spiked light-steel etc.

[Estel]

Should be again wearable by monks/shadows as it was possible during monks vol 1.

Real hard to gear shadow or monk atm. When it comes to armor pieces on legs for example.

[Davairus]

How many times must it be said... Monks do not wear metal. They need to wear stuff that allows them the agility to do their kung fu moves. If you don't feel the itemization has everything it needs, raise it, but don't come in here saying monks should be wearing steel. The whole world thinks that you are full of shit, because you're offering a fuckin' taste of robocop doing kung fu. Also, form fitting leggings easily comes to mind as an alternative that should be fine, so I don't believe there is a shortage.

[Dogran]

There is plenty of good gear just gotta find it

[Ergorion]

I agree with this point. It's funny how stuff that weighs so little is still classified as not light. If I remember correctly, the 4 pound armlets of vladimir are medium. While it would be a pain in the ass to change the weights of every item to reflect heavy/medium/light, I do think the actual weight should factor in rather than the categories being seemingly arbitrary. For example, institute something where any leg piece under 5 pounds is automatically light.

That being said, there are plenty of options for monks. Just start thinking outside the box more.

[Ceridwel]

Outside the box/inside the Codex.

[Olyn]

Armor type is independent of weight. Armor type is based on the material of the object. If you see steel as anything other than heavy it's a bug ("light steel" was too iconic to remove, so it's one category lighter than other steel). If you see leather as anything other than light it's a bug. In fact, the only metals that are light materials in Serin are mithril and adamantine.

Dav and I have discussed standardizing the item materials. Essentially, we would compile a list of materials present in our game world, determine the density of those materials, and determine the amount of the material needed to cover each of our eq slots. After that, a little math determines the rest. You guys have already been cataloguing our materials as you add things to the codex. Thanks.

I'm quite serious about making this happen. Remember the feature freeze we mentioned a couple of weeks ago? That's letting us keep an eye on a couple of classes who've gotten a recent facelift (monk, berserker, dark-knight, among others) while we sort through the various minor issues/bugs you guys have been finding. Don't expect this to get done right away, but it's near the top of my "project" list.

[Ergorion]

I guess now it's a matter of semantics.

The terms heavy/medium/light have connotations of weight. The fact that the actual weight of an item has no bearing on those terms seems a bit misleading. Perhaps classifying items based on how "restrictive" they are might be cleaner and less ambiguous. High/medium/low restriction.

[Olyn]

[Ergorion]

Yeah. That's pretty good. I should probably read help files.

[Nycticora]

the OP wasn't a retarded suggestion. It's not a great idea because monks in steel armor breaks immersion, but from a purely mechanical point of view it would be an easy mistake to make imho

[Dogran]

As it is, Moren was in very good armor before I deleted. He sat mid 40s hit and 54 dam in leopard stance with olost 300 ac in every slot. Items I could have improved were rings, necks, wrists, belt, and boots. Knowing I could get better in each of those slots, I was still decked with all light armor. It's possible.

[Davairus]

I've asked Olyn to update Evermore because it is a heavily thief themed area, and it would be in bad taste to go fight an awesome monk / ninja grandmaster with your level 50 ninja and find you can't wear the equipment.

Howeverv, there are several other areas that provide redundancy (so we do not have to kludge winter).

* gasteride - heavy armor
* underworld - medium armor
* zodiac island - light armor (not sure if this area is released yet but its in final stages)

So if we care that some random winter item is not useable by a thief, we would create something very similar in zodiac island. And if paladins cant get benefit from the lethal leather gloves, you know what, we can put full plated gloves in Gasteride. They might be just about pipped by the Winter equipment on the stats, and I do mean barely.

[Estel]

Main issue is with low rank gear. Red Fox sucks, let's be honest.

Red dragon heavy, black tear heavy, dark oak heavy (or medium?) and so on and so forth.

No real 2 stat gear for shadows/monks.

Even the thick belt from Titan is medium, it used to be light, perfect for monks so you can wear teeth necklaces at least. Girdle of ogre strength, gauntlets of ogre power all heavy/medium etc.

Needs to have more diversity on low level imo. I always min/maxed my low rank chars without needing of rares, got really beefed stats combining red dragon/dex eq and as monk/shadow can't do much of this. You either rely on rares or wear health eq.

[Olyn]

Red Fox is on par with radiance and beast and is easier to customize with engrave. I don't know what "stat gear" is, but we have living wood and mithril for easy hit dam balance. If you're talking about str dex etc there's eq everywhere.

[Estel]

Ok, goods/neuts can wear living wood and mithril for dam/hit.

Evils cant wear dark oak nor black tear or red dragon when you are shadow/monk.

Should I just give up and go for red fox with evil monk then?

I am parked in the middle of river in Guatemala (for a long time and no internet on boat), I can't consume enough time to keep full set of rares every month.

[Olyn]

I would get dorgar's black leather and some red fox studded leather and use non encumberance slots to use up your extra dex/str i.e webbed rings and teeth necklaces

[Nycticora]

I thought tattoos were supposed to pick up the slack in this area, are the tattoos not working for you?