Building Mixed Sets: Theory and Application - Part 1 (Patreon)

• Part 1: General Principles, Limitations and Foundations 
• Part 2: Head
• Part 3: Body 
• Part 4: Arms 
• Part 5: Waist 

This is something I've been writing alongside the Assessing Armor series, so it represents months in the making and we're going to dive quite deeply into the game philosophy, its limitations and why the armor build meta is the way it is. We're also going to look at how you go about creating workarounds and the benefits of what I term 'mixed' sets. A mixed set (also known as mongrel or piecemeal) is a bespoke set of armor built from multiple different armor sets, it lacks the benefits of a complete armor set, but instead it gets to pick and choose from the most powerful options available from each location's armor choices and create high synergy builds.

The Elephant in the Armoury

Before we move on and drill into the theory and applications, it's time to address the main problem with the armor philosophy in KD:Monster, armor set bonuses. 

KDM takes its armor design almost wholesale from the Monster Hunter series, when you drill into the way that monster hunter's armor works, you can see just how strongly KDM leans on Capcom's series for its design. 

In Monster Hunter (MH) however, the armor build meta is different, and this is because of a variation in how set bonuses work. So, as part of understanding the theory we're going to quickly look at how armor works in MH (this is not a guide, just a lose overview).

There are five locations for armor in MH, these locations are different from the traditional western locations (but the same as KDM) in that instead of head/arms/body/legs/feet you have head/arms/body/waist/legs - that design decision from Capcom is why we have waist armor in KDM rather than legs. A lot of the armor designs from MH have oversized belts/coils with sashes hanging from them and then the legs represent large boots or pants. This is why we have the oddity of Rawhide Pants being waist but the art is legs, and Rawhide Boots is legs but the art clearly covers just feet.

This eccentricity aside, we also have a number of other parallels from MH that were cribbed by Adam for his armor design; these include independent defense levels for each location (common in some RPGs as well, such as Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay), additional abilities being tied to armors, and set bonuses. Let's now look at a piece of armor from Monster Hunter: World, this is the Kaiser Crown (beta), crafted from the parts of Teostra who is one of the Elder Dragons (big powerful monster types) in the series.

Each piece of armor in the game can come in two or more forms, typically there is an alpha version that is rather cookie cutter and then a beta version with more flexibility (sometimes there is also a gamma version, which is a variant and often, but not always, more powerful).

The components of MH armor are defense, which can vary depending on the rarity level and the amount of upgrades/augments you've spent - and this number sits in high double digits (which is impractical for a board game, but fine for a video one). We also have a set of elemental resistance numbers that vary the damage depending on what type (if any) the hit on you is.  In Monster Hunter World fire resistance is far more useful and powerful than thunder or ice resistance overall as most monsters deal fire damage, but you're going to want to pay attention to that thunder resistance if you fight a Kirin (which is a badass mother of a lightning unicorn pony dragon).

We also have three other things worth mentioning, the first are the Skills and the second are the Decorations. These are essentially the same thing, skills are the various 'abilities' in the game and give you benefits, they have multiple levels in most cases and each additional duplicate of a skill will usually make that skill more powerful. For example; you can have up to 7 attack decorations (7/7) and there is an increasing benefit for each one, or you can have a single Sonorous decoration (1/1) for a benefit.

Each piece of armor has inbuilt skills that area always present, and also potentially has one to three decoration slots, which allow you to slot in gems for custom abilities. A large part of the end game in Monster Hunter is about collecting all the decorations so you can have lots of different cool, unique builds. I'm still stuck at 5/7 attack gems.

Finally we have the Set Bonus, this is the part I've been building up to with all that preamble above. Set Bonuses in MH are given for having a certain number of pieces from the same set, this number can be as low as 2 (Rathalos Mastery), Four (Rathalos Mastery again) or as high as 5 (Gala Suit's Great Luck). Additionally, the same set bonus can come from different sources, Master's Touch can come from Kaiser or Drachen items for example.

This variable number of pieces required is why MH has a mixed armor set meta, the best builds take the best gear pieces from each monster for the particular weapon being used, then they add the optimal other pieces to complete the desired set bonus (or bonuses) and use decorations to round out the skills. This means that the average monster hunter looks like a mess of different parts, for example here's my hunter's current Gunlance loadout without cosmetics hiding her armor:

This is one of the tamer examples of how disjointed these loadouts can look, the appearance has resulted in the creation of 'layered armor' that changes the cosmetic look for your armor and also 'fashion hunters' who dress for style and look rather than build power.

