Between the different spreadsheets I made for this video, I made some errors during recording. I'll include revisions below: 1. Samurai armor does not have a DEX debuff. This makes it the best plate armor all-around for DEX builds that want the most amount of coverage. 2. At 1:36 that is what happens you combine the words cut and blunt accidentally 3. Plated longboots do have a .98x Athletics debuff but this is still better than the Athletics modifiers on the other plated boots
I would like to speak up in defense of the armored rags. It has one specific niche where one might consider using it. Races have a different body part hit chances. And hive drones and workers, due to their unusal anatomy and body proportions have incredibly low stomach hit chance, at the expense of other body parts being more likely to hit. So you can equip this type of armor on them, and preferably train them as MA - therefore defense debuff from armored rags does not even matter. And most importantly, this armor looks hecking cool.
I always viewed the heart protector for vanilla as something more along the lines of "ok, you just got a katana and your character is low enough level that the defense minus is an actual problem. Wear this so that you might be able to survive a fight until you can afford something more then just an undershirt"
Yes, all damage dealt is reduced by 15%, which a huge deal for non-tank roles. Samurai Armor is the best when maximizing cut efficiency and access to weapon choices in exchange for having gaps in your coverage to critical parts and dealing less damage regardless of weapon type or stats.
@@Aereto So this is a lot more complicated then you are thinking, because only blunts and the fragment axe treat the damage modifier as worse worse. Dexterity is cut damage, so the raw damage of samurai armor is higher for hackers then all 0.65 dexterity armors and lower (And equal to all 0.7 armor.) This is raw per hit damage. Ok so. Dexterity also swing speed and block speed, so you spend less time defending, and attack more frequently. And this is hackers. A class thats 50/50 blunt and cutting. Heavy polarms and naginata katanas have far stronger preferences to samurai armor when compared to hackers. For katanas, sabers, falling suns, etc etc.... Samurai armor simply is the heavy armor. Period. So damage dealers almost universally are going to put out more damage then the other heavy armors... With the exception that the shek rags actually can keep up in some cases. (Plate jackets are medium, but they obviously have the lowest penalty of ok performance armors..)
@@WalrusJones185 I have leaned more into White Plate Jackets and Dustcoats for more skilled fighters using balanced or near balanced stat weapons mainly due to coverage to critical parts. They are more likely to be given Leather Turtlenecks or Dark Leather Shirts. On the rare cases Samurai Armor is used, I only give those to the ones with high toughness if I want to minimize dexterity penalty while able to tank damage that slips through the gaps.
@@Aereto Really depends on if you are banking on a single combatant (Heavy armor with coverage faults is a huge risk) or a large group of skilled fighters (Heavy armor with no real penalties in mass is incredibly overpowered as the risk of a few getting ko'd in rare edge cases doesn't matter.)
Holy/Unholy Armor in testing actually beats Samurai Armor in a 1v1 with high level characters. Apparently that 15% malus to damage and the chance for a hit to bypass the armor on the stomach for samurai armor, lets the unholy armor get the occasional stagger leading to a win. In addition to this the 95% cut resistance efficiency of Holy/Unholy is better than the 90% efficiency of Samurai, and that also make a substantial difference in the 1v1. Also the dex penalty on unholy armor for weapons like hackers which have a blunt cut split has a lower damage penalty than Samurai. That said with cutting weapons Samurai does have an edge with damage output. The big advantage that samurai has is that it makes it so you are very unlikely to lose an arm, but by mid game that is not as much of a concern when you can buy a specialist or masterwork arms that have a lot of hp. As a side note Crab tends to lose a 1v1 against the others, but it lasts for a long time. So Crab is the best tanking armor, or if you need the environmental protection. Seriously Masterwork Crab armor with a Heavy Jitte is a superb tank, just remember to turn on taunt. Alternatively grind strength up to like 80, get 2 masterwork lifter arms, and then grab an edge 1 or maybe 2 quality fragment axe to aoe crowds with massive blunt damage. Also with masterwork crab armor and high toughness very few things can possibly stun you; so even if you start to slow a bit from damage your attacks still go through.
Samurai armor is simply the best for anything other than a tank or martial artist, there’s no competition. The reason for that is that DEX is a fundamental stat for all characters, even those who use only blunt weapons. That’s because combat speed (ie the ability of your char to actually attack) scales with dexterity, which means that for example if you wear the crab armor, the penalty on combat speed will increase additionally, often making you unable to find an opening to parry or deliver a hit, especially against a high level character who’s wearing just a dustcoat or assassin rags… Still, all armors have their niche, and they are all great to use if not for tactics just for esthetics.
You overrate dex, it goes down drastically when you are injured so armour dex penalties arent that big of a deal in grand scale, combat speed isnt alone determined by dex however (about 3/5 of combat speed) the other 2/5 is determined by attack and defense stats.
A note on Holy/Unholy Armor, is that for pure STR builds, it can be paired with Chainmail for arm coverage. Sure, you dump your dex into abysmal levels, but if you're using a Fragment Axe+Jitte setup, why do you care about dex? Very solid for Shek warriors with str weapons, and it seems to be the definitive armor for supertank builds. When I'm looking at heavy armor on my characters, I see Samurai Helmet+Wooden Sandals on all builds, with Samurai Armor+Leather Turtleneck for Dex builds, Holy/Unholy Armor+Blackened Chainmail for STR builds, and Samurai Armor+Blackened Chainmail for split scaling builds. Martial Arts and Archers seem much better off opting for lighter gear with fewer penalties.
I'm really with you on the plate jacket, I especially like using it for everyone in my faction who are not the "elite fighter" group, as wearing plate jacket over leather turtleneck with plated drifter's pants adds little weight so requires little strength, applies no athletics effect penalty, while providing very balanced defense as you mention, making for a great 'militia' gear in the later game that will not interfere with the work of your basedwellers or caravaneers etc, or having little impact on the performance of ranged characters.
