Guide to choosing armor
Di, 10/04/2016 - 12:06
This assumes you've read the wiki to some extent. If you haven't, well... here you go-
http://wiki.spiralknights.com/Defense
http://wiki.spiralknights.com/Armor
http://wiki.spiralknights.com/Abilities
http://wiki.spiralknights.com/Firestorm_Citadel
http://wiki.spiralknights.com/List_of_prestige_missions (See danger missions)
Generally you're going to want to choose armor to meet these goals-
1.) A general use set that you use on every level; i.e. lots of bonuses for whatever weapons (Chaos, Black Kat)
2.) More specific sets for particularly challenging levels that you'll want to complete-
2a) Heart of Ice = Freeze +9 (Black Kat)
2b) Compound 42 = Poison/Fire +9 (Dragon Scale or Armor of the Fallen)
2c) Ghosts in the Machine = Shock +9 (Seerus)
2d) Firestorm Citadel = Fire + 2 (Chaos, black kat, seerus, volc demo, vog)
In parenthesis are the generally accepted set(s) that people use to cope with these situations. It doesn't matter that you choose these sets so much as that you choose sets that get you the correct status resistances and bonuses that you need based on your choice of weapons. For instance, if I have blitz needle, I probably want charge time reduction.. so I have to use seerus or chaos to get that but I could also use vog and just bring trinkets. If you want to bring vog and trinkets I'm not going to stop you.
Armor worth talking about
Chaos is probably the most crafted armor and with good reason- it gives a TON of bonuses at the cost of a few status resists, meaning for most levels, which do not feature too much status anyway, or for levels where you can mix it with status resistant armors, or for when you can get UVs, chaos is pretty much unbeatable.
One thing to note about chaos is that it's relatively dangerous when you lack UVs, heat, health trinkets etc. and are new in general. You may wish to ease your way into chaos by crafting one piece of vog and one piece of chaos, or even by starting with vog first. It all depends on your skill level, internet connection, and how beefy your machine is. Regardless, once you can get shock/fire UVs onto chaos you'll be set for life and things like skill and internet speed won't be as big of obstacles because hey, you have super armor.
Black Kat is expensive, but worth it. It's literally the only armor that really one ups chaos, and it's paywalled off.. but that's ok, because we have 3* black kat items that do just about the same thing as the 5* in terms of offense, which is why you want the item in the first place. Pick up the 3* sets whenever the event is taking place and you can afford to, and when you find a book or so, eventually, think about upgrading your cloak and keeping a cowl.
In terms of use it makes all other freeze resistant armors useless, because why would you want to focus on defense when you can focus on defense and offense? For this reason, it's best to avoid all armor with freeze resist. You'll have black kat at some point.
Seerus is the most defensive elemental gear piece, has fire and shock resistances, and grants gun buffs for ctr and asi. This is why people use and love it- it turns you from a glass cannon into a slightly less bombastic normal cannon, or just boosts your defenses and offenses a bit in general. The only downside is operation crimson hammer, which must be purchased. This is also an upside, since the bomb and sword you get there are both incredible items in their own right, making it one of the best investments a knight can make.
This is a less obvious one, but if you plan to bomb it shouldn't be. If you're doing FSC you'll want either shiver or blitz or both, probably more on the blitz side but bombers aren't common and shiver does help out quite a bit regardless of whether the Vanaduke fight lasts 30 seconds or 30 hours. Bomber is a strong role and this helm is basically the bomber equivalent of Seerus. If you lack guns and have bombs you should probably be using this helmet for FSC.
Vog could be considered the sword equivolent of Seerus.. but it doesn't grant you ctr, so it's pretty much not. Vog is good however, because it's easy to craft and widely useful. If you're going all swords and lack bombs and guns then it's your best bet by far. You can also pair it with seerus or itself or volcanic demo to fire in C42.
Dragon Scale Set is pretty much only good for compound 42. That being said, it turns compound 42 from a challenge into kittens, just like that. When you have your general use armor, dragon scale set is a pretty nice project to make, since it can bring in a good amount of free-ish prestige every fourth day.
Fallen is similar except instead of being useless offensively it packs a slight punch and makes you take a much larger punch. It's also not bad as a substitute for vog in Firestorm Citadel, and is particularly beginner friendly there. If you're really progressive you could plausibly go fallen+seerus to cover C42 and FSC in one fell swoop, though this is certainly the path less taken.
