Armorsmith Archive
Thread: Some Tips on Effective Armoursmithing
I see a lot of threads that essentially ask, how do I get better results on this? What sort of armours should I make? Is this that I'm making good? I realise that it is hard, especially for a new master, to really get a feel for what sort of armour sells, what sort of crafts are most effective, and what your customers want, and in many ways there are no easy answers. There is no substitute for talking to your customers, checking your competitor's vendors, and running your own tests so you can see what you can do with your own resources. However, in this post I will try to go through what I have found to be successful, what styles of armour I find to be huge sellers, and try to answer some of these more advanced questions. This is not a 'how to craft armour' guide - there would be no point in rehashing what JaatoWaals has already done in great and excellent detail. Instead, this post is aimed at those who understand the nitty-gritty of experimentation, of how layers work, and instead want to move on from basic armouring to really creating an armoursmithing business and understanding their craft.
Firstly, something of a disclaimer. I am a Master Armoursmith with 125 Assembly and 12 experimentation points, with over 9 months of stored resources. Many consider me the best on my server, though public opinion is fickle and biased, and I am by no means the most popular (this probably has something to do with my prices). Without blowing my own trumpet, there will be results here that many crafters cannot get, either because of 10 pts, or because a certain resource or two are lacking. Don't worry about that - matching stats is not as important, in this instance, as understanding the thinking behind the design, and understanding how those stats are achieved. There are quite a few armoursmiths I know who are 10 or 11 pts and can match it with the 12 pointers because they understand the rationales behind armour, and understand how to most effectively use their points. Similarly, there will be many crafters who can beat these stats - that's not at all important here. What is is how to make saleable, useful armour that people will want, and which serves their needs.
In a rough order of most to least popular, these are the brands of armour that I find to be most effective and most popular.
80% kinetic/60% base composite, mind HAM ~520: This is by far and away the most popular style of armour I make. This is everyday armour - designed to grind out endless combat and hunting. With this armour, the base is not as important as other stats, because customers who seek to fight continuously for hours will do so against kinetic for the vast majority of that time. What is important, after 80% kinetic, is HAM and cost. 80% kinetic armour is glorified ubese - it is commonplace and should be cheap, yet effective. While any serious combatant buffs, the mind HAM is important, and sustaining combat for hours is directly related to how well they can last with their mind HAM. Even with brandy, a high mind HAM can take a serious toll, and battle fatigue is also dependent on armour HAM. With some good encumbrance slices, a customer can sustain their combat virtually indefinitely in this armour; they can slap it on unbuffed in an emergency, or survive that one last fight when the buffs drop. To make this, the majority of your points must go into layer HAM - 1/1/1 or 0/0/0 is what you are shooting for, though that is not always possible. You then need to work out what your base needs to be for 3 kinetic layers to add up to 80%. For me, I can do it with 3 layers with 1.8% base/7% kinetic, or 3 2.2% base/6% kinetic. Either or is fine, though I personally use the former. Work out what you can do with your layers and resources. If you are a 10 pt smith, you should still be able to get around the 600 HAM mark with this recipe, which is not bad - you might have to drop a layer on the arm pieces and settle for less than 80% kinetic there to keep HAM low, but your main pieces should be 80% kinetic without any worries unless one or more of your resources are seriously lacking.
Ubese, mind HAM ~390: I make a few varieties of ubese at various prices, ranging from 70% kinetic to 77% kinetic. Ubese essentially fills the same need as 80% kinetic composite, but is cheaper to make and use. Ubese is an excellent product for new armoursmiths - leathery hide is easy to find in bulk, and the single layer means that production costs are low. Again, given that the customer's priorities are kinetic, then HAM, then cost, use points to keep HAM low at all stages after ensuring that kinetic is high.