I suppose the "reasoning" behind Shek liking the Armoured Rags chestpiece so much, is that unlike other "heavy" armor it does almost nothing to reduce offensive ability, debuffing instead melee defence, which no doubt plays to the 'character' of the Shek, and then they combine them with the Samurai Legplates to have its 50% stomach coverage make up a little for the god-awful stat of the rags. Not saying it's a good choice, just imagining that's probably the line of thinking, that it's a 'sacrificing defense for offense' line of logic that suits the Shek even if it ends up subpar in practice.
I'm a big fan of white plate jackets. They make for a very striking faction uniform, since no other faction in the base game wears them, as far as I know. Samurai armor is usually my pick for lategame armor since I don't tend to interact with the crab raiders much at all. The lack of dexterity penalty on Samurai armor also means I can keep a consistent uniform across my melee characters without screwing over my cutting weapon users.
Samurai armor does not decrease your DEX but your dmg. It balances out dmg decrease other heavy armors have without slowing your combat speed. Its great in combination with light weapons. Stats of this armor were specificaly made to work with katanas (SAMURAI armor, duh) even if katanas are not very good weapons in general and even worse against high-end armored enemies, having your character absolutely overwhelm you enemy with flurry of attacks, not letting him do anything while having good protection, if he actualy gets hit, is great.
For the price and effort to craft it I'd not trust plate armour to do much more than keep a base defender alive for longer while I deal with hostile crossbowmen in a base attack. It doesn't win fights, it just helps drag them out for longer when really the better thing to do in most of those situations is run away (making them maybe outclassed by SANDALS of all things). I see it as a kind of odd stopgap to having more research for base defences like elevated harpoons with overlapping fields of fire and enough turret training to have the skills for a good rate of fire.
since you were giving advice might have mentioned that switching limbs to cybernetics on organic characters pretty much makes the arm and leg vunerabilities obsolete and cyborgs need to worry more with their vital parts.
I wouldn't discount it, at least if you're fighting the Holy Nation, your legs could get destroyed which is bad for hit and run tactics and could get that character killed if you have to leave them behind.
0:30 BAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHHA Just to add vs weapons with negative armour pen the max cut dmg you can resist is 90%. This is believed (by me) to be a bug as it does not work this way with normal armour. Armour that protects from dmg after the 90% will still add stun dmg as if they are reducing the remaining 10 cut damage. So let's say you fight a Katana user with Crab Armour and they do 100 cut dmg. That is 10cut and 9 stun. Now if you wore Samurai Legplates you would take 10cut and 9.8125 stun and more if you have a shirt. Fun fact about Crab Armour.. I did 50 all stat testing with characters using MKII Falling Suns and wearing Masterwork Crab Helmet, Dark Leather Shirt, Samurai Legplates and Wooden Sandals (All humans) and swapped out the body armour pieces. I didn't bother testing armours which didn't fill any niches. The main armours I tested vs each other were Assassins Rags, Ninja Rags, Dustcoat, White Plate Jacket, Samurai Armour, Holy Chest Plate, Heart Protector, Crab Armour and Mercenary Plate. Each armour user fought vs the other 10 times. Crab armour lost vs all of the armour pieces over 7 times. In fact, Crab armour is so bad that when I did fights vs a character with no chest armour at all it want to say it was 11 to 9. Crab armour won 11 times out of 9. I was so shocked I did 20 total tests. It's so bad that no armor coverage is better sometimes. The -10 Attack is the worst penalty. Paired with the Dex drop it just blows. 1:27 I'd add that it has a 15% (0.85 attack damage effect) damage reduction. Which is great when training. It also has the largest combat speed penalty of any Heavy armour (Not counting Ancient Samurai Armour ofc) but no Dex reduction so it's not "too" bad if high stated. 3:35 Great mention! Was about to comment that. If you are a Skeleton or a Hiver UCP and HCP are the BEST when training defense (With robotic limbs ofc) and it hard counters animal damage as a VAST majority of animal damage (Minus Gorillos, they suck) is piercing aka Harpoon dmg. It however is absolutely horrid against their sworn enemies, the Sheks... Aka crap Blunt resist. 5:00 Samurai is 0.85x Damage :P Not Dex. Mercenary Armour has better speed and not as bad of a Dex reduction as HCP. It's mostly useful as a Hiver (Stomach like NEVER gets hit on them anyways) if fighting enemies with blunt dmg. 80% eff makes it horrible trash vs cut though. 5:29 They suck so bad... Also 15.75kg :P I updated the wiki a lil ago. To add the major weakness is -5 defense on top of all that. It is what makes the Sheks a joke. They can deal decent damage but they can not take it. 6:55 White Plate Jacket > others. Only 5% Dex reduction vs 10% from the others. I know you mention that later on but that alone means WPJ is the best of the 3. 7:11 5.625kg :) 7:35 The cut eff is pretty horrid on it and it comes with a Dex/dodge reduction. Not a giant fan of it. But it can be useful for staying alive for sure for starters. 9:22 Heart protector is one of the two armour pieces in the game with 100% cut eff. So if you are hit by a bolt and your armour protects you, as long as that hit did not do over 85.5 dmg (Before Toughness is applied) you take zero damage. As much as I love Heart protector is does weigh 3.75kg so it's a bit heavier. As a plus side it is what I refer to as "buff armour". It has 0 downsides. +2 Defense. It's the only plate body armour which has 0 debuffs. It actually has better blunt and cut resist compared to WPJ.. Assuming it blocks. 10:25 Armoured Rag skirt is one of the reasons why Martial Arts in INSANE in late game. +6 MA top armour, +4 Pants +8 indoors and you are increasing your damage by a truckload. The +10 alone from armour is why when I do an MA run I just let my character 1v1 Catlon on like day 9ish or so with their 90 (+10) Martial Arts. Should only be used in the late game tbh with MA and you'll have robotic limbs by then so the coverage doesn't really matter to me. 10:47 Well said. They are the most broken pants in the entire game. I use them in basically every (Non-MA) run. Samurai Armour for my legs and some stomach protection as the cost of 2.5% Combat speed? Yes please. 11:05 You take that back now. 11:32 Armour weight is based off coverage and the Material. They weigh less because of their bad coverage. Crab Trousers are extremely bad (95% coverage for legs, worse harpoon, cut, blunt, and combat speed) and I'd suggest never using them unless it is throwing them into an item furnace inside Crab Town after you just looted one on accident in disgust. That aside... It does look kind of nice. 12:49 Those pants are what make Tinfist a LOT easier to fight. I still don't know why they gave them to him. Anyways I will say they look really rad. Just... Not my type. 13:45 Robo limbs, wooden sandals or bust. Jokes aside Plated Longboots are the "best" ones imo. And hey look Samurai Boots the other 100% cut eff armour :D
Frankie! Thanks for watching. Sounds like the Crab Armor debuffs knock down DEX and damage a lot. Yes, WPJ all the way! RIP the 90% coverage on Tinfist shorts... I'd argue that Crab trousers are beautiful and functional btw 🦀
Paul, samurai armor does NOT have any dexterity debuff… I don’t know where did you take they 0.85x debuff that you quoted before, but that’s simply not true.
