Assessing Armor: Rolling Armor (Patreon)

Published:

2019-05-06 09:12:55

Imported:

2023-10

Content

Three items left and then we can wrap this series up! This one is going to be longer than most because technically Rolling Armor has 7 pieces because of the way that calcification gives you two upgraded versions of the mineral gear.

Rolling Armor is a really weird set, thematically it's a bunch of Dung Beetle Knight parts strapped together via rubbery bones. It lacks locations and doesn't even have the armor keyword, so it breaks a lot of the rules of the game and also creates some rules inconsistencies/issues that the game's rules are not specific enough about.

Statistically it's really powerful, with a lot of potential combos and usages, one of the prime ones is in mixed armor sets as the 'stuffing' polish to help bulk up your armor points. This is because going in with less than 4 armor for the late game monsters is a seriously poor idea for anyone outside of supports who plan to not attack at all.

This threshold is important because most late game monsters deal 3 damage per hit minimum and 4 armor is the lowest amount that allows you to suffer 2 hits per location without getting a severe injury - break points matter people.

So, without getting into more specifics here - lets dive into this set. It's going to be a long one, and everything smells ever so slightly of phoenix dung. So here we go!

For details and opinions on the calcification process see the following two links:

Scarab Circlet

Resource Cost: 1x compound eye, 1x hide, 1x bone. Requires L2 Black Harvest Nightmare Corn.

Assessment

Efficiency: This is a very efficient item, but it is not easy to get. You have to hit an L2 Black Harvest, which costs resources in itself (and time). So this is harder to make than the belt and pads.

B+

Defense: Pretty weak by itself, this is just a scant 5 armor points spread over all locations. In general terms that's less powerful than 5 armor to one specific location. But it can help you hit break points. The thing is, in the case of all the items in this set that give you armor points, that's how they work, they give you more armor than one item would normally, but they spread it around.

Abilities: This ability is potentially one of the more powerful ones in the game. In combination with the Lion God fighting art Burning Focus this will give you +1 strength token per turn without completely running out of survival.

In essence, you burn through your survival until you are at 0 and then you perform a survival action every single turn and keep building up more and more strength. It's a potent way to transform from being an early showdown tank into a late game surge DPS and it's one of the few 'transformative classes' you can make.

Even outside of that the only downside to this gear once constructed is that it uses a slot (just like most gear), it's better than shields for some DPS class builds.

S-

Affinities: Up and down half blues are unusual and solid. Often you're missing a down or up blue for builds and having something that gives armor plus a usable once per showdown 'desperation' ability even if you're not abusing it is often better filler than you normally get.

A-

Score: A solid and often overlooked piece of gear. I like the scarab circlet, but the fact that it is locked behind the Nightmare Corn harvest means that it's not something people get to use often. In short, the construction costs on this one keep it in check.

A-

Rainbow Wing Belt

Resource Cost: 1x scarab wing, 1x organ, 1x hide

Assessment

Efficiency: 3 resources, one of which is monster specific, is a good price. Though the scarab wings - like all DBK resources - is not an easy thing to get. Importantly it has no link to the Black Harvest, and as we look at how useful this gear is as a utility item in the late game, that'll matter at lot.

S-

Defense: N/A

Abilities: Two words. Early. Iron. This belt's ability turns each dice from a 10% chance of the attack scoring no hits to a 1% chance. That's huge, for example the Lantern Glaive moves from a 19% chance of the attack completely failing to a 1.9% chance and if I recall correctly the Lantern Sword moves from a 28% to a 2.8% chance of Early Iron activating. You can still miss normally, but you're not being inflicted as much with the absurd drawback - this means you can enjoy the benefits of the lantern weapons more.

It's also super powerful with slow weapons by giving you that second roll on your arc bow, dragon slayer and so on - and it has interesting applications for a whole bunch of builds.

S++

Affinities: The rainbow belt needs a lot of affinities to be activated, 2 reds, 1 green and 1 blue. Fortunately it does provide some help on this front with an up red, right green and down blue half affinity. These are all good affinities - especially the green one, and while it does limit the optimal place for the piece to be slot 4 that is not a hard requirement.

Score: Because of how important this item can be in making a bunch of late game weapons viable there is no way this can be anything other than an S tier gear card.

S-

Century Shoulder Pads

Resource Cost: 1x scarab shell, 3x leather, 1x iron

Assessment

Efficiency: This is not a cheap item to make and that's something I find a lot of theory crafting builders overlook. That cost a mammoth 4 hide, three of which have to be converted to leather, one which is monster specific and an iron. That's going to slow you down on any other late game armor set or weapon plans.