38% stun/65% base composite, mind HAM ~950: Stun is vital for PvP, particularly helmets and chests. This armour is done by ignoring HAM in the layers - max stun resists, then push base as high as it will go. Once you are this heavy, there seems little point in trying to reduce HAM a few points, so you may as well go for resists. I am personally trying experiments where I reduce stun protect on the secondary pieces to reduce HAM, but the helmets and chests should have highest possible resists.
70% base elec layered composite, mind HAM ~700: This armour is popular with those who want to slice all resists above 80%. Keeping all resists in base with elec layers allow them to get the important resists, kinetic and energy, above 80% very easily. The layers on this focus on maxing the base bar, with extra points going to HAM. It's a simple armour to make, but very popular - the only real dependent is how good your elec layers can be, and that is largely dependent on your resource luck.
79% energy/65% base composite, mind HAM ~510: Essentially a similar version to the above model, this type of armour resolves to get as high a base/HAM ratio as possible. It's one of those armours that is good whichever way it slices, just for different purposes. Again, your objective is to get layer HAM to 1/1/1 or 0/0/0, and then push base with the rest of your points. With good elec layer resources, you could do something very similar with elec layers.
47% base Imperial Prototype PSG: Now that these are vulnerable to 3 out of 4 of the major PvP damage types, their only purpose is as a stun shield in PvP. Market them with this purpose in mind.
Padded: If you can collect the resources to make good padded, around 60% kinetic or so with 45% base, you will be stuck making a lot of custom orders, but on the bright side, lots of cute dancers will talk to you.
Krayt Scale Mabari: Similar to padded for the looks factor, krayt scales are easy to use in mabari (no factory segments) and lend it a bit of legitimacy by taking away the energy vulnerability. This will be the lightest full coverage armour you can make, and you should be able to keep HAMs at around 100 for a full suit.
I do make other styles of armour, and am constantly innovating to try to find new models, but those basic models make up the vast bulk of my sales, and similar makes should be possible no matter your resources and skill level.
Some final tips:
- Try your own armours out. Get some sort of combat profession as well, and go out and fight in them. See how useful they are, both before and after slice. Only by understanding how resists and HAMs work in combat can you best make effective armour for your customers.
- Experiment constantly with your layer and segment recipes, layers in particular. Every layer experiments differently - there are certain combinations of points that will give better results than other combinations. Know how to optimise what you have. Pay special attention to hidden decimals - as small as 2% experimental difference on a layer (80% compared to 78%, rather than 14% kinetic compared to 12% kinetic) can mean different resists, or even more once full suit HAM is computed. Also, know exactly what you can get out of your resources - sometimes a lesser resource will produce the same results as your best ones. Several of the models I list above do not use my best resources, but my customers don't know any different. Using second-rate resources to produce the same stats extends the life of your best resources, and allows you to keep production costs down.
- Energy layers are your most versatile layer. This is because the resources are generic, and also because of the Inert Gas. Inert Gas has no Mal or SR, so these stats on your other resources increase in value. In other words, if you use high Mal metal and/or polymer, these Mals increase in value compared to their use in a kinetic layer, because the inert gas acts as a null when computing final values. You can do things with energy layers that you cannot with any other layer, because the Inert Gas null stats allow you to get more bang out of your stats than you otherwise might, and because a high OQ inert gas increases your overall average without limiting your other stats.
- Do your best to make armour that is good regardless of slice, but also take into account what slices can and will do to your armour.
- Once you can make saleable armour and get a business running, innovate. You have made the right choice - you are an armoursmith, and ours is an art that affords infinite variety and possibility in our crafting. We are not one-bar monkeys like weaponsmiths, and though we are not the most effective crafting profession (which is smuggler), the possibilities of what we can do are endless. Once your stuff is selling, break new ground - try something new and popularise it. There's only so much 80/68 heavy kinetic armour we can all see before we get bored to tears. Good luck with it.
What do you think of making the high base composite with stun layers? I have been making some that has 13% stun and slices up to 90% base. What I don't like about making the heavy high base armor is that if you dont get the good effective slice you are left with a lot of crappy armor parts that don't sell well.
Santino of Bloodfin