@@paulrogersgaming no worries pal, looks like you jumped a line and read 0.85x of the attack damage modifier as the dexterity modifier… but you’re still the best 😎
Would love to see a video on settling shrieking forest, never tried it myself because non stop spawning shrieking bandits corpses destroy my framerate and characters, just endless war with no break, feels like fighting an ant colony.
your guides are top notch, if i could humbly request a weapons guide and maybe weapons testing against various enemies, scenarios theyd be good in, scenarios theyd be bad in + your overall take id be highly intrigued
no, armor is actually not needed, i mean, just get your martial arts over 90 and strength at least 60 and you'll be practically one shotting everything. i can take out cleanser units in the amount of time they hit me twice.
As someone with 500 hours, and have beaten all names characters (both with a squad and solo) the only armours that really matter are: plate jackets, samurai and crab, I only put crab on designated tank rolls, but still. The rest are somewhat negligible
Heart protector should give 50% protection to the left arm and 70% chest protection. No other changes, same value, same protection. It would still suck, but not as bad.
I feel like you underestimate the armoured rags, they are great on skeletons and hivers, who have a much lower chance to get hit in the stomach versus the other races, skeletons 33% less often and hivers 66% less often, so you don't really need the coverage there as much. As such you can get near close the armor protection of samurai/crab, without barely a hit to dexterity and no damage nerf from samurai either. They're also cheaper than a plate jacket by about 15% on average, which starts to add up if you play with multiple / a lot of characters. Their only downside is their 15kg weight, but considering how high their protection ratings are I find this acceptable, and it also helps with training strength passively (due to reaching low % encumbrance easier), but I agree for the other races the low stomach protection really messes it up. Also armoured rags just look so badass when combined with drifter pants or plated drifter pants and drifter boots / plated drifter boots. I used to really like black plate jackets, but these days I try to put my recruits in sleeveless dustcoats (or leather armor if no dustcoats available), both of which are cheap, both are 15-16k at masterwork, while neither affects dexterity or combat speed. For hivers and skeletons I"ll choose armoured rags though until I can get some samurai for them, which I prefer over crab cause I'd rather take 15% damage nerf than a 50% dexterity nerf. Also I'm pretty biased here, but I really don't like how the plate jackets look, like how you pointed out that samurai plated leggins can look a bit silly. Once late game (not to be confused with endgame) starts to come around I try to switch my explorers to sleeved dustcoats (mostly for the armor protection), I don't run it on recruits cause the +5 melee defense slows down their training / narrows down their suitable training opponents, but once they're at an acceptable level I'll take the extra arm coverage, thus staying power in combat, with soft samurai pants since there's no debuffs but good coverage even though the protection ratings are meh. (I'm one of those people that tries to keep melee attack / defense as low as possible, as long as possible, cause I don't want to cheese the game with prisoners or "90 toughness in 3 minutes" tactics, basically because Stronger Opponent Logic exists). I agree on the heart protector though, it's just a "Better than nothing" and it fills that role perfectly, plus it's usually the item I loot off dust bandits because it's good value for it's item size even on shoddy quality, vs things like their helmet and boots which are only worth taking on standard quality or better. I really only put samurai on my base defenders or when I go for a city assault (for example to get seta or valtena) on my soldiers, my explorers tend to be stealth/speedy/light armor/dexterity characters. So end-game usually looks like 3-5 characters with dustcoats, soft samurai pants, samurai helmets and sandals still (or armoured hood if I need acid/burning) and the rest are full samurai.
I'd consider wooden sandals as the best footwear. It's the only item that gives you a 5% Attackspeed-Bonus. Also Samurai-Legplates cover 100% of your legs. So take the additional 5% Attackspeed and the increased dps output that comes with this buff.
robot limbs holy armor and crab head，the discuss result of best armor in Chinese community. it looks stupid and ugly,need your character be eaten by fogman. just the utility way to play the game
Late but crab armor is only the best in the HEAD slot as it only has minus perception debuff. It’s body and leg pieces are strongest tank wise but otherwise samurai chest and legs out class it by not debuffing your DEX. Holy chest plate does have a nice niche of it doesn’t protect arms so you can dismember you squad members for the strength and certainty of skeleton limbs.