Mercurial Demo is good for its high shock resist, decent actual defenses and most importantly shock resist. If you want to be fully shock protected, this is a pretty good option.
These are good for filling in holes with the above. Lets say you don't want seerus, and are looking for some armor with fire resistance that benefits your guns. Well one of the sets will have that. Generally speaking, you want the pure damage set that gives you one bonus to each asi, ctr and damage category as opposed to the pure damage vs X armors, since damage vs X is kind of unreliable.
Those other armors..
I'm talking about armor like chroma, radiant silvermail, plate, stuff like that. No, these aren't 100% useless, but they're relatively underwhelming and not worth talking about or crafting unless you plan to collect armor. Lets take for example volcanic plate set. On fire levels, you can build the following-
volcanic plate armor + volcanic demo
This is a VERY potent set for the third round of the gauntlet, which features fire, gremlins, and various construct. But outside of that, it's pretty garbage because you raise your bomb slightly slower and massive amounts of normal, elemental and fire resist probably won't apply.
So yes, you can use these sets and they'll work to do what they say, but have fun heating them for that one tiny scenario.
Order of Crafting
1. Start with your general use set, which is probably going to be chaos or chaos and seerus. Getting this set will let you do most levels competently.
2. Build for the levels Firestorm Citadel and Dreams and Nightmares
3. Branch out into the other sets mentioned, so that you're prepared for anything
4. Goof off and craft volcanic plate if you still want to
Unique Variants
If you have a set to resist a status, you'll want to get at least a low in that status on that item. For instance, if I have dragon scale set I'll want at least lows in fire and poison on the set, so that I can fully resist whisps and other low statusing hazards. This is the power of those sets.
For your general use set, you'll want fire/shock resistance, so as to further resist the worst statuses. Freeze is also a bad status but you have black kat to deal with that for you.
Di, 10/04/2016 - 13:47
#2
see also
Your guide is good. My armor guide over here may also be of interest to readers of this thread.
Di, 10/04/2016 - 19:35
#3
I added a note in under chaos Nuclear.
Mi, 10/05/2016 - 01:13
#4
This is a good guide for the generic player.
I would say that perhaps a note should be added to the Mercurial Demo Suit/Helm paragraph that mentions the Mercurial Mail and Mercurial Helm, as some players may want shock resistance for GITM or missions before they reach shadow lairs. I consider Mercurial Mail a gunner armour, as guns can still make use of the movement bonus while firing, and the added cost for Demo wouldn't be worth it to anyone but a dedicated bomber with ctr uvs/trinkets
You could also add a section on which armours to avoid as they are redundant, such as bombastic, mad bomber, azure guardian, etc etc.
I'd also say that Ancient Plate armour could be included on this list considering it's relative ease of acquisition once you start doing vana and it's usefulness in unique situations such as the March of the Tortodrones event or paired with Black kat in lockdown.
It'd be interesting to see a guide similar to this for shields, especially if you yell at peopke who craft aegis...
Mi, 10/05/2016 - 13:55
#5
I wouldn't recommend normal mercurial set because it's piercing and generally worse than mercurial demo at all stages- prior to 5* it's just jelly with shock, whereas with mercurial demo you can at least have OKish bomber gear to use. If you must, buy the material off of AH and run shadow snarb/ice queen, or get someone to carry you. Yes, this is the pansy way out but you can't deny that sometimes it's the best option.
Ancient requires heating, which makes it just as costly as every other armor piece that isn't black kat. Your general use armor of chaos/black kat should be good enough for tortodrones, given they have some normal defense. Definitely what I've seen most players using there, to be honest.
As for unwanted gear, I'm saying that pretty much everything not listed isn't worthwhile enough to be crafted and should be avoided unless it fits into some niche of your play style. Generally you can use your imagination here- guy-that-kills-lizards is not an aspect of your play style. Guns with attack speed is. Chroma? Or Justifier? Hmmmmmmmm
Nor am I mentioning lockdown, because I don't play that.
Mo, 10/10/2016 - 23:53
#6
I'd like to amend an important omission
Dread Skelly Set
If you want to become a Shadow Defender, (and you should), one of the 8 different classes in the game (Shadow Defender, Elemental Defender, Piercing Defender, Cobalt Knight, Specialist, Guardian, Bomber, Gunslinger, Striker in descending order of Being Cool and Awesome), this set is pretty much essential.
