Assessing Armor: Dragon Armor (Patreon)

(This one almost got lost in the cracks as it was originally scheduled for 9/5/2020, whoops).

We are nearing the end of this series, a series that dissects every single armour set in the game, looks at what makes each set good - whether it's individual parts (Leather, Rolling) or the set bonus (Rawhide, Lantern) or just about everything surrounding it (Cycloid, Screaming). 

The goal has always been to educate and illuminate what it is that makes for good armor and bad armor.  Armor can be good because of affinities, abilities or raw stats (armor points, stat gains) and often it's a combination of two out of three that makes the set really sing.

Dragon Armor is the next one up and it's got good affinities, great raw stats and a few solid abilities. It's been something of a slow burn for me, gradually climbing up the rankings as I used it more and more. 

My first proper exposure to Dragon Armor was via People of the Sun, it's the single 'hardest' non-heavy armor in the game and unlike Phoenix Armor it's not flammable - which does actually matter in the final confrontation. However, continued use of the armor set made it clear to me that it's very powerful, the issue is that its power is drowned out by the incredible noise that is output by the obvious power of the other top end armor sets.  It's hard to rave about Dragon Armor when you look at the sheer amount of abilities stuffed into Cycloid, the raw stats of Lantern/Rolling or the incredible defensive potential of Dancer and Warlord. 

In short, it took me the longest time to come to appreciate Dragon Armor for what it is and what it's best used for.  It's never going to be the greatest armor set in the meta, but it is currently the best two-handed melee weapon choice you have - and it has incredible synergy with the options you get from the Sunstalker gear.

I've hyped it up enough, let's dive into the specifics and look at why I've come around on this set. 

Dragonskull Helm

Resource Cost: 1x horn fragment, 2x bone, 1x husk

Assessment

Efficiency: It's rare that you see such a bone heavy piece of armour and that's great. What's not great is how relatively weak the armor is when you drill into it. It has one ability that you'd rather not use in the +1 to severe injury rolls for head and a second ability that's interesting but situational.  As a consequence, the costing on this is a little on the high side - you're paying 2 monster and 2 basic resources for stats most of the time.

B+

Defense: With the aforementioned +1 to severe injury rolls, protection against shattered jaws and a high base level of armor at 4. This is a defensive item through and through. It's just a shame that these defenses are nothing compared to the best stuff in the game.

A-

Abilities: I think we've already discussed the abilities enough, they are very situational.

C+

Affinities: I do rate the affinities provided on this helm. It's a good fit with the armor set as a whole, easily activated and they are very rare.  The helm is already a prime slot to jam a monster tooth necklace on the left of, and that does matter for hitting break points (I'll discuss this a bit more when we look at the armor set as a whole).

A+

Score:  I like the thematic links of this helm, it protects your head and also provides the ability to consume after a shattered jaw - which ties into People of the Stars in a subtle manner. But, despite Zachary Barash's enthusiasm about the Dragonskull Helm (see when he used it when playing with TWIST Gaming) it's nothing to write home about outside of the affinities and protection against head injuries.

 A-

Dragon Mantle

Resource Cost: 1x horn fragment, 1x hardened ribs, 1x leather, 1x iron

Assessment

Efficiency: The price jump here from the Helm to the Mantle is very significant. We've gone from basic resources to monster specific + the 'upgraded' basic resources and that's a heck of a leap. The Dragon Mantle does repay these costs though and that's what matters.

A+

Defense: Not only do you get a solid baseline of armor points, but you also get the best form of survival gains - ones that happen during the showdown.

A+

Abilities: This ability is the second best ability in the Dragon Armor set and it makes the Dragon Mantle the best piece of gear you can get. Anyone who's hunted a lot of L3 monsters can tell you that the survival phase does its absolute best to strip away your survival and leave you with as little as possible.

With an active Dragon Mantle, this doesn't matter, you can spend every single last point of your survival on the hunt and you'll still get a full refresh of it when you arrive. It also doesn't care how much survival you gain on departure, it's going to jam you all the way up to the top of the survival limit.

It also makes your survivor beat their chest like a badass, which is the second coolest gear flavour text in the game behind the Eyepatch.

S+

Affinities: The Dragon Mantle is affinity intensive, it needs all 4 of its affinities connected in order to make the gear active and at times that can be difficult. The most typical layout is shown above, but as you can see it still needs help from a left blue (more on this later). 

Still, you have to respect the sheer number of affinities that the Dragon Mantle offers, it's providing 2 green, 1 red and 1 blue half affinities and it works really well with most of the pieces of gear in the set.

S+

Score: As the strongest individual piece of gear in the armor set, the Dragon Mantle is quietly impressive. It's not going to wow you when you just look at it on paper, but when you experience just how strong it is in action - with the ability to gain 10+ survival without even spending an activation. You can come to appreciate this distinguished, if silly looking, piece of armor.

S

Dragon Gloves

Resource Cost: 1x cabled vein, 1x husk, 1x leather, 1x iron

Assessment

Efficiency: Ooof! Not good. You're paying in essence as much for these gloves as you do for every single other part of the armor set (outside of the helm), but you're only getting 2 half affinities and some armor points. It's not a good deal and that means the gloves are low on the priority list for crafting.

B-

Defense: 4 armor points, nothing else apart from that green half affinity. It's not great.

B+

Abilities: N/A

Affinities: Affinities and armor points is all we get. Also only the green half affinity is actually of any use in the most typical layouts you'd use. Very few builds want an up blue affinity when they can get a right blue or a down blue from the same armor set. It has some applications with the Mantle + Lucky Charm, but it's not going to blow any doors off.