I just keep thinking about it but blackened chainmail + plated jacket makes you pretty tanky without debuffing your damage or dex that much at all honestly, while giving you perfect upper body coverage in two great layers
surprised to hear such praise for the plate jacket. I think its one of the worst armors in the game. mediocre resistance, still getting a dex penalty (a 10% decrease in melee DPS and less attacks overall), and hurts dodge meaning martial artists cant wear it. having to get a masterworked one to have mid resistance when only a "High" samurai plate outperforms it with better debuffs (attack damage reduction is better than dex reduction, you are still hitting fast allowing you to not get overwhelmed, a good trade for the slightly lowered damage that is almost identical to the end result of reduced dex, and the combat speed malus is negligible). the full upper body coverage personally doesnt matter, the small chance an attack gets through with sam' armor, your chainmail is there for a reason. Also the cut resist efficiency is much better on the sam' armor, but cut efficiency is a whole can of worms. I do prefer the looks of the plate jackets though. samurai armor is really ugly to me.
The heart protector has a fantastic perk, it's protection is dog water and it sells extremelly high while not being weighty or using much inventory spave, and you know who wears it? Dust bandits, so farming dust bandits early game with the help of the shek gate guards is a fantastic way to both train combat stats and make some descent money while doing it
"20% stomach coverage" I always hated this design, we even see it in real life with actual ballistic armor that only covers the chest while ignoring the guy area. Sure, you can survive taking a bit of damage there and that's not as important as the organs in your chest, *but I'd rather have a fat slab of metal covering it anyways because that's gonna hurt a lot less.*
Been enjoying these vids a lot! You take everything in to consideration, and I'm really looking forward to the helmets tier guide by you soon! Better than a tier list.
Crab's legs stealth debuff is larger than Samurai's no? Unless I'm really misreading how that modifier works. But really both are so low that it doesn't matter much.
the cut efficiency mod just removes the extra cut resistance you'd normally have, so a converted 70% cut efficiency would reduce the vanilla cut resistance on the armor by 30%. i.e. his damage calculations, while technically wrong for vanilla (when considering a full outfit due to how the leftover cut efficiency damage is handled, which makes low cut efficiency outer armors MUCH MUCH worse than they appear), are actually accurate for NCE mod, since the mod author used the same logic for calculating the true cut resistance of the armors when removing cut-efficiency.
regardless of your favourite, you DO need a mod that fixes the cutting efficiency, since it's sorta bugged in vanilla. steam workshop provides. my tanky fav combination is: armored hood crab main armor samurai legs leather turtleneck wooden sandals some items give speed, or no penalty or resistances. i like black plate jacket too. no stealth penalty. combine with samurai cloth legs etc and good for speedy characters
I feel your underestimating the armored rags a bit to mutch yes it's stomach protection is abysmal but it's damage reduction closer to heavy armor than the medium armor while having some of the lowest stat debuffs, no stealt and dodge debuff makes it the best option for thiefs and martial artists long term I really like how armor in the game says something about the faction that uses it, holy nation lacks resources and competent crafters so they put what they have into one really good armor piece that is easyer to produce for those that have shown there worth to Okran, empire is poor but there nobles are rich and can afford the best equipement from tech hunters for there army, shek have guts but would rather die from loosing them literally than living with the shame of loosing them figuratively and there are tons of little things like that
@@paulrogersgaming Wow wtf? I have nearly 1,000 hours in Kenshi and never noticed. Probably because I only ever bother with masterwork heavy armor. lol
Between the different spreadsheets I made for this video, I made some errors during recording. I'll include revisions below:
1. Samurai armor does not have a DEX debuff. This makes it the best plate armor all-around for DEX builds that want the most amount of coverage.
2. At 1:36 that is what happens you combine the words cut and blunt accidentally
3. Plated longboots do have a .98x Athletics debuff but this is still better than the Athletics modifiers on the other plated boots
I would like to speak up in defense of the armored rags. It has one specific niche where one might consider using it. Races have a different body part hit chances. And hive drones and workers, due to their unusal anatomy and body proportions have incredibly low stomach hit chance, at the expense of other body parts being more likely to hit. So you can equip this type of armor on them, and preferably train them as MA - therefore defense debuff from armored rags does not even matter. And most importantly, this armor looks hecking cool.
Also it can be retinted to blue by giving them to Agnu then taking it back which is great
@@teecee1827yes I love that! Know I should get her some better armor at some point but I just love the look it
I always viewed the heart protector for vanilla as something more along the lines of "ok, you just got a katana and your character is low enough level that the defense minus is an actual problem. Wear this so that you might be able to survive a fight until you can afford something more then just an undershirt"
Lol... heart protectors for me are profit revenue, I get my smith's to pump them out, until I can make better gear at a high grade
@@jaybee8862 hmmm ... Maybe that explains why all the dust bandits wear them
The best Plated Armor is Holy Chestplate,because nothing can defend you better then Okran!!!
holy chestplate is amazing training armour because of its great chest and stomach defense and bad limb protection
@@austinlipnicki7761 And because it's Holy👍💪
@@Busson_0 Okran is my shield!
Amen
@@austinlipnicki7761 The exposed limbs are to proudly show off that you are whole and not corrupted by skeletal taint
5:00 Slight correction: Samurai Armour doesn’t have a Dexterity modifier, it has an *Attack Damage Effect* of .85.
I'll pin a comment with corrections for this. Thank you for catching this!
Yes, all damage dealt is reduced by 15%, which a huge deal for non-tank roles.
Samurai Armor is the best when maximizing cut efficiency and access to weapon choices in exchange for having gaps in your coverage to critical parts and dealing less damage regardless of weapon type or stats.
@@Aereto So this is a lot more complicated then you are thinking, because only blunts and the fragment axe treat the damage modifier as worse worse.
Dexterity is cut damage, so the raw damage of samurai armor is higher for hackers then all 0.65 dexterity armors and lower (And equal to all 0.7 armor.) This is raw per hit damage.
