Assessing Armor #2: White Lion (Patreon)

We're going to (mostly) move through these armors in order of when they would appear on the timeline, so this means that we're moving from the heady heights of Rawhide to the rather less impressive White Lion armor. Now I'm going to preface this one by acknowledging that White Lion armor is not very good, that's the TL;DR of this matter, but it's also not completely awful and in theory it should be better than it is. 

So it's very interesting to look at this armor set and understand exactly what it is that holds it back from being worthwhile. I'll really drill into this in the summary, because it's something that stands true for almost every early game monster armor set. That's the fault of the design philosophy of Adam Poots LLC.

White Lion Helm

Resource Cost: 1x white fur, 1x great cat bone

Assessment

Efficiency: The efficiency of this gear is absolutely terrible, for the cost of 2 hide and that great cat bone you could instead be crafting a Zanbato. Which is one of the premium early game (pre-LY10) weapons. But even when you don't consider that cost, comparing it to the rawhide headband reveals some serious issues. It's twice the cost of the headband, but it's not twice the effectiveness (once you consider set bonuses, and they matter, it's only 75%). 

D

Defense: The defense is 2, raising to 3 when the set is complete. This means it sits between rawhide and leather. Which is not a bad level of defense for an offensive styled set. 

B

Abilities: When you compare this ability to the one on the Screaming Helm you can see some issues. The survival and activation cost of this head gear is honestly huge, and while the +2 strength for non-deaf insane survivors is a very powerful support ability in the early game (insanity for everyone else is also potent) - there's nothing else in the white lion set that encourages you to build support with it.

Honestly, if the ability of the helm didn't cost either survival or the activation (limit once per round), it would be a very interesting piece of gear.

A

Affinities: A down red half affinity is not that useful for the White Lion set and it's hard to activate this gear early on without support from the Gorm gear. Additionally it has very low synergy with the Monster Tooth Necklace despite matching colours. 

If one other piece of White Lion armor connected to the helm it would be a different matter, but it is not the case.

C

Score: The helm is one of the better pieces of gear in the white lion set, sadly it is not supported well, a little under powered and over costed - that great cat bone is a huge price to pay for this.

B-

White Lion Coat

Resource Cost: 1x white fur, 1x hide

Assessment

Efficiency: Two hide is a lot to pay for an early game armor set, and just like the rest of the armor pieces in the white lion set, you don't get a lot more bang for your buck. This could be 2 pieces of rawhide or a part of the leather armor set quite easily. 

C-

Defense: Same as the rest of the items in this set. It's solid for the early game, but falls off quickly once you're onto L2+ monsters or Phoenix tier.

B

Abilities: Pounce is a decent ability, however Kingdom Death contains a total of 5, yes 5! Move and attack based "charge" style abilities available to survivors and Pounce is easily the worst of these by a long, long distance.

D

Affinities: The up blue half affinity on this gear is almost completely useless for the White Lion set. Yes the helm needs a blue affinity to activate, but down blue half-affinities are rare  - in fact the Gorm is the main source of them (Gorn, Armor Spikes). So this is another area where the White Lion set needs support from the Gorm.

D

Score: The coat is overall a pretty terrible piece of gear, it has little to no synergy with the rest of the set and it's blue half-affinity is in a poor position - you can't even use it with most of the common early game blue half-affinities to get the helm active. It doesn't work with the Lucky Charm, Fecal Salve, Claw Head Arrow or Cat Gut Bow and there is no reason to combine it with the Rawhide Headband in a mixed set, not just because the game punishes mixed sets, but because there is anti-synergy between those two armor pieces.

D 

White Lion Gauntlets

Resource Cost: 1x white fur, 1x bone

Assessment

Efficiency: The price here is a little better than most other parts of the set, a generic bone is a reasonable additional cost (though you have to wonder why it's not a Lion Claw and the head generic, at least from a lore perspective).  

Defense: Same as everything else, it's ok, but falls off quickly.

B

Abilities: The ability of the gloves is entirely dependent on not just the White Lion Coat, but it's also dependent on activating Pounce. Now, the gain in accuracy is nothing to be sniffed at, accuracy is a premium bonus in the earlier parts of the game, but it's very conditional.

B-

Affinities: N/A - and I'd like to note that the lack of affinities on this item is part of the core issues in this set,

Score: The lack of affinities and the situational nature of the gloves make this gear hard to recommend. It's absolutely never something you'd use in isolation and about the only thing that really stands out with this piece of gear is the fact that it is one of the only pieces in this set with a reasonable resource cost.

C

White Lion Skirt

Resource Cost: 1x white fur, 1x hide

Assessment

Efficiency: It's pretty bad, it has the same cost issues as the rest of the set, however because this gear provides protection and affinities only; the two hide cost is even more egregious. It's worth highlighting that the Leather Skirt has a better affinity (down half-Green), higher armor and costs 1 hide + the conversion cost (which is a fraction of an endeavor on average). This piece costs twice what it should do.

D-

Defense: The waist is an area that is often better armored than the other locations, I mention this because that is why this gear is getting a slightly lower score than the others. Otherwise, it's pretty standard.

B-

Abilities: N/A 

Affinities: This piece has the best affinities in the set, combining with the boots and the Monster Tooth Necklace to get the bonus on that jewelry active with ease.

