the NPC in Ancient Greece. Here are some examples:


Perfected Gorgon actually has 84 Impact protection, which means it is now the Armor with the highest Impact protection in game and puts Carramone in 2nd place.

Special Damage armor protection:
The Armor Chart below shows all of the Armors currently in the game which have special damage protection and plots each Armor horizontally based on what it protects against, i.e. Electric, Cold or Acid, and Vertically based on how much total Special damage protection it offers.


See enlarged image

Along the bottom of this table you will see that Armors with mostly Electric protection are located on the left side while Armors with mostly Acid protection are located on the right side of the table. Armors offering mostly Cold protection will be found in the center.

Along the left edge of the table is the total amount of Special damage protection. The higher the number, the stronger the armor is. For example Aquila Armor is found somewhere between Acid and Cold because those are the Special damage types it offers protection against. When you add up the Cold and Acid protection of Aquila you get a total of 33 points, therefore Aquila is found in the slot for protection between 30-39.

At the top of the table I have added the names of mobs that typically could be hunted using armors in this table.

And lastly, I have color coded all Armor names so it's easy to see at a glance whether the Armor is available only in a Limited version (Red), Unlimited version (blue), or both (white).

Ranged Damage armor protection:


See enlarged image

Along the bottom of this table you will see that Armors with mostly Burn protection are located on the left side while Armors with mostly Penetration protection are located on the right side of the table. All Armors having a balanced amount of both Burn and Penetration protection will be found in the center.

Along the left edge of the table is the total amount of Burn / Pen protection. The higher the number, the stronger the armor is. For example Pegasus is found at the top, in the row showing the number 80-99, because Pegasus has 52 Burn protection and 43 Penetration, which makes a total of 95 together.

At the top of the table I have added the names of mobs that typically could be hunted using armors in this table.

And lastly, I have color coded all Armor names so it's easy to see at a glance whether the Armor is available only in a Limited version (yellow), Unlimited version (blue), or both (white).

--
Note that some Armors have been omitted from both of these tables for clarity, either because they are not well suited for creatures with these damage types, are no longer available or are unique.

Distribution of Damage in EU:
Different planets and areas usually have a higher occurrence of certain damage types. The table below shows what that particularity is for each planet or area. Note that this doesn't mean you will not find other damage types there, it just means those damage types are the more important ones.


Yearly cycle of Damage types:
Yearly Events in EU such as Mayhem are always the same from one year to the next. In addition to standard damage types such as Impact, Cut and Stab, these events always feature some specific damage type either in addition to the standard ones, or in greater proportion as follows:


Screenshots
A couple of years ago Darkaruki was working on updating a lot of things in Entropiawiki.com and working very hard on a project which consisted of creating new high quality screenshots of every single Armor in Entropia. These screenshots have all been uploaded in this forum as well and posted in this thread for your viewing pleasure:

Help: Currently working on updating all Armor Set images on EntropiaWiki

Mob Damage Types & Proportions
There is still quite a bit of research that needs to be done. One particular area of research which I am quite interested in is figuring out what damage types creatures do and in what proportions. I have done a bit of this on my own over the last couple of years but that definitely isn’t as fun as it could be if it were being done in collaboration with many other players.

How this is done exactly is somewhat of a tedious process. You really have to put your thinking cap on and try to come up with ingenious ways to isolate damage types as you go along. I have heard of perhaps one other way that this can be achieved using software, which ultimately might be easier on the brain, but I’m not sure who has this so I will just give you my way of doing it. This is from the Monria forum and is just a write-up that I did to go over the details of how I determined the Yog's damage proportions:

A few have asked me how I actually determined the damage types and proportions for the Yogs so I thought I would lay out the details here so others can see the math and all the nitty-gritty details if they are interested in that sort of thing.

1. To get the total amount of damage being dealt by a mob.

So first I confronted the Level 5 Yog Tunneller naked to see how much damage it deals when you're not protected at all. I stood there and took blows for a while, healing myself as required so I wouldn't die, and noted the amount of damage from each blow. I didn't write these down or record them in any way, the only thing I was interested in was the highest and lowest numbers.

You see, a mob's attack is exactly the same as our attack on the mob with a weapon, the damage that will be dealt is going to fall within a range (you see this range when you check Item Info on your weapon), with the lowest number for that range being exactly half of the most damage that can be dealt, or received.

After close to an hour of standing there and paying attention to how much damage was being inflicted on me by the Yog, I was able to determine that the range was right around 8.5 to 17.0 (give or take 0.1), the average of that being 12.5 damage per hit.

