Gear

How equipment slots, wearing, wielding and the level and class gates on gear work.

Everything you equip falls into one of two groups. Armour, jewellery and clothing are put on with wear and taken off with remove. Weapons are taken up with wield and put away with unwield. The equip command handles either, choosing the right one for the item you name. gear (also equipment) lists everything you currently have on, arranged by slot, and ooc <item> prints an item's full record: its type, grade, armour rating or weapon class, quality, condition, sockets and any class or level requirement.

wear, remove, wield and equip all accept the bracketed number shown beside an item in your inventory, as well as its name, an ordinal such as 2nd sword, or a name followed by a number.

Slots#

Every piece of armour, jewellery or clothing declares an item type, and that type decides which slot it occupies. You may wear one item per slot. Attempting to put on a second names the piece already there and refuses.

Rings are the one exception to the one-item-per-slot rule. There are two ring slots, right and left, and you may wear two rings in total. A plain ring or band goes on the right hand; a piece made specifically as a left ring goes on the left. A third ring is refused.

Level requirements#

Most gear carries a minimum level to wear or wield it. If you are below it, the refusal names the grade band the item belongs to rather than a bare number. Grade is nothing more than the name of that band, so a level 90 ring and a level 90 sword are both Ancient.

A piece may additionally set a higher requirement for one particular class. That entry can only raise the bar for that class, never lower the item's own floor.

Armour categories and class#

Armour that declares a category may only be worn by the classes that category belongs to. Armour with no category at all is unrestricted, which is what the classes outside these lists can wear. Explorers wear leather, the light starter armour their guild issues.

Clerics who follow Kranos are the one exception: from level 27 the war-god's faithful may wear plate as well.

The category also decides how much armour a generated piece carries. Working from plate as the baseline, mail is worth 88 percent of the plate value for the same slot and tier, leather 78 percent and cloth 70 percent. Only plate and mail come in shield form, and a shield is worth as much as a chest piece, so a fully kitted warrior carries roughly one and a half times a caster's armour on merit rather than by any hidden cap.

Every tier is a real upgrade. For the same slot, the same category and the same quality, a piece from a higher tier always carries more armour rating than the tier below it, and no generated piece carries none. Quality still matters across tiers: a Pristine piece can out-rate a Poor one from the tier above.

Weapon classes#

Weapons carry a type, and each type is open to a set of classes.

Individual items can also bar particular races, and weapons can be barred to followers of particular religions. Anything of that sort is listed in the item's ooc record.

Armour rating and mitigation#

Armour rating is the only armour number combat reads. Your armour class is the plain sum of the armour rating of everything you are wearing, reduced by each piece's condition, plus flat armour class from socketed runes, plus flat armour class from a completed plate or mail set, plus five points for every point of constitution above ten.

The pieces you wear are weighed against the attacker's level: 4.8 points of worn armour are worth 1 percent against a level 25, 8.8 against a level 50 and 16.8 against a level 100, so a kit of your own level stops about two fifths of a same-level blow at every level. Everything else in your armour class (shield, constitution, set bonus, runes, blessings) is worth a flat 1 percent for every 25 points. There is no class floor and no class ceiling on the way up; the only hard limit is a 75 percent ceiling on total reduction from all sources. A naked character mitigates nothing.

Weapons in the hand#

A weapon that needs two hands is two-handed, and that single fact drives everything else about it. A two-handed weapon deals 33 percent more damage on the whole blow, your fighting style and sharpened edge included, misses 5 percent more often on top of the flat 5 percent chance everyone carries, and cannot be used with a shield. The rule works in both directions: you cannot wear a shield while a two-hander is wielded, and you cannot wield a two-hander while a shield is worn.

Small weapons such as daggers can be taken in the off hand with offwield once you have a primary weapon in place. The off hand follows your main hand 10 percent of the time at level 1, rising to 50 percent at level 100, and its blow lands for half of what the same blow would do from the main hand. You cannot dual wield while carrying a shield. Mages and Healers deal 15 percent less damage with weapons than other classes, whatever they are holding.

A merchant with the right training can identify an item to read out its enchantment and bonuses without you needing a scroll, or appraise it for a full report covering grade, quality, condition, socketed runes, stat bonuses and resistances in one go.

Related#

• World drops
• Runes
• Gear sets
• Durability