Ok so.
Dexterity also swing speed and block speed, so you spend less time defending, and attack more frequently.
And this is hackers. A class thats 50/50 blunt and cutting. Heavy polarms and naginata katanas have far stronger preferences to samurai armor when compared to hackers.
For katanas, sabers, falling suns, etc etc.... Samurai armor simply is the heavy armor. Period.
So damage dealers almost universally are going to put out more damage then the other heavy armors... With the exception that the shek rags actually can keep up in some cases. (Plate jackets are medium, but they obviously have the lowest penalty of ok performance armors..)
@@WalrusJones185
I have leaned more into White Plate Jackets and Dustcoats for more skilled fighters using balanced or near balanced stat weapons mainly due to coverage to critical parts. They are more likely to be given Leather Turtlenecks or Dark Leather Shirts.
On the rare cases Samurai Armor is used, I only give those to the ones with high toughness if I want to minimize dexterity penalty while able to tank damage that slips through the gaps.
@@Aereto Really depends on if you are banking on a single combatant (Heavy armor with coverage faults is a huge risk) or a large group of skilled fighters (Heavy armor with no real penalties in mass is incredibly overpowered as the risk of a few getting ko'd in rare edge cases doesn't matter.)
You could have shown holy chest plate by Greenlander model, but you did chose to use Shek. Some might fight this highly offensive.
Blasphemous... I hope I can pray for forgiveness
@@paulrogersgamingyou will have to be enslaved and do stone mining in the name of okran.
Holy/Unholy Armor in testing actually beats Samurai Armor in a 1v1 with high level characters. Apparently that 15% malus to damage and the chance for a hit to bypass the armor on the stomach for samurai armor, lets the unholy armor get the occasional stagger leading to a win. In addition to this the 95% cut resistance efficiency of Holy/Unholy is better than the 90% efficiency of Samurai, and that also make a substantial difference in the 1v1.
Also the dex penalty on unholy armor for weapons like hackers which have a blunt cut split has a lower damage penalty than Samurai. That said with cutting weapons Samurai does have an edge with damage output. The big advantage that samurai has is that it makes it so you are very unlikely to lose an arm, but by mid game that is not as much of a concern when you can buy a specialist or masterwork arms that have a lot of hp.
As a side note Crab tends to lose a 1v1 against the others, but it lasts for a long time. So Crab is the best tanking armor, or if you need the environmental protection. Seriously Masterwork Crab armor with a Heavy Jitte is a superb tank, just remember to turn on taunt. Alternatively grind strength up to like 80, get 2 masterwork lifter arms, and then grab an edge 1 or maybe 2 quality fragment axe to aoe crowds with massive blunt damage. Also with masterwork crab armor and high toughness very few things can possibly stun you; so even if you start to slow a bit from damage your attacks still go through.
Armored rags may be bad but they win with drip which is the true endgame
Samurai armor is simply the best for anything other than a tank or martial artist, there’s no competition.
The reason for that is that DEX is a fundamental stat for all characters, even those who use only blunt weapons. That’s because combat speed (ie the ability of your char to actually attack) scales with dexterity, which means that for example if you wear the crab armor, the penalty on combat speed will increase additionally, often making you unable to find an opening to parry or deliver a hit, especially against a high level character who’s wearing just a dustcoat or assassin rags…
Still, all armors have their niche, and they are all great to use if not for tactics just for esthetics.
The attack combat stat also applies into your attack cooldown
You overrate dex, it goes down drastically when you are injured so armour dex penalties arent that big of a deal in grand scale, combat speed isnt alone determined by dex however (about 3/5 of combat speed) the other 2/5 is determined by attack and defense stats.
Holy Chestplate gives the best cut and blunt resistance because Okran makes you chaste
Armoured rags are fineish on hivers because their subrace has lower hitchance on stomack
A note on Holy/Unholy Armor, is that for pure STR builds, it can be paired with Chainmail for arm coverage. Sure, you dump your dex into abysmal levels, but if you're using a Fragment Axe+Jitte setup, why do you care about dex? Very solid for Shek warriors with str weapons, and it seems to be the definitive armor for supertank builds.
When I'm looking at heavy armor on my characters, I see Samurai Helmet+Wooden Sandals on all builds, with Samurai Armor+Leather Turtleneck for Dex builds, Holy/Unholy Armor+Blackened Chainmail for STR builds, and Samurai Armor+Blackened Chainmail for split scaling builds. Martial Arts and Archers seem much better off opting for lighter gear with fewer penalties.
Can't wait for headgear! These guides are great, even for a seasoned player!
I'm really with you on the plate jacket, I especially like using it for everyone in my faction who are not the "elite fighter" group, as wearing plate jacket over leather turtleneck with plated drifter's pants adds little weight so requires little strength, applies no athletics effect penalty, while providing very balanced defense as you mention, making for a great 'militia' gear in the later game that will not interfere with the work of your basedwellers or caravaneers etc, or having little impact on the performance of ranged characters.
I suppose the "reasoning" behind Shek liking the Armoured Rags chestpiece so much, is that unlike other "heavy" armor it does almost nothing to reduce offensive ability, debuffing instead melee defence, which no doubt plays to the 'character' of the Shek, and then they combine them with the Samurai Legplates to have its 50% stomach coverage make up a little for the god-awful stat of the rags. Not saying it's a good choice, just imagining that's probably the line of thinking, that it's a 'sacrificing defense for offense' line of logic that suits the Shek even if it ends up subpar in practice.
The biggest debuff of plated armor has is the price tag
Just craft it. Armor smithing is easy to level and makes a ton of money.
I'm a big fan of white plate jackets. They make for a very striking faction uniform, since no other faction in the base game wears them, as far as I know.