2. To isolate which damage types are being dealt by a mob.

I'm skipping ahead a few steps here, basically I tried a few different things, was able to confirm that the Yog did not deal any Electric damage, then was able to confirm that it also did not deal any Penetration, so I had a hunch that my Goblin armor + Pulsar 8 plates would probably Deflect all damage. So I put my Pulsar 8 plates on my Goblin and went back to the Cave to test it out against the Level 5 Yog Tunneller.

Goblin armor + Pulsar 8 plates provides the following protection
23 Impact
19 Cut
6 Stab
9 Acid

When confronting the Yog with this armor set-up, I was Deflecting all damage every time, meaning the armor+plates absorbed 100% of the damage dealt by the Yog. What this confirmed was that there was no other types of damage, in other words, 100% of the damage dealt by the Level 5 Yog Tunneller had now been narrowed down from the 9 possible damage types in the game, to the 4 damage types that this armor set-up protected me against. Now I just had to figure out in what proportion the Yog dealt the Impact, Cut, Stab and Acid.

3. To determine the portion of Acid the Yogs deal.

In order to determine how much Acid the Yogs deal, I need to isolate this damage type either by protecting only for Acid and not for the other damage types, or protecting for all the other damage types and not for Acid. I found an armor/plate combination that would accomplish the second option.

Firewall armor + Pulsar 8 plates provides the following protection
11 Impact
19 Cut
10 Stab
16 Electric

I knew that the Yogs didn't deal Electric, so I didn't need to take that into account when using the Firewall armor. This set-up would block all the Impact, Cut and Stab damage and would only let the Acid damage get through, allowing me to determine the proportion of Acid.

When confronting the Yog with the Firewall set-up, the minimum damage observed getting through was 1.5 and the maximum was 3.0, giving us an average of 2.25 points of damage getting through. Since we know from the testing done with the Goblin armor set-up that the only possible damage types are Impact, Cut, Stab and Acid, and the only thing that the Firewall set-up is not protecting me against is Acid, then the 2.25 of average damage must be Acid.

2.25 of 12.5 is 18%, therefore the portion of Acid damage from the Yog is 18%.
Therefore also, the sum of the Impact/Cut/Stab damage is 82%.

4. Now to determine how much Stab is dealt.

The Gnome armor provides the following protection
11 Impact
4 Cut

When confronting the Yog with the Gnome armor, the minimum damage observed getting through was 4.0 and the maximum was 8.0, giving us an average of 6.0 points of damage getting through. That means the Gnome armor was blocking 6.5 points of damage (since naked average was 12.5, minus 6 = 6.5)

6.5 of 12.5 is 52%, therefore the portion of Impact/Cut damage is 52%
If the Acid damage is 18%, then 100 minus 18, minus 52 = 30%
The proportion of Stab damage dealt is 30%

5. The only thing left to do now is to determine how much of that 52% is Impact damage, and how much is Cut damage.

To do that, we'll just use the Goblin armor without any plates. Since Goblin only protects against Impact and Acid, and we already know the proportion for Acid, we'll just take the total amount of damage blocked, minus the 2.25 of Acid, and that will give us how much Impact the Yog deals.

Goblin armor provides the following protection
12 Impact
9 Acid

When confronting the Yog with the Goblin armor, the minimum damage observed getting through was 5.0 and the maximum was 10.0, giving us an average of 7.5 points of damage getting through. That means the Goblin armor was blocking 5.0 points of damage (since naked average was 12.5, minus 7.5 = 5.0)

If Acid damage is 2.25, then Impact damage is 2.75 (since 5.0 minus 2.25 = 2.75)
2.75 of 12.5 is 22%, Impact damage is 22%!
52 minus 22 = 30, Cut is 30%!

So the breakdown is as follows:

22% Impact
30% Cut
30% Stab
18% Acid

These tests are repeatable and can be verified by anyone.

Also, something like this needs to be done on a Level 6 Yog so we can determine the proportion of Cold.

Click to expand...

I did a similar write-up to go over the details of how I figured out the damage types for the Shub Combatant (L17) which you can read here if you’d like.

Other mobs I’ve researched in this way include the Oompa, Sicarius and GMC on the new Ark Moon.

