Armours

Armours on Icesus

There are many kinds of armour in Icesus. Armours are divided into three different classes depending on their weight and encumbrance. These categories are light, medium and heavy armours. See 'help armour types' for more information about armour types. Armour has a very big effect on the damage you receive, so be prepared to invest a lot of money if you wish to maximize your survival chances.

Light Armour

Light armour is used by those who prefer ease of movement and speed over protection. Generally, the protection it offers is not very good, but even the lightest armour is better than no armour at all. The best material for light armours is chitinium silk, but it is very, very expensive. Light armour is the choice of Rangers and Light Infantry of Vaerlon, as well as the monks.

Medium Armour

Medium armour is the most commonly used form of protection in Icesus - at least theoretically. While it is somewhat heavier than light armour, it offers much better protection. It is still much cheaper than heavy armour, and quite much lighter. It is a good compromise between protection and offensive power.

Heavy Armour

Heavy armour is the ultimate form of protection in Icesus, usually made of metal plates. It is, however, very heavy, hot and cumbersome to wear, which causes rather high penalties for all physical actions. Therefore, only the stronger and more experienced fighters usually use this kind of armour. It is usually also very expensive, and therefore quite rare. Absolutely required for any serious defensive fighter, especially for Heavy Infantry of Vaerlon. The smiths can make you a nice set of fine steel full plate armour, for a nice price of course, which is almost the best possible heavy armour available.

Quality, Materials and Size

The better material and quality, the better protection the armour offers. The most important hit locations/slots to be protected are head and neck, torso, and for the taller races the legs. Use the command 'slots' to find out how well protected your hit locations are. 'Help adjectives' gives you the order of the adjectives used to describe the protection value, as well as other statistics. See also 'help materials' for information about the qualities of the different materials.

Unlike with weapons, the best armours are mostly made by the smiths. Only a few armours you can get by killing monsters are better than those made by the smiths, and even then the difference is not very large. However, since armour protection, while it is important, is not everything, magical armours are still used fairly regularly.

Not everything fits for everyone, resizing armours is a fairly common occurrence. It can be quite costly to resize a full set of heavy armours, but it is usually worth the price, unless you happen to have several full sets of armours.

Damage to equipment

One of the newer additions to the system is eqdamage. If you are hit hard, regardless of the source of the damage, your equipment can get damaged. Only spells and area-effects can damage non-hit-slot equipment. Marking a piece of equipment for you greatly reduces the chances of eqdamage. Naturally, the better quality and material, the less likely the equipment is to get damaged - so a set of fine steel full plate armours should last years before getting damaged so much that it is no longer usable. Also, magical glow reduces the chances of eqdamage, so magical armour is even less likely to be damaged than conventional armour. Also, the type of the damage matters a great deal, fire burns leather and cloth very nicely, but has little effect on full plate. Acid, on the other hand, damages almost everything quite easily. Check out 'help eqdamage' for further details. At the moment it is not possible to repair the damage, but that might change in the future.

See also

• Equipment damage

Useful Skills

Most armours are not perfect, and most require quite much skill to be used effectively. Your skill in the approppriate armour, light, medium or heavy, makes the armour you wear more effective. Therefore, to get as much out of the armour as possible, you should train these skills as high and fast as possible.

It's fairly easy to check the differences between different armours, but if you wish to do so without wasting money and time on the channeler, you can use the skill 'compare armour' to compare two pieces of armour yourself.

Useful Commands

Some of the more useful commands related to armours are:

Command	Description
slots	Tells you the protection your armour grants you, individually for each hit location / slot.
eq	Tells you what equipment you are wearing, as well as the overall protection level of your armour.
eq check	Lists the condition of your equipment.

Final Words

Naturally, magically enchanted armours can greatly differ from they usual armours. They also have a better chance of resisting eqdamage, so acquiring magical armour should be one of the main goals of every player.