Assessing Armor: Vagabond (Leather Promo Hybrid) (Patreon)

I'm going to roll both body pieces into the same article, because they're very similar, with one being a (mostly) straight upgrade over the other.

Leather Cuirass/Hard Breastplate

Resource Cost: 1x leather, 1x bone or 1x leather 2x bone (needs Lantern Oven/Heat)

Assessment

Efficiency: In both cases you get a lot for your cost, with a total of 4 armor when the set is completed, the additional bone costing on the Breastplate is a fair increase for what you get, but some people may shy away from the heavy keyword (and I cannot blame them).

A / A-

Defense: The Hard Breastplate is significantly more defensive than the Leather Cuirass, but at the cost of being super vulnerable to stuff that normally leather wouldn't be harmed by.

A / A

Abilities: While the leather cuirass has no abilities, the Hard Breastplate has a very powerful one which is tempered by a negative keyword. The automatic ability to ignore the first severe injury you suffer each showdown is a huge boost to survivor durability, and while you can't choose when to activate it (which you can with Dried Acanthus) it is still very welcome.

N/A / A-

Affinities: Up red and down blue half affinities are not that useful overall. You might find the odd place where you make use of them, most notable is the Scrap Sword that is sort of close to being activate-able in a reasonable fashion with Vagabond armor, a Lucky Charm and a Red Charm.

C+ / C+

Score: In most situations saving a bit longer for the Hard Breastplate (which can also be used in the normal leather armor set) is just a better choice, but you will regret that if Cracks in the Ground turns up when you're returning, because that card hates fun. 

Leather Bracers

Note: I'm skipping on the Ivory Crafter location's White Dragon Gauntlets for the moment because we know nothing about the location and we're going to remain clueless until the release of the Mega-Stan expansion in 202X. It's the other arm option, but to be honest I can't see it being viable because it's so, so, so much more powerful than the rest of the armor set.

Resource Cost: 1x leather, 1x hide

Assessment

Efficiency: Exactly the same as in leather really, this is a solid piece of gear and it gets better when combined with the leather boots, which are a valid part of the Vagabond set. However, it is two hide in the cost, so it's not as good as other options.

A-

Defense: +2 Survival when departing is strong when combined with 4 armor and the tabard (more on that later). It also fits well into the affinity puzzle for Monster grease, essentially if you want, you can do all the +evasion leather tricks on Vagabond.

A-

Abilities: Solid ability with the extra departing survival, but not as strong as it is on the leather armor set because of how the tabard works. 

A-

Affinities: It's one of the good affinities, the right half-green and that's a good result if you're looking for only a single affinity. However, it is only one affinity, which isn't 2+ affinities is it?

A-

Score: I have absolutely no hesitation in calling this piece of armor a solid A- piece in the Vagabond set.

 A-

Leather Skirt

Resource Cost: 1x leather

Assessment

Efficiency: As before, this is a super efficient piece of gear, requiring 1 hide and a faction of an endeavor as its resource cost (yes Endeavors are technically resources when you drill into the mechanical wording of the game - bizarre). This puts it in the hyper efficiency category of gear, something that is normally reserved for just Rawhide.

S+

Defense: 3 (4) defense is solid, however it has no other abilities, so we can just call this one a B+.

B+

Abilities: N/A

Affinities: Down green is always welcome in sets with the leather boots + bracers combo, because of how it fits with the leather shield and monster grease. So it's a great single affinity.

A-

Score: This is a solid, efficient workhorse of a piece with nothing super flash about it. Efficiency matters and the Vagabond set has it in spades.

A

Cloth Leggings

Resource Cost: 1 x cloth, 1x hide (requires: ammonia)

Assessment

Efficiency: Cloth is the starting item that you have 4 of. So, essentially these cost you one hide once you're past your first Rawhide set. They're also an accessory, so they immediately start to work even if you're not building the full armor set.