Some mobs that I think would be of interest at this time would be:

Daudaormurs in Ancient Greece: I think many would be interested to know just how much of their damage is actually Acid and what are the other damage types that they inflict;

New Calamusoids: I don’t believe anyone has confirmed or denied yet that the new ones are doing the same damage that the old ones used to do;

Death Drakes: it has been brought to my attention recently that the information in Entropiawiki.com on them is incorrect;

Aurli: I’ve had several hunters report that they seem to hit a lot harder than they used to, and as far as I know, no official investigation has ever been performed to find out what has changed exactly;

New AG mobs: with the increased activity in Ancient Greece lately, I think knowing the damage types and proportions of the new mobs there could be very beneficial to many hunters;

If there are any other mobs that you think could be of interest, please let us know and I will add it to the list.

Durability formula for Limited Armor
This is not hard to do but possibly quite tedious. I know that there are people out there that know how to do this. If not, I will do a detailed write-up of how this can be tested.

Break Rates of Armor Enhancers
I don’t think this is something that can be predicted with absolute certainty, but figuring out an average value for this should be doable. I’ve only started thinking about how I would proceed testing this so if anyone out there has already figured out a procedure, please share.

Compensation for Armor decay
Our understanding of this 'compensation' is not so good, it hasn't officially been tested and so far all we really have is this statement from 3 years ago from MindArk:

Charlie|MindArk said:

Most of the decay from healing and using armor is now compensated for in the loot of the mob. On top of this the actual amount of decay to the armor per damage absorbed was reduced greatly. Overall the cost for healing and armor usage is less than 5% of what it used to be.

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Although it sounds like 95% of the decay is compensated in the loot of the mob, the statement just states that "Overall the cost ... is less than 5% of what it used to be." We have to remember that Armors used to decay a lot more before loot 2.0, around 2-3 times more than they do now. So as you can see, the statement could be alluding to the macro data, the compensation could be random, just like loot is, and the actual mean average of this compensation might fall much lower at say 70% and the statement would still be true since it refers to the costs as they "used to be", and they used to be a lot more.

I think using team mechanics may be the easiest way to research this and/or shared mobs. I would recommend using Unlimited armors and plates as it's much easier and quicker to see what the real decay was down to the 4th decimal place at the repair terminal.

+rep for a well researched and informative post with a lot of value for players.

Only comment I would make is that maybe you'd want to include the 'lowering protection' part of UL armors in your decay/cost calculations, since after a point in a hunt, especially with low TT and durability armors new players use, the difference in protection is going to manifest as added healing costs.

Good looking guide Legends, very nicely done.

Amazing guide, will bookmark this for disciples
Many things I didn't know!

Killahbee said:

Amazing guide, will bookmark this for disciples
Many things I didn't know!

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Be careful then and do your own research, every PEC put into markup is gone bye bye (same goes for L weapons, L amps, etc) while pure TT decay is mostly compensated in loot, markup is not.

I'm not saying L armors are bad, they have their place but newbies and disciples should not waste MU on (L) armors.

It's just my opinion.

hogfather said:

+rep for a well researched and informative post with a lot of value for players.

Only comment I would make is that maybe you'd want to include the 'lowering protection' part of UL armors in your decay/cost calculations, since after a point in a hunt, especially with low TT and durability armors new players use, the difference in protection is going to manifest as added healing costs.

Click to expand...

Thanks hogfather, I really appreciate your positive feedback

I did allude to this in the 1st post, under 'Limited vs Unlimited armor'

1. Unlimited Armors provide less and less protection as they decay:
One particular feature that MindArk introduced (VU 9.1 I believe) for Unlimited Armors is that they will provide less and less protection as they decay. You still only pay for the damage that is absorbed by the Armor, so this doesn’t affect your protection costs in any way, but it can sometimes be an inconvenience and require that you heal more often (using a FAP which in many cases is less economical then Armor) as your hunt progresses, or that you travel back to a repair terminal to fix your Armor so that it will provide full protection again.

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I will take another look and see if there's anything more I can add in the decay/cost calculations as you suggested, but this may prove very difficult as there's no way to know or predict what the actual added costs might be without knowing what healing tool is being used since they all have different costs (hp heal/pec).

Legends

Nicely done, thanks for all your info +1 rep!

An amazing amount of work there Legends and a great value to the community there.

I have doubts about that armor decay returned in loot part though. They are all based on a random assumption. Even though i understand the reason behind such an assumption (we do not have any other data to base it on), i would like to see a more thorough research be done on that aspect. If anyone would be willing to do a thorough research on that topic i would be willing to "compensate" for the time spent on that. The data and the methods would of course need to be shared to the public.

Captain Jack said:

Good looking guide Legends, very nicely done.

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Killahbee said:

Amazing guide, will bookmark this for disciples
Many things I didn't know!