B

Score: The affinities do a lot to help make this armor piece not entirely suck, but it's too expensive for what it is and what it does. You expect more when you're spending a monster specific resource, and even more again when you're paying two resources.

C

White Lion Boots

Resource Cost: 1x white fur, 1x hide

Assessment

Efficiency: The cost of this item is insane. 2 hide is way overpriced for what you get. However, this is one of the better parts of the White Lion armor, it's just not supported very well.

C

Defense: Same as the rest, bad for the cost.

C

Abilities: The ability is really great, as extra movement is one of the best things in the entire game. However, it's not very good for white lion armor in general because they want to be pouncing most of the time. So it's a good item in isolation, but bad with the armor and hard to activate.

B+

Affinities: The affinities are not bad, but red affinities are just not what this armor wants, despite the design and the memes of the Red Charm. What White Lion armor really needs is more things to support Katars and Daggers in general and red affinities are not generally linked to daggers or Katars (Daggers are kind of a mix of red and blue affinities, which is what White Lion armor really needed).

It gets better with support from the Gorm set however, so I'm going to score it a B.

B

Score: This is easily one of the best part of the armor sets and it's a real shame that it doesn't appear on any hybrid armor sets (Yet, it's on Sprinter). Movement is one of the most powerful stats in the game and going to 6 movement is a huge benefit - good positioning is one of the master level plays in Kingdom Death, and kiting is the strongest way to prevent damage. 

B

White Lion Armor

Resource Cost: 5x white fur, 1x great cat bone, 1x bone, 3x hide

Assessment

Efficiency: When you look at the set as a whole, this is where you can see the efficiency cracks start to really break open. This armor set costs a whole additional resource MORE than leather (yes it doesn't require endeavors to convert rawhide to leather, but leather has more applications than just leather armor and can be mass converted).  Even worse than that, it costs more hide (8 vs. 7). 

What this means is that the white lion set, as a whole, should straight up be at least on par with, if not stronger than, the leather set. However it's not, it's in fact weaker than rawhide at double the cost.

So I can't do anything other than give this armor set the second lowest grade for efficiency, the only way it could score lower is if it cost extra endeavors to convert resources before crafting.

E-

Defense: 3 armor on all locations for 10 resources is not a very good deal, you can do better than that with most other early game options you have. For 9 resources you can have leather or screaming and for 8 you can have gorment. All of which provide at least the same level of protection for less slots or better protection and utility.

I haven't mentioned on other HUGE issue in respect of 'defense' for White Lion armor, because it's applicable to every single piece of gear in the set - so I wanted to address it all in one go. White Lion armor is heavy, this is a (mostly) negative keyword that has some serious downsides to it. Including, but not limited to, the King's Man, The Sun, Cracks in the Ground and much, much more. 

Wearing heavy armor is something you have to consider seriously, because it can delete itself from existence without much warning.  So your armor needs to be very powerful if it's heavy, and if it's not, I'm going to subtract an entire grade from your defense score.

D-

Set Bonus: I am very sorry if the idea of rolling more speed when you attack excites you, it's just not a very good ability at all because it harms both you and the rest of your group by increasing the number of reactions you deal with and the number of times that the trap appears. 

The additional strength is nice, and the set armor bonus is exactly average, but it is rare that you get a set bonus that has downsides. So I can't really give this one anything other than a failing grade.

D

Abilities: There are some very good abilities mixed into this set, along with some rather substandard and even detrimental/advanced play ones. The extra movement is very powerful and the helm ability is almost good enough, but it's not enough to lift this set as a whole out of the mire. 

The set does start to come into its own when combined with the Sunshark Bow, that is a very powerful build, but there are better versions of that build available, all of which have more durability, accuracy, strength and utility. So at best this could be a transition set, or a set for people without access to the Phoenix/Screaming/Dragon King armor sets. But that's not enough.

Bonus point for giving a way to get around cumbersome on the bone club/twilight sword early on however. So it's not all bad.

C

Affinities: The affinities on this set are a mess. When you put it together you end up with 1 red affinity, 1 blue half affinity and 3 red half affinities, and that doesn't even have the helm or boot abilities active. As mentioned those are two of the best parts of this set, and you can't even get them going without help from a Steadfast Potion/Knuckle Shield or two sets of Bone Daggers.

If the boots had been switched so they were up and left red half-affinities, or the gauntlets had been given an up red the set would be a LOT tighter, but it's just not the case.

D

Score: If you put all of these together and you consider the whole package, the White Lion armor set scrapes in an awful result of D. You pay a lot for a set that is lacking in self synergy, mostly lacking in synergy with it's own monster specific gear and supports 2 stats that are not that essential for survivors (speed and strength). 

D

Summary

The White Lion armor set struggles because of the way that it, and other armor sets in its bracket often struggle with. They are in the tier between Rawhide and Leather chronologically, but they are priced more extremely than leather and have less power. While the Screaming Armor and Gorment Armor manage to escape this design trap - the first because it was buffed in 1.5 and the second because of it's 4 slot efficiency - the White Lion set has no such benefits, it's over costed, has bad affinities and has abilities that do not compliment it's main focus. Additionally the main focus is in aspects that make the game harder and reduce your chances of success.

Next time we're going to look at a better version of an early game monster armor set, one that gets a lot of things right, but not perfect - Gorment Armor!