This makes the Cloth Leggings an odd little entity, you build them early on (as soon as you unlock the pre-requisite) and use them wherever and then you put them onto your vagabond set, but only until you get the far superior leather boots. Then the Cloth Leggings sort of get squeezed into whatever set/build has space and needs the green affinity (generally to combo with the Leather Shield). So it's this multi-use potency combined with a very low cost that makes the Cloth leggings efficient. It's not super powerful, but it is very well costed and flexible.

A-

Defense: 1 (bonus) defense to the legs and a reduction in the amount of bleed you receive is not a huge amount. But this is an accessory, so it's better than nothing. 

B-

Abilities: This ability is marginal, it is going to save lives on occasion, but this is an effect that only impacts on leg severe injuries that cause 2 bleed normally. That's a very narrow focus and I can't really be praising it as much as the breastplate ability. 

C-

Affinities: A down green is one of the two better green affinity locations, however it's used in conjunction with the Leather Skirt (which also has a down green), which means it's not that useful in conjunction with the Vagabond set. Oddly if it had a left green (which is usually not a premium green location) it would be a lot stronger.

C

Score: This is just a flexible transition piece that lets you get to Vagabond Armor faster because you don't need to build leather to make it. However, you are always going to replace this with the Leather Boots when you have the chance.

B-

Leather Boots

Resource Cost: 1x leather, 1x hide

Assessment

Efficiency: As mentioned in the leather article, you get a LOT for your 2 hide + part of an endeavor. Two of the three best green affinities and a solid movement ability that you can forget about a lot of the time, but when you do remember it, you get to do neat tricks such as avoiding Gorm pee.

S

Defense: The 3(4) armor, extra movement at the end of your act and the 2 green affinities create an incredible defensive package. The Leather Boots were the best part of the leather set and they're one of the best two parts of the Vagabond Set.

S

Abilities: The +1 movement after your act is a hugely flexible and powerful ability, it's not as strong as it is on leather or on sets that just give you extra movement regardless (there's a really good one of those coming soon).

A+

Affinities: Lets not go over this again and again. Those two affinities, incombination with the bracers, are amazing.

S-

Score: One of the two best parts of the vagabond gear cards, the boots will always be very powerful because of that combination of cheap cost, great ability and amazing affinities.

S

Tabard

Resource Cost: 1x cloth, 1x organ (requires: Paint)

Assessment

Efficiency: 1 starting item, 1 spare organ (which become less valuable early on once you have your monster grease + lucky charms + fecal salves sorted out) is a super efficient piece of gear to build. The Paint requirement is a little more awkward as Paint is only the third innovation you should try and make (after Symposium and Drums), but it's only a pre-requisite, not a cost.

And what do you get for this? One of the best accessories in the game, yeah, that's right, I put this piece of gear at the end because of how good it is. You're not just going to be making this for vagabonds if you know what you're doing.

S+

Defense: So this one gives you +1 accessory armor to the body and either survival or insanity gains. Now, for reasons that will become clear, the defense that this provides is huge.

S-

Abilities: So, I've touted that this piece of gear is actually better than the boots, that's quite a tall order, but lets get into why. We're going to ignore the barbaric ability on this gear, because the set bonus negation basically means that you're never picking barbaric if you're using this. 

It's the romantic ability that matters, when you're encouraged you gain +1 survival. Effectively when you get encouraged the encouraging survivor 'transfers' their survival to you. That's nice, but when you add in another survivor with a tabard, then as long as they have 1 survival between them, they can pass encourages back and forth (note that you can encourage someone who's standing if you want to). This has power in ensuring that all survivors with tabards are never, ever knocked down for more than a moment, but also it has combination with items that pump up things when you are at 0 survival. Here's one example.

I think you can see how this will work and you can aim for 4 tabards in a hunt party if you want. There's a whole world of things you can do with tabards and they fit on absolutely any armor set you want because they're an accessory.  Just take a look at all the things that trigger at 0 survival, but when you can juggle 1 survival around between your survivors endlessly you can do huge things (Burning Focus FA is also worth mentioning).

S++

Affinities: The left blue affinity matters on this, it allows you to go for a Scrap Sword/Lucky Charm/Deadly build when combined with the rest of the set.