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Thanks guys, your positive feedback is very much appreciated. Hoping to have the Armor Upgrades section posted later today

Legends

Angel O2 Mercer said:

Be careful then and do your own research, every PEC put into markup is gone bye bye (same goes for L weapons, L amps, etc) while pure TT decay is mostly compensated in loot, markup is not.

I'm not saying L armors are bad, they have their place but newbies and disciples should not waste MU on (L) armors.

It's just my opinion.

Click to expand...

That is correct, the loot system never accounts for markup and I have a section which explains this in detail in the 2nd post which goes over Durability and the Economy of Armors (both Limited and Unlimited).

Of course I encourage others to do their own research, this always helps greatly in solidifying one's understanding. I will also provide a write-up on how to test for exact decay shortly in the article on 'Further Research'. I also would welcome others to share their own methods and results, as the more data points we have the clearer the picture becomes.

Legends

Juan said:

Nicely done, thanks for all your info +1 rep!

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Thank you

DraKil said:

An amazing amount of work there Legends and a great value to the community there

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Thanks Drakil, yes this was indeed quite a bit of work but it feels good to get it all out of my head, and now that it's done, it's easier to see where our understanding is poor and more data is needed.

DraKil said:

I have doubts about that armor decay returned in loot part though. They are all based on a random assumption. Even though i understand the reason behind such an assumption (we do not have any other data to base it on), i would like to see a more thorough research be done on that aspect. If anyone would be willing to do a thorough research on that topic i would be willing to "compensate" for the time spent on that. The data and the methods would of course need to be shared to the public.

Click to expand...

Indeed, this is something I've been thinking about more and more. Charlie's statement is a bit vague on this and that's really all we have right now. We need to test this and gather some data so we have a better understanding of what this so called 'compensation' actually consists of.

I will add this to the article on 'Further Research'

Legends

Tremendous work!

Tremendous work. Thorough, clearly written and well presented. This work of yours is a model or all future documentary contributions.

Ramses said:

Tremendous work. Thorough, clearly written and well presented. This work of yours is a model or all future documentary contributions.

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Thanks Ramses

I have added the section on Advanced Knowledge today, quick link:

Advanced Knowledge

This is just a start, I have more to add there later but I think those 2 tables can be very useful to some people

DraKil said:

An amazing amount of work there Legends and a great value to the community there.

I have doubts about that armor decay returned in loot part though. They are all based on a random assumption. Even though i understand the reason behind such an assumption (we do not have any other data to base it on), i would like to see a more thorough research be done on that aspect. If anyone would be willing to do a thorough research on that topic i would be willing to "compensate" for the time spent on that. The data and the methods would of course need to be shared to the public.

Click to expand...

you can see for yourself that armor decay is compensated by simply putting some armor on run into some mobs and let them hit you for some decay then run over to your friendly neighborhood turret to kill those mobs and whalla you get shrap for each mob that hit u. Very easy to do at new switzerland...

Shame that getting the materials required for some of these upgrades is near impossible. Mod Vigi isn't a huge upgrade from Adj, but a few of the materials would take months to collect. Each part needs 5 Hardening Nano Adjuster A01. That means 35 are needed for a full set, and yet I see only ONE A01 has been sold all month. And only 120ish over the decade, it seems. So, how the hell are we even supposed to upgrade even if we had the desire and the PED?

Otherwise, great work on this post!

Rave said:

Shame that getting the materials required for some of these upgrades is near impossible. Mod Vigi isn't a huge upgrade from Adj, but a few of the materials would take months to collect. Each part needs 5 Hardening Nano Adjuster A01. That means 35 are needed for a full set, and yet I see only ONE A01 has been sold all month. And only 120ish over the decade, it seems. So, how the hell are we even supposed to upgrade even if we had the desire and the PED?

Otherwise, great work on this post!

Click to expand...

Most people will probably TT these as the MU hardly covers the auction fees. I hoard mine in case some other armor of my interest becomes available for upgrades in the future. I think I have about 20-30 of these in my storage.

Fronske said:

Most people will probably TT these as the MU hardly covers the auction fees. I hoard mine in case some other armor of my interest becomes available for upgrades in the future. I think I have about 20-30 of these in my storage.

Click to expand...

Well, the one that sold this month went for 12,000%, I think. Wouldn't that more than cover the fee of a 1 PED item? That said, I don't even see them being advertised in chat or on here (in that case of avoiding fees). I have no doubt a few people (such as yourself) have a small stack saved up, but even then it seems that would be a rare case.