However, considering what you get, the price is fair.

Defense: 5 armor spread across all locations is the same as the scarab circlet. However, where the Pads win out is when you get to its ability, which gives it a huge defensive boost.

Abilities: Ignoring hits is one of the most powerful abilities in the game. By itself this gear gives you a 10% chance of ignoring one hit, which is decent - especially when it can be combined with Fencing, The Green Knight Helm (which is 100% DBK Parts and can be considered to unofficially be a part of the Rolling Armor set), Shields, Deflect tokens, Phoenix Plackarts and whatever else you can get your hands on.

Turns out in KDM stacking ignore hit type abilities is something that has no cap and is r i d i c u l o u s when combined with evasion.

S+

Affinities: A lone right green half affinity here. That's a good affinity, but it's nothing to write home about.

B+

Score: This is one of the pieces of the Rolling Armor that attracts the most attention for a good reason. Apart from the high cost and heavy keyword it has no downsides and it can even be upgraded into one of the most powerful defensive items in the game.

S+

Century Greaves

Resource Cost: 1x scarab shell, 1x beetle horn, 2x iron + L2 Black Harvest - Nightmare Corn required.

Assessment

Efficiency: Very expensive for what you get here. You're not going to be ever building or using this item without having the Shoulder Pads to go with it. 5 armor split to all locations is not a good exchange for -1 movement in a level 2 Black Harvest gear card.

B+

Defense: The defense here is strictly worse than the one given by the Scarab Circlet because movement is your first line of defense against anything. Losing movement hurts a lot of survivors so you need to be getting a good return on that - without the Pads, the greaves do not give it.

Abilities: Now this is where things really begin to matter, the +1 to ripple pattern results is a 100% increase in the power of the Pad's ability to ignore hits. It's where this gear begins to earn its place - and when you eventually calcify it, it'll start to sing.

A+

Affinities: Needs green and blue to be active, only provides a left green half affinity. It's pretty weak deal overall.

B-

Score: Bad in isolation, good when combined with the Shoulder Pads. This one is not a high priority piece for survivors who do not want full rolling armor.

A-

Rubber Bone Harness

Resource Cost: 1x Underplate fungus, 1x century fingernails, 2x leather and L3 Black Harvest - Vampiric Artichoke required.

Assessment

Efficiency: Very, very poor. Let's not beat about the bush here, the Rubber Bone Harness; listed as the Elastic Harness on the Wet Resin Crafter location because fuck copy editors I guess - sorry the sheer number of typos I reported on the DBK expansion is exasperating - pobody's nerfect but Adam Poots Games LLC is a professional company. Anyway, lets not get lost in that bush, the Rubber Bone Harness is very inefficient for its cost.

It provides a very limited form of defense, it costs two very valuable DBK specific resources (fungus = Fetasaurus and fingernails = Digging Claws) and it needs the level 3 black harvest to make it. It's super expensive and the largest stumbling block for any settlement seeking full rolling armor.

Defense: There is virtually no defense here, but there are some few situations where monsters give out a lot of negative tokens and you can flip them to the positive ones.

C-

Abilities: This has combo potential with survivors that have Super Hair (but that's always a PITA to get) and it also works well with the Pulse Lantern in multiples (activate 4 pulse lanterns, get 4 knockdowns and +4 accuracy). However, I am surprised that this is the ability given to the hardest to make piece of the armor set. Things may change in the future if negative tokens become more and more common as a monster mechanic.

B-

Affinities: Very good actually, it doesn't need any affinities itself, but it provides four half affinities, including a left and right green that combos well with the plates. However the up red affinity doesn't work with the rainbow wing belt, so builds that want to use rolling armor + early iron can be very awkward at times.

A-

Score: I can't go giving this one a really high score because of how awkward and expensive it is. It's easily the weakest part of the rolling armor set and this score reflects that.

C-

Finally lets look at the two calcified parts of the Rolling Armor set - and before we move forward, a reminder for your potential homebrew stuff - calcification is the process where a gear card with the mineral keyword loses that keyword and gains stats. It is not bone gear that automatically calcifies, it is mineral ones. Remember to include that keyword.

Calcified Shoulder Pads

Resource Cost: 1x scarab shell, 3x leather, 1x iron + calcification

Assessment

Efficiency: More efficient than the non-calcified version, spending 3-4 years in the dirt, plus the resources for the casing gives you a piece of gear that's almost three times better than its original form.