A-

Score: I am not exaggerating when I say that people have been sleeping on this piece of gear because normally they can't afford to own it in multiples. Yes, you're limited to a maximum of 4 tabards/leggings per settlement because you only have 4 cloth, but if you can resit making the leggings, you'll end up with a massively powerful combo that just needs other items built into it.

S+

Item Name

Resource Cost: 2x cloth, 4x leather, 3x bone, 3x hide, 1x organ (but variable).

Assessment

Efficiency: This is a really efficient set to build, not just because of the low cost (it's generally lower than leather), but because of the staggered way you can cheaply move into the full set by leaving the boots until a bit later on and just wearing the leggings.

Set Bonus: So a super important thing to note here, Vagabond Armor's set bonus does not work if you wear head armor or your settlement is Barbaric. The second of these isn't a big deal, Barbaric is way worse a principle than Romantic, and the first one can be bypassed by the use of clever head items that are not armor (for example the Trash Crown, Manhunter's Hat or similar). But it is a limitation, if you're going Barbaric then Vagabond Armor is absolutely awful.

That said, the set bonus on this gear is ridiculous. We're talking about sword mastery on tap for any newbie survivor. Some people call this overpowered, and in combination with the Black Sword it absolutely is. However on most other swords it's not that amazing because Swords are a kinda bad mastery/weapon category that mostly revolve around Secret Fighting Arts to make them strong. Honestly, if the Black Sword didn't work with Vagabond (which it is clearly intended to do so, look at Aya's model) then we'd be in a different place.

So the idea of an armor set that gives access to weapon mastery is absolutely amazing, because sometimes settlements just can't get their weapon masters online and that can cause a death spiral/struggle. So it's a great idea, it's just that on this early/mid game set and with the Black Sword the operation falls apart. If Vagabond required parts of Lantern Armor for example, it would be a lot more balanced.

S++

Defense: Vagabond defense is weird, the full set's defenses break down as follows:

• Head - 1
• Body - 5
• Arms - 4
• Waist - 4
• Legs - 2 or 4 or 5 (depending on combinations, typically 4)

In essence you've traded armor on the head for a little extra on the body and a super powerful set bonus. It's a good trade off, especially when you realise that Vagabond Armor can be used to carry the Trash Crown around without any issues. And the Trash Crown is a thing of beauty. So this armor set is tankier than it looks at first glance, it's a solid bruiser set.

A-

Abilities: So we get a combination of, ignore first severe injury, reduction in bleeding at legs, +1 movement after your act, +1 survival when encouraged (if romantic), +1 insanity when encouraged if barbaric (HAHAHAHAHA, sure) and sword mastery/specialization.

Yeah, that's good, that's really good.

S++

Affinities: This is where the set struggles a bit, we have on the best version of the armor the following:

• 1x Green
• 1x Right half-Green
• 1x Down half-Green
• 1x Down half-blue
• 1x Up half-Red
• 1x Left half-Blue

What this gives you is a lot of flexibility in how you build, but you're not going to get to activate everything all of the time, you'll normally need to pick if you're going Leather Shield + Monster Grease or Scrap Sword + Lucky Charm because fitting all of that in is difficult. Honestly the affinities are the weakest part of the armor set, well that and the lack of head armor - which usually necessitates the use of an accessory head piece (Manhunter's Hat, Trash Crown, Necromancer's Circlet) or some supporting Rolling Armor piece (Scarab Circlet for example).

Score: Yeah, there's no way around it, in games where the Gorm is available as a quarry, the Vagabond Armor is utterly dominating to the point of obscenity. Even when it's not in the pool of options Vagabond Armor remains a very powerful and useful option that's hard to ignore. It's great for settlements that are struggling, but it's also easy to fall into the trap of using vagabond every campaign because of its generic resource requirements.

S+

And we're out of the mid game stuff now and into the big boy armor sets. Coming up is Cycloid Scale, Rolling, Dragon and Lantern Armor!