Samurai armor is usually my pick for lategame armor since I don't tend to interact with the crab raiders much at all. The lack of dexterity penalty on Samurai armor also means I can keep a consistent uniform across my melee characters without screwing over my cutting weapon users.
savant
Samurai armor does not decrease your DEX but your dmg. It balances out dmg decrease other heavy armors have without slowing your combat speed. Its great in combination with light weapons. Stats of this armor were specificaly made to work with katanas (SAMURAI armor, duh) even if katanas are not very good weapons in general and even worse against high-end armored enemies, having your character absolutely overwhelm you enemy with flurry of attacks, not letting him do anything while having good protection, if he actualy gets hit, is great.
Thanks for the comment! I pinned a comment with corrections for this detail since DEX is not debuffed by samurai armor.
For the price and effort to craft it I'd not trust plate armour to do much more than keep a base defender alive for longer while I deal with hostile crossbowmen in a base attack. It doesn't win fights, it just helps drag them out for longer when really the better thing to do in most of those situations is run away (making them maybe outclassed by SANDALS of all things). I see it as a kind of odd stopgap to having more research for base defences like elevated harpoons with overlapping fields of fire and enough turret training to have the skills for a good rate of fire.
I don't quite understand the debuf stats. When is a .90% debuf the same as a 90% debuf?
since you were giving advice might have mentioned that switching limbs to cybernetics on organic characters pretty much makes the arm and leg vunerabilities obsolete and cyborgs need to worry more with their vital parts.
I wouldn't discount it, at least if you're fighting the Holy Nation, your legs could get destroyed which is bad for hit and run tactics and could get that character killed if you have to leave them behind.
thats only if you are a robot, paladin swords still do reduced damage if you are organic with cyberlimbs@@joshuagraham1800
0:30 BAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHHA
Just to add vs weapons with negative armour pen the max cut dmg you can resist is 90%. This is believed (by me) to be a bug as it does not work this way with normal armour. Armour that protects from dmg after the 90% will still add stun dmg as if they are reducing the remaining 10 cut damage. So let's say you fight a Katana user with Crab Armour and they do 100 cut dmg. That is 10cut and 9 stun. Now if you wore Samurai Legplates you would take 10cut and 9.8125 stun and more if you have a shirt.
Fun fact about Crab Armour.. I did 50 all stat testing with characters using MKII Falling Suns and wearing Masterwork Crab Helmet, Dark Leather Shirt, Samurai Legplates and Wooden Sandals (All humans) and swapped out the body armour pieces. I didn't bother testing armours which didn't fill any niches. The main armours I tested vs each other were Assassins Rags, Ninja Rags, Dustcoat, White Plate Jacket, Samurai Armour, Holy Chest Plate, Heart Protector, Crab Armour and Mercenary Plate. Each armour user fought vs the other 10 times.
Crab armour lost vs all of the armour pieces over 7 times. In fact, Crab armour is so bad that when I did fights vs a character with no chest armour at all it want to say it was 11 to 9. Crab armour won 11 times out of 9. I was so shocked I did 20 total tests. It's so bad that no armor coverage is better sometimes. The -10 Attack is the worst penalty. Paired with the Dex drop it just blows.
1:27 I'd add that it has a 15% (0.85 attack damage effect) damage reduction. Which is great when training. It also has the largest combat speed penalty of any Heavy armour (Not counting Ancient Samurai Armour ofc) but no Dex reduction so it's not "too" bad if high stated.
3:35 Great mention! Was about to comment that. If you are a Skeleton or a Hiver UCP and HCP are the BEST when training defense (With robotic limbs ofc) and it hard counters animal damage as a VAST majority of animal damage (Minus Gorillos, they suck) is piercing aka Harpoon dmg. It however is absolutely horrid against their sworn enemies, the Sheks... Aka crap Blunt resist.
5:00 Samurai is 0.85x Damage :P Not Dex. Mercenary Armour has better speed and not as bad of a Dex reduction as HCP. It's mostly useful as a Hiver (Stomach like NEVER gets hit on them anyways) if fighting enemies with blunt dmg. 80% eff makes it horrible trash vs cut though.
5:29 They suck so bad... Also 15.75kg :P I updated the wiki a lil ago. To add the major weakness is -5 defense on top of all that. It is what makes the Sheks a joke. They can deal decent damage but they can not take it.
6:55 White Plate Jacket > others. Only 5% Dex reduction vs 10% from the others. I know you mention that later on but that alone means WPJ is the best of the 3.
7:11 5.625kg :)
7:35 The cut eff is pretty horrid on it and it comes with a Dex/dodge reduction. Not a giant fan of it. But it can be useful for staying alive for sure for starters.
9:22 Heart protector is one of the two armour pieces in the game with 100% cut eff. So if you are hit by a bolt and your armour protects you, as long as that hit did not do over 85.5 dmg (Before Toughness is applied) you take zero damage. As much as I love Heart protector is does weigh 3.75kg so it's a bit heavier. As a plus side it is what I refer to as "buff armour". It has 0 downsides. +2 Defense. It's the only plate body armour which has 0 debuffs. It actually has better blunt and cut resist compared to WPJ.. Assuming it blocks.
10:25 Armoured Rag skirt is one of the reasons why Martial Arts in INSANE in late game. +6 MA top armour, +4 Pants +8 indoors and you are increasing your damage by a truckload. The +10 alone from armour is why when I do an MA run I just let my character 1v1 Catlon on like day 9ish or so with their 90 (+10) Martial Arts. Should only be used in the late game tbh with MA and you'll have robotic limbs by then so the coverage doesn't really matter to me.
10:47 Well said. They are the most broken pants in the entire game. I use them in basically every (Non-MA) run. Samurai Armour for my legs and some stomach protection as the cost of 2.5% Combat speed? Yes please.
11:05 You take that back now.
