Wiki/Equipment/Armor Classes

Equipment

Armor Classes

Plate, leather, and robes — three armor families, three combat styles.

Table of Contents (5)

Three Families

Every armor piece belongs to one of three families that line up with the three combat styles. Plate armor is forged from bars and pairs with melee. Leather armor is fabricated from cured hides and pairs with ranged. Robes are woven from cloth and pair with signal magic. Wearing the wrong family for your combat style penalizes accuracy and damage.

Plate Armor

Forged from smelted bars in the Forging discipline. Bodies, helmets, boots, and shields. The highest raw defense at every tier — mandatory for melee builds. Trains and is gated by Fortitude.

Leather Armor (Ranger)

Cured hides at three tiers: Dark Leather (T2), Brown Leather (T4), and Black Leather (T7). Crafted in Fabrication on the Leather tab. Each set is body, coif, and boots. Required for ranged combat — wearing plate while shooting bows kills accuracy.

Where Hides Drop

Hide drops from monsters in every combat zone. Tier 1–3 zones (Sporeveld, Miasma, Resonance) drop Dark Hide. Tier 4–6 zones (Crucible, Pale Reaches, Shattered Expanse, Abyssal Veins, Signal Apex, Hollow Core) drop Brown Hide. Tier 7+ zones (Incubation Vaults, Architect Necropolis, Genesis Lab) drop Black Hide. Hide is heavily weighted in the drop pool, so any combat session in those zones builds toward your next leather set.

Robes

Woven from fabric in Fabrication. Four schools (Volt, Cryo, Toxic, Pyro) each have a Robe (lower tier) and a Vestment (upper tier). Required for signal magic — wearing plate or leather shuts down spell accuracy.