Mixed Sets #5 - Don't Get Waisted! (Patreon)

 Part 1: General Principles, Limitations and Foundations 

Part 2: Head

Part 3: Body 

Part 4: Arms 

Part 5: Waist 

The waist is a bizzare oddity of a location in Kingdom Death, it simultaneously combines leg-wear, belts, skirts, kilts and pants of various types all in one mix. It's the most weird and varied of all locations and it's shows the very non-western influences that area baked deep into Kingdom Death because waist armor is not something you'll find in a game like Dungeons & Dragons, Elder Scrolls, Shadowrun or Mini Metro.  It's more present in certain Japanese games - though Diablo does have a belt slot.

Likewise the design of waist gear is all over the place as well, it's often a 'dump slot' for an armor set (like arms are sometimes). By that I mean a piece of gear that has no abilities, no affinities or very weak abilities. You're just dumping a slot in your gear grid to get access to this gear without much hope of getting anything other than armor protections, set bonuses and maybe an affinity or two.

This means that a lot of time time in the world of waist armor, you're looking for the best affinities, keywords or just plain old efficient costing rather than anything as impressive as the head, body or even arm pieces have displayed. 

Waist gear is often just dependable rather than blow your socks off impressive, but not every gear has to be chock full of powerful abilities - Adam's monsters aren't strong enough to handle that kind of power.

White Lion Skirt

This one makes it onto the list for early game mixed builds. Yes, many people, myself included are not particularly positive about the White Lion set, and for good reason. It's got a whole host of issues that make it undesirable and harmful to your settlement if you construct it. It's heavy (which means it can delete itself or the survivor wearing it from the campaign), it's expensive, it is very poor when compared to leather and it's even weaker than Rawhide. That's the largest crime that the White Lion set has, it's fine that it's an early game armor set that's discarded later on, but it's not fine that it's worse than literally every single other early game option.  

All of that written, the Skirt is one of the better parts of the White Lion set in an early mixed set because of the affinities. When you have Heat available (Lantern Oven) you can make the Monster Tooth Necklace, and that + skirt + 1 left red affinity is +2 strength. Early on +2 Strength is a significant bump in power, it can make weapons move from being only good against L1 White Lion tier monsters to being solid against L2s and even the L1 Phoenix Tier group. 

However, it's price is 2 hide, which is very steep for a piece like this, so this isn't something you can recommend as optimal.

Gorment Suit

The Gorment Suit is a Body/Waist item that's almost exclusively an Arms/Body/Waist 2 piece combo. For discussion on it, see the body article here. It's powerful, but like most Gorment armor pieces, it lacks the armor points and affinities it needs to be really exciting.

Silk Sash

There are some problematic issues in the Silk Armor set, however the Silk Sash is not one of these. It's a perfect piece for use in Mixed armor sets because it provides a solid armor baseline at 3 and also gives you +1 to all locations once activated. This means it's not just a waist piece, it's a solid 'glue' piece as well and it can be used to carry lower armor point pieces a lot further - especially when combined with shields, bird bread or DBK gear.

Additionally it gives you 2 green affinities, one of which combines excellently with the Leather Shield; and all of that means you're very close to being able to activate Monster Grease when you use this gear. 

Leather Skirt

This one is essentially a toned down version of the Silk Sash. The Leather Skirt is nothing to write home about, it's armor points + a down green half affinity for the combo with the Leather Shield. However, it costs just 1 Leather aka 1 hide + part of an endeavor. Which is a staggeringly low cost. In comparison the Silk Sash is 2 Silk, 1 Bone and 1 Hide - and while it's clearly the better piece if you have the resources, sometimes you just don't have them available.  

Leather Skirts, the cheapest way to efficiently protect your junk.

Cycloid Scale Skirt

I do not rate the Cycloid Scale Skirt in mixed sets most of the time, the Cycloid set's power isn't in its pants, it's in every other piece of the armor set. 

That written, it is fair to say that for Mixed Set builds that use a lot of blue affinities (Blue Charm for example) and want a waist piece that combines with the Leather Shield - this one is a better choice than the Leather Skirt or Silk Sash. But it's really for those settlements that are flush with resources because Cycloid Scale gear is not cheap.

Dragon Belt

As one of the least impressive parts of the Dragon Armor set when you look at it in combination with the others, you'd expect the Dragon Belt to be likewise 'meh' when considering it for mixed sets. 

That's not the case, the main issue with it in Dragon Armor is how hard it is to activate the belt and the far more important Dragon Mantle at the same time. You have to get a left blue and up blue gear for slot 6 - that's hard to find, only the Talon Knife (which sucks) works there. When you're in Mixed sets you don't have this issue, instead you can select the gear cards that fit your desired layout better.

All of this means that the Dragon Belt represents one of the highest armor points on the waist available right now combined with two useful affinities and an ability that isn't terrible (but isn't amazing). It's the affinities and the armor that make this such a good waist piece and honestly, it's the mixed set waist slot of choice for any mixed set not using the Phoenix Plackart.

Lantern Mail

The Lantern Mail makes it onto the list for exactly one synergy. It is one of the few mixed set armor pieces that is happy to sit in locations 4 or 7 on the gear grid. 

If you are not clear on the importance of that. It's because of the Phoenix Plackart's requirements.

That left green can be a pain in the ass to complete, often requiring a non-weapon, non-armor piece of support gear. So the Lantern Mail, despite its high cost and lack of anything else, can be a desirable piece to use in combination with the Plackart - especially if you are only using mixed sets as you work your way towards making Warlord Armor.

That's ultimately the best place for the Lantern Mail, Warlord Armor and as such it's not really a high recommendation as a waist piece. But it is an option if you don't have any other ways of hitting that right green.

And that's the list! It's not a particularly big one and there are no really impressive pieces in this, most of the time you're going to be picking either Leather, Dragon Belt or the Silk Sash as these are the best options, but there may be situations where other ones apply.

Next time we are more fortunate, because the leg gear selection contains a lot of different utility items that have impressive and even class defining abilities! And once that's done we'll be looking at some different builds, their applications, advantages and where you'd use them!