11:32 Armour weight is based off coverage and the Material. They weigh less because of their bad coverage. Crab Trousers are extremely bad (95% coverage for legs, worse harpoon, cut, blunt, and combat speed) and I'd suggest never using them unless it is throwing them into an item furnace inside Crab Town after you just looted one on accident in disgust. That aside... It does look kind of nice.
12:49 Those pants are what make Tinfist a LOT easier to fight. I still don't know why they gave them to him. Anyways I will say they look really rad. Just... Not my type.
13:45 Robo limbs, wooden sandals or bust. Jokes aside Plated Longboots are the "best" ones imo. And hey look Samurai Boots the other 100% cut eff armour :D
Frankie! Thanks for watching. Sounds like the Crab Armor debuffs knock down DEX and damage a lot.
Yes, WPJ all the way!
RIP the 90% coverage on Tinfist shorts...
I'd argue that Crab trousers are beautiful and functional btw 🦀
Wrecking Ball and Kenshi are very niche....
Paul, samurai armor does NOT have any dexterity debuff… I don’t know where did you take they 0.85x debuff that you quoted before, but that’s simply not true.
I'll pin a comment with a list of corrections. Looks like I pulled some bad data. Thanks for letting me know!
@@paulrogersgaming no worries pal, looks like you jumped a line and read 0.85x of the attack damage modifier as the dexterity modifier… but you’re still the best 😎
chainmail guide when? also when hats guide
Chainmail next, hats after that!
Would love to see a video on settling shrieking forest, never tried it myself because non stop spawning shrieking bandits corpses destroy my framerate and characters, just endless war with no break, feels like fighting an ant colony.
Plate Jacket gang gang
Gang gang rise up
Damn the backpack achool comment hit hard
your guides are top notch, if i could humbly request a weapons guide and maybe weapons testing against various enemies, scenarios theyd be good in, scenarios theyd be bad in + your overall take id be highly intrigued
no, armor is actually not needed, i mean, just get your martial arts over 90 and strength at least 60 and you'll be practically one shotting everything. i can take out cleanser units in the amount of time they hit me twice.
As someone with 500 hours, and have beaten all names characters (both with a squad and solo) the only armours that really matter are: plate jackets, samurai and crab, I only put crab on designated tank rolls, but still. The rest are somewhat negligible
Heart protector should give 50% protection to the left arm and 70% chest protection. No other changes, same value, same protection. It would still suck, but not as bad.
I feel like you underestimate the armoured rags, they are great on skeletons and hivers, who have a much lower chance to get hit in the stomach versus the other races, skeletons 33% less often and hivers 66% less often, so you don't really need the coverage there as much.
As such you can get near close the armor protection of samurai/crab, without barely a hit to dexterity and no damage nerf from samurai either.
They're also cheaper than a plate jacket by about 15% on average, which starts to add up if you play with multiple / a lot of characters.
Their only downside is their 15kg weight, but considering how high their protection ratings are I find this acceptable, and it also helps with training strength passively (due to reaching low % encumbrance easier), but I agree for the other races the low stomach protection really messes it up.
Also armoured rags just look so badass when combined with drifter pants or plated drifter pants and drifter boots / plated drifter boots.
I used to really like black plate jackets, but these days I try to put my recruits in sleeveless dustcoats (or leather armor if no dustcoats available), both of which are cheap, both are 15-16k at masterwork, while neither affects dexterity or combat speed.
For hivers and skeletons I"ll choose armoured rags though until I can get some samurai for them, which I prefer over crab cause I'd rather take 15% damage nerf than a 50% dexterity nerf.
Also I'm pretty biased here, but I really don't like how the plate jackets look, like how you pointed out that samurai plated leggins can look a bit silly.
Once late game (not to be confused with endgame) starts to come around I try to switch my explorers to sleeved dustcoats (mostly for the armor protection), I don't run it on recruits cause the +5 melee defense slows down their training / narrows down their suitable training opponents, but once they're at an acceptable level I'll take the extra arm coverage, thus staying power in combat, with soft samurai pants since there's no debuffs but good coverage even though the protection ratings are meh.
(I'm one of those people that tries to keep melee attack / defense as low as possible, as long as possible, cause I don't want to cheese the game with prisoners or "90 toughness in 3 minutes" tactics, basically because Stronger Opponent Logic exists).
I agree on the heart protector though, it's just a "Better than nothing" and it fills that role perfectly, plus it's usually the item I loot off dust bandits because it's good value for it's item size even on shoddy quality, vs things like their helmet and boots which are only worth taking on standard quality or better.
I really only put samurai on my base defenders or when I go for a city assault (for example to get seta or valtena) on my soldiers, my explorers tend to be stealth/speedy/light armor/dexterity characters.
So end-game usually looks like 3-5 characters with dustcoats, soft samurai pants, samurai helmets and sandals still (or armoured hood if I need acid/burning) and the rest are full samurai.
I'd consider wooden sandals as the best footwear. It's the only item that gives you a 5% Attackspeed-Bonus. Also Samurai-Legplates cover 100% of your legs. So take the additional 5% Attackspeed and the increased dps output that comes with this buff.
I never realized how bad armored rags were. I thought they were on the lighter side, will avoid in the future for sure.
robot limbs holy armor and crab head，the discuss result of best armor in Chinese community. it looks stupid and ugly,need your character be eaten by fogman. just the utility way to play the game
False, Unholy Armor is better. Narko for life babyyy!
they are the same thing,right?
@@刺枫林 Only the stats 😅
Late but crab armor is only the best in the HEAD slot as it only has minus perception debuff. It’s body and leg pieces are strongest tank wise but otherwise samurai chest and legs out class it by not debuffing your DEX. Holy chest plate does have a nice niche of it doesn’t protect arms so you can dismember you squad members for the strength and certainty of skeleton limbs.
