Assessing Armor: #1 Rawhide (Patreon)

We will start today with the armor set that most Settlements are founded on - Rawhide Armor.

Rawhide Headband (Head)

 Resource Cost: 1x hide

Assessment

Efficiency: A single hide is as cheap as you can get for armor, and this piece comes with 1 armor point, an ability and a blue half-affinity. That's a lot of bang for your buck (pelt).

A+

Defense: 1 armor point is low, but it is solid enough protection for the early game and it's also ample protection for the lighter armored late game survivors who stick with this.

B

Abilities: The ability on the Rawhide Headband is one of the strongest abilities in the entire game, it's one of the primary reasons why Rawhide is used in the very late game regardless of how flimsy it can be. It's a shame that there are no generic AI manipulation items that are on this level. In fact it's one of the biggest flaws in the design of KDM overall. However, that takes nothing away from how potent this ability is.

S+

Affinities: The down blue half-affinity is very relevant early on, where this armor set is often used by DPS (damage dealing) characters as well as, just about everyone else. Because the Lucky Charm cares about this. Later on, other armor sets provide this affinity just as well, but the headband scores highly regardless because of how it can jump-start settlement farming when combined with .

A

Overall Score: It is just impossible to get over the activated ability of the rawhide headband. This is a gear card that I carry across to rolling armor (the only late game armor set that can use it without losing set bonuses), when I am able to, but it also is one of two things that keeps Rawhide Armor relevant throughout the entire campaign.

S+

Rawhide Vest (Body)

Resource Cost: 1x hide

Assessment

Efficiency: again this piece is really efficient, for 1 hide you get 2 half affinities (red and blue), plus 1 armor point and when activated +1 evasion. 

S

Defense: You do not want your body to be so lightly protected, so 1 armor point is not amazing. However for the early game it is ample protection when combined with that extra evasion. So the overall defense on this piece is good for starting body protection.

A

Abilities: +1 evasion is very powerful early on, especially when you can stack it with monster grease, tall grass, rhythm chaser and so on. Even in the late game this ability remains relevant because an extra 10% chance to not get hit matters in a game with such a non-granular die type.

S

Affinities: The affinities on the body piece are designed to slot together with the head and gloves to create an easy activation. The red is less useful than the blue however, 

B

Score: The Rawhide Vest is the second best gear card in the rawhide set, held back only by it's low armor points. However, as we will see in the future, when this drawback is circumvented, the vest can carry a non-support/bow survivor well into the late game.

A+

Rawhide Gloves 

Resource Cost: 1x hide

Assessment

Efficiency: Again, you can't get armor for cheaper than this cost (outside of the starting cloth).

A

Defense: 1 armor point isn't much, but it's more than enough for the portions of the game/builds where you use this gear.

B

Abilities: Early on in the game gaining +1 survival when you depart should not be that relevant. If you have a lot of +Survival limit innovations in the early life of your settlement, things have gone wrong with your picks.

However, in the mid to late game the survivor types who continue to use this armor (bow, support) can run out of survival, and they greatly appreciate having that extra survival gains. It is also important to remember that with the set ability this is actually a gain of +1.5 survival when departing.

B+

Affinities: The left red half-affinity allows you to complete your Rawhide Vest affinity without much issue. Most of the bone weapons also fulfill this role, but once you are beyond the need for bone weapons, this inbuilt affinity allows you to continue to benefit from the +1 evasion without sacrificing a slot.

B+

Score: A solid item, and one of the three best parts of the Rawhide set available. It has synergy with both the set bonus and the body piece.

A

Rawhide Boots

Resource Cost: 1x hide

Assessment

Efficiency: Not quite as good at the gloves, but still a solid item.

Defense: See Gloves.

B

Abilities:  Early on in the game gaining +1 survival when you depart should not be that relevant. If you have a lot of +Survival limit innovations in the early life of your settlement, things have gone wrong with your picks.

However, in the mid to late game the survivor types who continue to use this armor (bow, support) can run out of survival, and they greatly appreciate having that extra survival gains. It is also important to remember that with the set ability this is actually a gain of +1.5 survival when departing.

B+

Affinities: N/A

Score: As slightly worse version of the gloves (legs are less lethal than many other locations overall if they get hit), the boots get a slightly lower score. They are the 4th piece of this armor set you would craft, ahead of the pants, but behind everything else.

B-

Rawhide Pants

Resource Cost: 1x Hide

Assessment

Efficiency: While this item is the worst piece of gear in the rawhide set (it should always be the last part you craft). It is still ridiculously efficient for what you pay, 1 hide to gain 1 armor point and 1/5th of the Rawhide Set Bonus (which is one of the best set bonuses in the game), is still a good deal.

B-

Defense: Same as the Gloves/Boots really, well slightly worse because you have cloth armor early on to protect the waist, which is why it's not important to make this piece quickly. But that is only

Abilities: N/A

Affinities: N/A

Score: The weakest part of the set and the most generic armor piece in the entire game. There's nothing unique or special about these pants except for their involvement in the set as a whole.

C 

Rawhide Armor Set 

Resource Cost: 5x hide

Assessment

Efficiency: This set as a whole is the very model of efficiency, 5 hide gives you +2 survival when departing, an equivalent (on average) of +50% survival limit, +1 evasion, a blue affinity, a red affinity and 2 armor to all locations. Nothing else in the entire game comes close to matching that ratio of power & utility to cost.

S+

Defense: I have to give this one three different scores, because the armor set is absolutely king in the early game, but it will fall off once in the mid/late part of a campaign except for on support and ranged survivors. The scores are as follows: Early/Mid to Late DPS/Support & Ranged.

S+/C+/S

The reason the armor doesn't fall off so much for supports or ranged characters is because being at a distance away from the monster is the best protection in the entire game.  If the monster can't reach you, most of the time all you need is minimal armor and that AI manipulation and increased survival pool really matters.

Abilities: This armor set has survival gains, evasion, survival sustain and AI manipulation. It's an impressive package for the 'starter' armor set and honestly it distorts the early experience by overshadowing the Gorm/White Lion/Spidicules options. It's responsible for a lot of the homogeneous experiences you have early on, because it's so much better than the other choices.

S

Set Bonus: The set bonus for rawhide is an effective +50% to the Survival Limit and +50% to departing survival. But it also has applications with Fighting Arts like Thrill Seeker, which will deepen your survival into an almost bottomless pit.

Rawhide's set bonus is why we have the play style meta that we do. Reducing the cost of surging by 50% over the course of a showdown fight means that the support survivor can do the job of 2 normal survivors - controlling the AI and the HL decks in a single turn, or bandaging while activating a Gorn (and so on). 

A+

Affinities: 1 blue and 1 red affinity is nothing to shout about, but it's also nothing to get upset with either. The blue affinity is the valuable part of this armor most of the time, because the accessory Lucky Charm is significantly stronger than the Monster Tooth Necklace. 

B

Score: A while ago I wrote a series on the top armor sets in Kingdom Death and while things have moved around for some armor sets since then, Rawhide topped that list with a great deal of ease and still does. My opinion has not changed one bit because it's still an astronomical armor set that is viable for certain survivors from year 1 to year 30. Every settlement will build at least one set of this armor, and most will utilize three to help them get to the more specialised armor sets that come with the later monsters.

S+ 

Summary:
Rawhide is the number one reason why the Kingdom Death armor meta is shaped the way it is. It demonstrates power; evasion; a unique, game changing ability and it remains the number one choice for not just support survivors, but bow users as well. 

You can slap a suit of rawhide onto your survivor and wear it year in, year out, all the way to the culmination of a successful campaign with repeatable success. That's insane.