Rave said:

Well, the one that sold this month went for 12,000%, I think. Wouldn't that more than cover the fee of a 1 PED item? That said, I don't even see them being advertised in chat or on here (in that case of avoiding fees). I have no doubt a few people (such as yourself) have a small stack saved up, but even then it seems that would be a rare case.

Click to expand...

Yes, the A01s are worth decent PED, about 60 PED each so no one should be TT'ing them.

It seems to me that they are just an extremely rare drop and so since the Mod Vigi upgrade has been released, only 3 sets have probably been made, so less then 1 set per year.

I think the idea behind such rarity is to make people grind a lot of mobs for them, but in my opinion, making something too rare ends up having the opposite effect and causing hunters to just give up and move onto something else.

Legends

I've been looking at these new Cyrene armors a lot more closely today to try and see what they could be good for and how much they might be worth. Some really good Armors here. There is a lot to look at so here is a little table to help compare the new Paneleon armors to other options that already exist in the game:


The Salamander has more Burn than the Paneleon, and also has a little bit of Penetration which you almost always need since there are very few mobs that only have Burn and no Pen. But the 12 Impact, 12 Cut and 12 Stab on the Paneleon makes it possible to hunt other things than just Ranged mobs, which is practically impossible with the Salamander. So when you consider both the advantages and disadvantages than I'd say the comparison is fair and I would think that Paneleon should cost somewhere between tt+2.5k to tt+3.5k to obtain.

The Paneleon Spec is pretty awesome I have to admit. There are a ton of 100% Impact mobs on Caly and also many mobs that have a combination of Impact/Cut damage for which this Armor is perfect. Some examples of classic 100% Impact mobs would be Daspletors, Big Bulk, Mulmun, Longtooth and Snarg. Some Impact/Cut mobs include Longu, Neconu, Cornoanterion and Argonaut. Not to mention that Burn is the more prevalent of the Ranged damage types. Don't get me wrong, this one is quite the plate guzzler, you'll either need a lot of different plates to be able to switch them depending on what you are hunting, or you'll need other armor sets. But one particular aspect of this set I like a lot is that with a simple set of acid plates, the Paneleon Spec becomes perfect for some other popular mobs like Leviathans, Frescoquda, Kreltins, Scaboreas & Caperon. The 25 Burn helps a lot on things that do mostly Burn damage like Drones, Droka and Legionnaires, just add 6A plates and you're all set. With Stab plates you could do, among other things, Hogglo, Atrox, Aurli, Warlock and Eomon.

It's kind of hard to put a value on this Paneleon Spec armor but for the sake of argument, if I had to give a quick, off the cuff value right this second, looking at this I'd say at least tt+5k.

I will make some tables next to compare the Adj/Imp/Mod Imperium armors.

In a recent VU MindArk stated quite clearly that each armor piece has a specific probability of getting hit:

Bertha Bot said:

Changes to tier increase probability

• The tier increase probability for non-(L)imited armor parts is now based on how likely each armor part is to get hit, resulting in all parts of a set of armor tiering at approximately the same base speed instead of having certain parts lag behind. Each armor part of course still has its own TIR, so the tier speed of any individual part may still be faster/slower than that of another. Note: this change does not apply to (L)imited armor parts, as their maximum tier potential is determined by their Trade Terminal value rather than the speed at which they gain tiers.

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I suspect that this probability is different from one mob to the next so I'm going to start paying attention to this and just record my observations here for others to see.

I did a hunting run on Leviathans tonight using the new Improved Imperium armor and it decayed a total of 41.31 PED by the end of the hunt. Here's how that decay breaks down:


I did have armor plates on this armor, they were limited and I did not keep track of how much each plate decayed, so this undoubtedly will cause some inconsistencies in the data here and there since damage sometimes is offered to the plate first, sometimes to the armor part first. But I think this outcome is revealing, clearly the Harness has a much higher chance of getting hit than the rest of the armor parts and the Gloves are the least likely to get hit.

What will be really interesting is if I get the same results on a different mob.

So for drones, I should use Adjusted Vigilant or Adjusted Nemesis? Without the enchanters.

You call this a complete guide for armor, and it is very thorough and well written, but where is the information on armor plates? You did enhancers, why not plates and how they work? Other than that it was very informative.

Xanato Xan Kaso said:

You call this a complete guide for armor, and it is very thorough and well written, but where is the information on armor plates? You did enhancers, why not plates and how they work? Other than that it was very informative.

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In the first post: "The basics of Armor Protection" I cover plates and how they work, along with a table that show the most important unlimited ones.

I could/should probably say a little something about some of the limited options, I'll think about it.