If you do this, you can survive probably 5 shadow attacks instead of 3, making you able to stand in the front lines and keep your party of weaker classes safe from the shadows.
Di, 10/11/2016 - 14:24
#7
I dissagree
I don't think that the skelly set is very good. The shield is a very good item but the armor is just not up there in terms of great armors.
Undead and feinds drop lots of health and undead are pretty easy to dodge so only lasting 3 hits is not that big of a problem as long as you kill one or 2 of them before you get hit. Now feinds on the other hand I find them to be annoying but surprisingly easy. Most of them stop attacking if you hit them, so all you have to do is not combo. That way you are able to attack them or shield when they attack you and in most cases interupt their attacks. The next thing to considder is do undead or feinds ever have poison and freeze damage? Not really, they are most common with regular damage and with fire. By the time you end up being brave enough to do Heart of Ice you will be better at dodging and will be smarter about when you go in to attack, so the skelly set is okay there but it isn't great while the shield is a must for that mission.
So with that being said should you get the shield? Yes, it is a very usefull shield. Should you get the armor set? I would say no since if you have the shield you won't need to have the armor and other than heart of ice it is a pretty useless armor set in my opinion.
It may sound like I am bashing skelly but it just isn't good enough in my opinion to be placed on that list.
Mi, 10/26/2016 - 13:39
#8
@Nuclear-Lynx
You have much to learn. You can find others here and on the next page (Do note that as new threads are created, the threads are pushed back farther into later pages, so in the future you will have to go a few pages farther.)
There apparently were a few similarly named threads back in 2011, but their content isn't quite the same. They're mostly serious threads; the notable exception being the "Master Shoewearer" thread.
For the topic:
Ancient Plate set forces you to be a better player to deal with enemies more efficiently due to the debuffs. When I was playing, it seemed like a lot of people were anxiously trying to kill the enemy ASAP while running around like chickens. They didn't know how tightly they could dodge between attacks or around enemies because they would always run away or run in a wide circle (and it's pretty safe to run in a straight line in this game).
The armor is pretty cheap to get and is pretty much the best training armor due to giving the most debuffs while giving you a little bit more health to play with. It's great to spice up the grind and keep you on your toes.
Mi, 10/26/2016 - 14:25
#9
I thank you for linking that
I thank you for linking that thread but it doesn't change my opinion on skelly one bit, as far as me having much to learn I can say that I knew all of that way before this post was created so while I do agree I need to still learn a few things I don't think I am in the "you have much to learn" category. I just don't think that it is worth getting when both undead and fiends are decently easy if you are smart. Both of them drop a decent amount of health. Another reason I think it is an okay but not great armor is because there are so many armors that are better when used against fiends and undead and every other monster (chaos, the gunning armors, shadowsun, deadshot, vog, and kat are just a few examples) and most of them are just as easy to get.
Like I said before it can be useful in some areas but the other armors I mentioned are good for if not all most levels and therefore in my opinion outclass skelly by a decent amount.
Do, 10/27/2016 - 08:54
#10
I added a note about fallen set, since it's one of the two C42 armor sets and can be useful in FSC. As for ancient I still think it falls under other armors when it comes to actual use, which is the point of the guide.
Do, 01/12/2017 - 12:21
#11
Came back
Hi, I came back to this game, I have quit before when energy was a thing. So as I read all your guide, now vog isn't that popular anymore? I do wonder if going Chaos set would be correct. I am interested a lot in swords BUT I don't think that might be good always, since I think this game requires you to keep your distance (guns). I enjoy the playstyle of both guns and melee. So having said that, I need to know if going full melee isn't necessary the correct way, so I could craft Chaos for bonus damage to everything.
Do, 01/12/2017 - 13:35
#12
Chaos is great, I would
Chaos is great, I would really recommend it. You can use it almost anywhere, just be careful as its downsides can really bite you. Chaos also lets you keep your play style open as you can use any weapon in a variety of ways (Charge spam, ect.). It is a good armor that outclasses most others with its offensive bonuses
Do, 01/12/2017 - 18:21
#13
yes, Chaos
Yes, Chaos is great. Depending on your skill, computer, and network connection, it might not be great everywhere. There's no one-size-fits-all answer here.
