How Does Equipment Stats Work?

[Jack Walters]

Hello everyone.

Let's say that I have for example vambracers and gloves equipped. Those have specific stats that I assume add up.

Then I find plate gloves that, if I equipp, they take the space of both my other gloves and the vambracers which are now removed. The stats of the plate gloves however don't add up to the same ammount.

Same goes for boots that take the place of both grieves and shoes, or plate armour that takes the place of pauldrons, breastplate and vambracers.

How does it work? How do the stats add up? Are the gloves and vambracers better than the plate gloves because they add up or do they overlap each other, so it doesn't matter?

Also if they overlap, which items overlap with which? I get that the creators try to make the game simple, they even put dots instead of numbers as stats for the items (and shields have no stats at all!) but there's simplicity and then there's that. How am I supposed to know how it works so that I can choose the best equippment when I find it, and what to replace?

Thank you for any response.

[Tony]

Yes, items that stack on top of each other do offer accumulative protection (if you're struck in that area - obviously armor does no good if you're hit on an unarmored location). You can't really say "this armor combination is always better than that" since there are many variables to consider (encumbrance penalties, overall coverage, what weapon combination you're using, etc).

The first step is to ignore all stats and look to see if the armor (after equipping it) covers the areas that you're going to be struck often. For example, if you have a large shield equipped then it's less likely for your front chest region to be struck as often so I'd consider your exposed areas to be a higher priority for armor (legs, head, etc.).

To figure out which items overlap each other you must experiment by equipping the items and see what items are removed. If an item isn't removed then it is overlapping whatever other armor pieces it is visually covering (there are about a thousand or so 'virtual slots' for equipping armor so I can't go over them all here).

Next try to balance all types of protection (impact, slash, crush, pierce) for areas that are likely to be struck often. For example, if you're wearing plate armor which offers great slashing protection then it's more important to wear a padded gambeson underneath plate rather than chain since a gambeson offers better crush/impact resistance while chain offers mostly slashing protection (which is somewhat redundant with plate). Of course wearing all three will offer the most protection but it may not be worth doing so if it encumbers your movement (how much armor you can wear before becoming encumbered depends on whether or not you've trained the "manoeuvering in armor" skills).