And that is the end of this monster hunter diversion, I felt that it was worth looking at because it demonstrates a similar system (set bonuses) applied in a different manner (partial set bonuses) which has created a different meta! Just the act of allowing set bonuses to be given out for less than 5 pieces of gear from a set changes how people play entirely. (I've actually worked out a better way to do all of this in KDM, but writing about that is for the future, I don't want to spill the beans just yet.)

Kingdom Death Mixed Sets

What does this all mean for us? Well, it means that the meta in KDM is building all 5 parts of an armor set to be able to take advantage of its set bonuses, and if we're not going to be doing that here, we need to be able to compensate for this with two things, very powerful individual gear pieces and armor points. Mixed sets in KDM have widely varying armor points across locations, and some of the pieces of armor are just too fragile without having their armor points bolstered. 

This is the first thing we're going to look at here (yes I'm afraid this is going to be a multi-part series again, it's the only way to make long articles like this manageable). However I'm not going to close out this first part without taking a detailed look at the 'glue' which can be used to tie together the disparate parts by plugging up gaps. These come in four different flavors; DBK parts, Shields, Boosters and Immortal. Lets look at them each in turn.

DBK Parts

If you are playing a campaign with the Dung Beetle Knight expansion, you have access to three pieces of gear that work as glue very effectively. They are the Scarab Circlet, Century shoulder pads and Century Greaves.

The Scarab Circlet works well as glue, but it's also an underappreciated gear card I do not see many people discussing. Not only does it provide some bonus armor but also has an incredibly useful up and down blue half-affinity, which as you will see when we look at the various locations, is something that is desirable for many of the pieces you'd consider.

I would also quickly like to mention the ability on this piece, it's actually very strong when combined with Burning Focus Fighting Art, remember this one for your sculpture plays!

Next we have the gruesome twosome - the carapace parts.

Just like the circlet, these pieces of gear add armor to all locations, without being armor or shields themselves. The Shoulder Pads are the better item if you're looking to add just one piece, because they have no downside and they are the piece that carries the amazing Ripple Pattern ability. However you might consider adding the Greaves as well if your build desires it.  

The calcified versions of these two pieces are even stronger!

Shields

The obvious option for bolstering your armor points are shields. Shields provide a lot of protection and you can use multiple different shields to get additional armor bonuses (plus don't forget shield specialisation!) 

When you are looking at this category, you want to consider affinities as well as bonuses. While the Leather Shield is the stalwart of this, the traditionally weak Scrap Shield is something that actually provides benefits because it has a right facing Red. 

You can also consider the Beacon Shield, which has a huge +2 armor to all locations and Block 2, or the absolute king of shields the cheese shield.

This shield, which is something you can craft by LY9-10 with focus, is an upgraded Beacon Shield. As you can see it has two useful affinities and an amazing monster level reducing ability. Plus it's so damn strong that you can hit monsters with it for a lot of the game, allowing you to hit shield mastery and also saving a slot in your build.

Ultimately the shield you choose will depend on your options and your affinity requirements, most of the time it's probably going to be Leather. 

Boosters

Boosters are a wide range of different support gear types that provide a one time increase to armor. A couple of examples of these (in fact the best two examples) are the Gorn and Bird Bread.

These two gear items provide useful affinities (Down Blue, Right Green) and also have a one time ability that gives bonus armor points to all locations. The Gorn requires someone else to use it on your behalf (and you be knocked down), while Bird Bread has that small potential downside of knocking your survival to 0 (Burning Focus works again here). 

There's not a large pool of these options, but they are decent alternatives to shields.

Immortal

Finally we have a non-gear based option in Immortal. What Immortal does here, is it provides a 'sponge' portion of hits that sit on top of your normal armor points, you're not looking to use Immortal for all your protection, instead you're using it as your extra armor and once it's removed you'll use your normal points instead. The main issues here are you need ways of generating a decent amount of insanity and you cannot spend survival - so Red Fist is a valuable way of gaining protection against certain issues for a survivor like this,  if you do go this route you can bolster your protections further with the addition of the Feather Shield.

Next time we're going to start looking at the very best options for each location, discussing their advantages and disadvantages so you can decide what you would want for a particular build. The aim is to do all the locations over two posts.