S+

Defense: 15 points of armor, spread across all locations helps a lot with break points, that's +1 level 3 monster hit to every place, that makes even Rawhide Armor sufficient protection for the average fight and it also still has the ripple pattern ability.

S++

Abilities: There is no improvement to the Ripple Pattern here. But it is a little stronger in combination with the higher armor points.

Affinities: Same as before.

Score: This piece of gear is one of the ones that draws the eye of the newer players more than anything else. It's like a turbo charged shield for a survivor and seeing it included in builds is pretty much a meme at this point.

S++

Calcified Greaves

Resource Cost: 1x scarab shell, 1x beetle horn, 2x iron + L2 Black Harvest - Nightmare Corn required + calcification

Assessment

Efficiency: While the non-calcified version is not that efficient, the calcified version ranks up a lot. It's another big pile of stats, ones that are worth the loss of movement this time.

B+

Defense: Huge levels of defense when combined with the shoulder pads - and lets be honest, you should never, ever be in a situation where you have the greaves without the pads (if you do, you've been unfortunate or foolish).

S++

Abilities: +2 to ripple pattern is a lot, that's moved the ability to an 8+, which is 3 times better than it is at the base line. 10+ is something that just happens occasionally, but 8+ is at a level where you can rely on it to a certain degree.

Affinities: Same as before.

Score: Not as good as the shoulder pads, but rarely found in isolation. The calcified greaves are one of the things that make completed rolling armor the powerhouse that it is but on their own they're fodder for Green Armor.

Rolling Armor

Resource Cost: 1x Underplate fungus, 1x century fingernails, 2x scarab shell, 1x beetle horn, 1x scarab wing, 1x compound eye, 1x bone, 1x organ, 2x hide, 3x iron, 5x leather plus Black Harvest requirements

Assessment

Efficiency: Rolling Armor is many things, but efficient is not one of them. It's why I ended up writing two articles on the crafting process (see the top of this post for links) - because optimising the whole operation is difficult. It is fair to straight up call Rolling Armor one of the most inefficient things to craft in the game. But it is worth that inefficiency.

A-

Defense: Full rolling armor is 5 armor to all locations, which is past the minimum break point for a DPS survivor fighting L2s and L3s and it also provides protection against negative tokens and hit cancellation. However the minus movement should not be overlooked, you have less situations where you can dash-cancel attacks and you're going to be in range for a lot more dangerous monster activities.

S-

Abilities: 9+ Ripple Pattern, +strength tokens when at zero survival, rerolls on misses plus once per round ignoring knockdown and rolling away with knockback 5. It's not that much when you look at it, most of what rolling armor gives you is tied up to tanking based activities.

Additionally as this armor set does not take up any specific locations,

S-

Affinities: you can get yourself 2 green and 1 blue full affinities, plus some combination of 2 red up half affinities and 2 blue half affinities. It's not as good as other late game sets, and its hurt by the fact that both reds are ups. However it does work well with monster grease and that matters when you're considering that this armor set is ultimately a tank one.

A-

Score: Without calcification this armor set is solid but it can't make the top 2 or 3 for full tank sets (as it's competing with its calcified version, Warlord, Lantern and Leather + Silk Body Suit).

A+

We're just going to look at a few limited areas for the calcified version because the costs, abilities and affinities either don't change or hardly change at all.

Calcified Rolling Armor

Efficiency: The efficiency of the calcified set climbs up a lot despite the extra time and resources involved in the calcification process. The boosts you gain to defense are very significant, moving the armor set from solid to top tier tanking.

Defense: Once calcified you're gaining access to a total of 9 armor on all locations, plus an 8+ ripple pattern. It's incredibly powerful, and the only armor set with more protections baseline is the Green Armor. However, it is at this point worth pointing out that rolling armor can be buffed further by adding useful parts of other armor sets to it. The Lion Skin Cloak for example is incredibly when combined with the tanking capability. Essentially, you've got the ability to do almost all your mixed armor set dreams by splashing the best of the best.

S++

Abilities: These remain the same as the non-calcified rolling set except that ripple pattern becomes more reliable.

Score: I have called this the best tanking set in the game, and it is - especially when combined with the cloak's damage mitigation. It is stronger than any other choices and it should be when you consider the difficulty and costs involved in crafting it.

S+

We have two more sets to look at, both of which are the only true 'plate' style armor sets in the game right now. So next time we'll dive into the incredibly expensive club focused Lantern Armor and then after that it'll be time to look into the dream meme that is Green Knight Armor - an armor set that's too powerful considering how relatively easy it is to make.

Yes, you read that right. Easy.