Development of Weapons & Armors

This guide aims to provide the necessary information on the development of weapons & armors at the Avalon workshop. The guide contains the following:
* Development Pattern
* Full Body Armor & Battle Suit
* Weapons
* Availability of the weapon & armor development options
* Shop locations for Full Body Armor & Battle Suit:
* Plan ahead and prioritize

Development Pattern

The Avalon weapon & armor development workshop has two guys who can develop more advanced weapons (left in green) and armors (right in brown). They come up with an idea of developing a new one in certain cyclic order as follows:

Weapons: Sword —> Great Sword —> Ax —> Club —> Spear —> Short Sword —> Bow —> Helbards(?)
Armors: Helmet —> Hat —> (Nothing) —> Heavy Armor —> Light Armor —> Gauntlet —> Greaves —> Battle Suit—> Shield —> Small Shield

A battle or flee moves one item forward, so you better keep track of it. Once requested, the new weapon/armor becomes ready for pickup after 5 battles/flees. After the five battles, go back to the Avalon development workshop and receive the new one (only one, the prototype, can be received. To have it sold in shops we need to wait until the next generation). This automatically moves one item forward as well.

(*) On Helbards I haven't confirmed it myself yet, hence the question mark.
---> confirmed by qlip in the comment. Thanks!

Full Body Armor & Battle Suit

Full Body Armor:
Completing a set of Helmet + Heavy Armor + Gauntlet + Greaves for each level gives us a bonus of having a new full body armor, which is way superior to any of those pieces. The following lists the obtainable full armor:

[Lv 1: 400K] Open Helm + Steel Armor + Gauntlets + Steel Greaves, yielding “Lamellar Suit”
[Lv 2: 800K] Hellenic Helm + Silver Cuirass + Vambraces + Silver Greaves, yielding “Plate Suit”
[Lv 3: 1200K] Closed Helm + Harmonia Armor + Mastery Gloves + Quicksilvers, yielding “Harmonia Suit”

Harmonia Suit is badass and one of the best kind that can be purchased (for free, of course). Not only it has DEF: 45 but also provides us better defense against heat and cold. Miramar (in which the town needs to have become large enough to have a shop) seems to be the only place where we can purchase the full armor once it is developed. There is no need to spend extra money to develop a full armor, but simply completing the four sets does not immediately make the full armor being sold in Miramar. We still need to pass years to get them in the next generation.

Battle Suit:
The attractive is the level 3 ‘Reinforced Garb’, which only has DEF 8 but wards sleep. That is, it prevents Hypnosis or any other kind of nasty sleep inducing effects without the need for learning the skill to evade them.

Weapons

Except for Sword & Bow, we can develop the best kind in the game through weapon development. Cross Claymore (Great Sword) especially stands out, offering ATK 55, which is 10+ greater than the last emperor/empress’s default Great Sword equipment (FYI: Moonlite, the default for the last empress, can also use the skills of Swords at the same time). We can find the best sword and bow elsewhere in the game.

Availability of the weapon & armor development options

At the beginning of the game, types of weapons & armors we can develop are limited. As we conquer new regions, the development of other types is unlocked. For example, we cannot develop Ax until we take over Nuono and finish the Armed Merchants event. For armors, it appears that defeating Kzinssie at Somon and finishing Watchman Nest are enough to be able to develop all the armor types.

Shop locations for Full Body Armor & Battle Suit

Full Body Armor: Miramar
Battle Suits: Nibel, Teretuva, Mobelm(guy on the right)

Plan ahead and prioritize

Now the problem is money. While it is not impossible to complete the development for the whole set in one game, this is by no means necessary in order to defeat the Seven Heroes. Based on the attack & defense benefits and depending on what weapons we’d like to use, we need to prioritize. For example, if you want Sword/Great Sword to be the main weapon, it’s just a waste of money and time to develop Short Sword or Club, so simply skip them. Remember, we can only advance the level of each weapon or armor by one in a single generation, so we at least need three generations to have level 3. For armors, the number one priority would be Shield, then Battle Suit and Full Body Armor. With the combination of Obsidian Shield (Lv 3 Shield) + Reinforced Garb + Harmonia Suit, we can achieve DEF 89. On top of that, if you can cast Light Wall magic, nothing can kill you with one stroke!

[TheDrill]

FYI, axe research only becomes available from the 1st Armed Merchant event, not the 2nd. I had skipped the first part on accident, but got Nuono, North Longit, and Armed Merchant without being able to research axes.

[seraph]

Just to confirm, Halberds are developed after bows.

[Rabouk]

I've found that you can keep developing the forge indefinitely even on last emperor. What I do is order a research, go to the steppe and kill everything here, come back and weapon or armor will be ready. This + potentially infinite money from the memory maze. Sure, it's grindy, especially for money.

[[サガ] Baz]

This is amazing!