I just keep thinking about it but blackened chainmail + plated jacket makes you pretty tanky without debuffing your damage or dex that much at all honestly, while giving you perfect upper body coverage in two great layers
Whoops, I thought the red numbers on the armor rags were a good thing. I think I might be stupid.
surprised to hear such praise for the plate jacket. I think its one of the worst armors in the game. mediocre resistance, still getting a dex penalty (a 10% decrease in melee DPS and less attacks overall), and hurts dodge meaning martial artists cant wear it.
having to get a masterworked one to have mid resistance when only a "High" samurai plate outperforms it with better debuffs (attack damage reduction is better than dex reduction, you are still hitting fast allowing you to not get overwhelmed, a good trade for the slightly lowered damage that is almost identical to the end result of reduced dex, and the combat speed malus is negligible). the full upper body coverage personally doesnt matter, the small chance an attack gets through with sam' armor, your chainmail is there for a reason. Also the cut resist efficiency is much better on the sam' armor, but cut efficiency is a whole can of worms. I do prefer the looks of the plate jackets though. samurai armor is really ugly to me.
The heart protector has a fantastic perk, it's protection is dog water and it sells extremelly high while not being weighty or using much inventory spave, and you know who wears it?
Dust bandits, so farming dust bandits early game with the help of the shek gate guards is a fantastic way to both train combat stats and make some descent money while doing it
"20% stomach coverage"
I always hated this design, we even see it in real life with actual ballistic armor that only covers the chest while ignoring the guy area.
Sure, you can survive taking a bit of damage there and that's not as important as the organs in your chest, *but I'd rather have a fat slab of metal covering it anyways because that's gonna hurt a lot less.*
Hey man your vids got me to download kenshi again.
Thank You :)
Nice!
6:25 how about martial art though? is it a good armour for people fighting without weapons? do you have a video on martial art specialist equipment?
Training my army of hive guardian drones. Ended up with plate jacket as best among competitors, with some heavy guys in mercenary plate.
Boot aren't necessary IMO, hiver and skeleton can't used boot, but it's okay
If you didn't know, you can turn up your texture quality in the settings menu
Been enjoying these vids a lot! You take everything in to consideration, and I'm really looking forward to the helmets tier guide by you soon! Better than a tier list.
I notice you gloss over the "combat speed" debuff, does it not matter that much?
Will you do helmet or weapons next?
I'm gonna finish the armor guides first then I might move on to weapons from there.
I knew this was coming I'm exited to watch! I like heavy armor as training armor
It's strange that you can make plate armor before chain
Masterwork grade heart protector feels illegal to craft.
Masterwork grade heart protector feels illegal to craft.
Any plans to cover the chainmail shirts in the future?
take the leather turtleneck, ignore the rest ;-)
Yes!
Counterpoint :Armored rags look cool
Samurai armor not having a dex debuff makes no sense at all, way too op
that's why it has a -15% damage debuff instead.
I don't even play this game, why do I like watching this?
This is where I say my "personality" is appealing. 🤣
Armored rags and armored rag skirts are great if you roleplay as a band of murder hobos.
Armored rags also look amazing on agnu
Crab's legs stealth debuff is larger than Samurai's no? Unless I'm really misreading how that modifier works. But really both are so low that it doesn't matter much.
Agreed. Stealth isn't good on either piece. I might have been thinking about a different stat when I mentioned it.
yes its crap, not crab ;)
samurai lp is best
Hey Paul, got a question. Does the advice in here still apply when using the “No Cut Efficiency” mod?
the cut efficiency mod just removes the extra cut resistance you'd normally have, so a converted 70% cut efficiency would reduce the vanilla cut resistance on the armor by 30%.
i.e. his damage calculations, while technically wrong for vanilla (when considering a full outfit due to how the leftover cut efficiency damage is handled, which makes low cut efficiency outer armors MUCH MUCH worse than they appear), are actually accurate for NCE mod, since the mod author used the same logic for calculating the true cut resistance of the armors when removing cut-efficiency.
Never clicked so fast
Helmet guide when?
Great video! Please make more
regardless of your favourite, you DO need a mod that fixes the cutting efficiency, since it's sorta bugged in vanilla. steam workshop provides.
my tanky fav combination is:
armored hood
crab main armor
samurai legs
leather turtleneck
wooden sandals
some items give speed, or no penalty or resistances.
i like black plate jacket too. no stealth penalty. combine with samurai cloth legs etc and good for speedy characters
I feel your underestimating the armored rags a bit to mutch yes it's stomach protection is abysmal but it's damage reduction closer to heavy armor than the medium armor while having some of the lowest stat debuffs, no stealt and dodge debuff makes it the best option for thiefs and martial artists long term
I really like how armor in the game says something about the faction that uses it, holy nation lacks resources and competent crafters so they put what they have into one really good armor piece that is easyer to produce for those that have shown there worth to Okran, empire is poor but there nobles are rich and can afford the best equipement from tech hunters for there army, shek have guts but would rather die from loosing them literally than living with the shame of loosing them figuratively and there are tons of little things like that
😭 Promo sm
For the "baggy samurai plates: goto face surgeon and make the legs thinner. works well
Crab Gang Crab Gang
I love that you mentioned not only numbers but the drip which is an essential quality of any armor in any game!
algorithm comment
Bless you!
Love the ending 😂
Item grade does not change skill effects.
I know for Athletics on lower body armor, the grade does reduce the debuff.
@@paulrogersgaming Wow wtf? I have nearly 1,000 hours in Kenshi and never noticed. Probably because I only ever bother with masterwork heavy armor. lol
Watch the video in 1.25 speed this dude talks in slow motion
nah
no this is fine. much better than the usual overrushed clips
It’s nice for a change to listen to someone with a normal paced voice instead of the ADHD ridden content out there.