In case you haven't seen it, an earlier (but still relevant) armor guide was linked in post #2.
Fr, 01/13/2017 - 11:08
#14
Good to see this guide coming up again! Yes, "just use chaos" is basically the idea behind this, with a few caveats of course.
Sa, 01/14/2017 - 09:46
#15
Lol hey another question
Lol hey another question which weapons should I aim for upgrading them first? Sword or gun? I'm gonna end up with blitz and Acheron, atm I have needle shot and nightblade, don't know which to upgrade first
Sa, 01/14/2017 - 12:09
#16
You're probably going to want more than just two weapons to deal with the entire game so I'd recommend branching out more. To answer your question however, I'd get blitz needle as your first 5*, purely because FSC farming is still popular. That way you could get some elemental weapon (probably combuster) and spend a while crushing vanaduke before quitting or ascending into greatness.
Sa, 01/14/2017 - 13:56
#17
"Erecting a Handgun Dispenser."
Just my opinion here, but for the most part, the gunner sets are just as viable between each other -- it all just depends on what Handguns you'll be using for the job.
On one side, you got the Gunslinger duos (Nameless/Shadowsun or Justifier/Shadowsun duos) that give you +4 resistances to 2 status (Freeze or Stun + Poison) as well as a Med ASI+DMG for Handguns for practically no drawbacks, which makes this a viable choice for gunners who will ONLY use Spam-centric Handguns that only have viable use in their regular attacks.
On the flip side, you got the Seerus duo (Seerus/Shadowsun duo), that while it does give you a +4 resistances to both Fire and Shock, +2 resistance to Poison and a Med CTR+DMG on Handguns, it comes at the drawback of a -2 resistance to Freeze and a Low ASI on Handguns, making it only a viable choice for gunners who will ONLY use Charge-centric Handguns that only have viable use in their charge attacks.
And then you got the Padded duos (Sacred Pathfinder/Sentinel/Shade duos), that depending on your setup can either give you +4 resistances to 2 status and -3 resistances to 2 others, or a +4 resistance to one status followed by a +1 resistance to another one and a -3 resistance to a third one, but all of them will give you a Med ASI+CTR+DMG on Handguns, which is a viable choice for gunners who will use both Spam-centric AND Charge-centric Handguns, or who will use Hybrid Handguns that have viable use in both their regular attacks and their charge attacks.
TL;DR, Gunslinger duos are only viable if you're on one end of the gunner spectrum, Seerus duo is only viable if you're on the opposite end, and Padded duos are only viable if you're in-between.
Fr, 02/03/2017 - 05:46
#18
Whats the best armor set vs slimes? (And sword aswell if possibl
I really want to farm on jelly king alone but i dont know what armor and weapons to use
Fr, 02/03/2017 - 06:06
#19
solo jelly?
skolver armor + acheron/obsidian edge
or
sacred hazard armor + obsidian carbine
Fr, 02/03/2017 - 12:23
#20
agree, but Chaos too
Yes, Acheron and Skolver would be great. Chaos would also be great, because there are no status threats. It wouldn't help you against the piercing damage, but it would let you charge your Acheron so rapidly that you could just blast everything all the time.
Fr, 02/03/2017 - 13:34
#21
I'd advise against crafting skolver because of black kat. Against slimes and especially polyps, yes, skolver offers an advantage of sorts, but the advantage really isn't big enough to make me go back and equip my skolver, in spite of owning it... and if it's hardly worth equipping for the defensive advantage I have a hard time recommending crafting it, since the moral of this guide is basically "go for black kat".
I really like the guide. It is well written and covers the best armors in the game.
The only thing that I want to add is that I think that if you are just starting out with the game DON'T go for chaos first unless you have a beast internet connection or have good reflexes. While chaos is the second best armor set in the game it can literally kill you if you have a bad internet connection or if you aren't good at dodging.
I would suggest slowly working your way to getting chaos like I did. I would recommend starting off with an armor that is easy to get, has good bonuses, but won't kill you (like Vog). If you will be using guns and don't mind taking the time to get the recipes (it is well worth doing so) I would recommend the Sacred Firefly Shade set since it has good fire resistance and good gun bonuses. Its only drawback is that you have to find the recipes from basil and it has negative shock resistance (so don't use it for Ghost in the Machine), but it will help make grinding vanna easier until you feel good enough to get chaos or until you get seerus.