What determines highest armour level via upgrade?

[The88shrimp]

So I upgraded my armour to level 4 which was the max at the time and a few quests later I notice I can upgrade it further, I'm just curious as to what determines how much an armour piece can be upgraded.

[Blade]

Tied to story missions, so if you want to upgrade your armor more then progress more into the story. Some higher tier armor pieces have innately higher defense but usually when max upgraded they will still fall around the same armor rating give or take.

[The88shrimp]

Originally posted by BANBARO:

Tied to story missions, so if you want to upgrade your armor more then progress more into the story. Some higher tier armor pieces have innately higher defense but usually when max upgraded they will still fall around the same armor rating give or take.

Ah ok, Thanks again!

[Nerevar]

to answer the question directly : armor rarity decides the level it ends up upon. r10 armors will go higher than r12 armors. however r12 armors start with higher base values normally than r10 and thus the end result is roughly the same in the end. keep in mind 50 defense barely matters past 1000 for endgame. its only around 1% less dmg taken from that. which has virtually no impact on fight results or amount of hits tankable.

this is why defense boost is such a bad skill aswell. the overall % impact from the whole skill is worse than a hard element resist decoration of the right type. this is why people with defense boost 7 can safely be considered noobs or clueless hunters as they simply dont know how defense is calculated in this game.