B+

Score: This is yet another late game armor gear item with no abilities, at least these gloves give decent protection, but they are very expensive and there is no argument that they are the weakest piece of gear in the set - they should be crafted last if you're struggling.

C

Dragon Belt

Resource Cost: 2x winged vein, 1x organ, 1x iron

Assessment

Efficiency: The belt is absolutely the second worst piece of gear in the Dragon Armor arsenal. It, like the gloves, almost seems to exist just to help complete the set, provide affinities and get access to the set bonus. It gives you a good amount of armor points for the price paid, but so does every single other piece of Dragon Armor gear.

B-

Defense: This gear has some reasonable defense, providing the same standard 4 armor point base line and an ability that does help defenses a smidge. Just a smidge mind you.

A-

Abilities: This is the sticking point with this piece of gear, the ability is hard to activate (more on this below) and also it's not very powerful when you do have it activated.  Knock downs are one of the least difficult status effects to deal with - most settlements have access to encourage and F&T mastery.  Also this ability only triggers when you've taken a heavy injury, that's not something you should be experiencing in the first place and it's going to typically trigger no more than 5 times in a fight (if that). Very marginal and not worth the effort.

C

Affinities: The affinities are awkward and the down blue half affinity might as well not exist. This is because activating the mantle is far, far more important and at the moment there is very little gear that has a left blue and up blue half affinity.  Normally you're just getting a red affinity from this and that does help activate the helm if you're not using a Monster Tooth Necklace. But, it is nothing to write home about.

C-

Score: Blah, this piece sucks to have to craft in Dragon Armor. However it's not bad as a waist slot piece for mixed sets.

 B-

Dragon Boots

Resource Cost: 1x king's claws, 1x husk, 1x organ, 1x iron

Assessment

Efficiency: Better than some parts, not as good as the Mantle.

A-

Defense: 4 armor points, and extra movement during your act gives you some decent defense, but as the movement can't be used to dash-cancel it's not as useful as it could be (for example on Dancer Armor or the White Lion Boots).

A

Abilities: Third best ability in the set, this one is still a bit situational. Movement is very, very powerful, but less so when you can only use it on your act. I do not sniff at being 7 movement baseline, and the combination with things like Propulsion Drive or Harvestman is still powerful, but this is no Dancer armor. 

A+

Affinities: They're alright. Mostly it's the up green that matters, the red affinity is almost useless, it provides a few alternative options, but no power.

B+

Score: These boots are better when used outside of the Dragon Armor set, but the extra movement on your act and the green affinity are relevant, one helps with Monster Grease if you want to go in that direction (it's a little tricky on Dragon Armor) while the other can improve your positioning and has small synergies with certain fighting arts.

A-

Strawham: So fen, you've looked at all of these pieces and you've been kind of lukewarm on many of them, you only really have a lot of praise for the Dragon Mantle, the rest is sort of okay or expensive for what is nothing more than a (short) pile of stats. Why has Dragon Armor risen up so much in your estimation when the gear pieces are so not impressive?

Well, this takes us back to the start of the article, some armor sets are carried by single pieces (Phoenix) and some are carried by the collective. Dragon Armor is the sum of its parts and also the creature it comes from.

Dragon Armor

Resource Cost: 2x horn fragment, 2x husk, 2x veined wing, 1x cabled vein, 1x hardened ribs, 1x king's claws, 4x iron, 2x leather, 2x bone, 2x organ

Assessment

Efficiency: Super, super high. One of the "secrets" I've not been talking about much to this point is that fighting the Dragon King gives your survivors a ton of opportunities to gain stats and iron.  In fact the Dragon King is one of the most efficient non-degenerate (read L1 Flower Knight) ways of generating iron in the game and as a consequence the armor set costs a lot less than you'd think because the process of gathering the monster specific parts also generates a lot of iron as well.

The Dragon King is not a slouch to fight, but if you can tackle Sunstalkers, Phoenixes and Dung Beetle Knights. You're already more than halfway there. Just watch out for the Hunt Phase, the DK Hunt Phase can W R E C K you and your settlement - have murder bait ready.

S+

Defense: Solid, it's 5 points to all locations and you can easily be positioned in places where you're unlikely to be the target thanks to the set bonus ability, huge pile of survival and the extra movement. Also, and this is very significant, this is the highest amount of base armor from an armor set in the game right now without going into heavy armor pieces. Even the Hybrid sets (Brawler and Warlord) have heavy elements which are going to get you punished on the odd (rare) occasion.

S+

Abilities: So you get a few decent abilities just from the gear, the most notable is of course the mantle. But you're also getting potentially protection from head injuries, resistance to knock down and extra movement during your act.

That's all fine. But what really brings this set together is the set bonus. I'll state this clearly.

THE.

SET.

BONUS.

IS.

INSANE.

It is, it really is.  +2 Accuracy and +5 strength is a staggering amount of extra stats on an attack and they're exactly the two you want (excluding luck) + the leap (aka teleport) is a massively useful tool. This ability is easily the best of the 'monster charge' abilities outside of Phoenix + Harvestman abuse and it's very easy to get around the limitations that the ability would normally present by using sexy reach weapons. Weapons such as, this hunt phase improvement tool + thrown spear.

Or perhaps as a basic you'd prefer this:

Or maybe you want to be the most powerful possible and enjoy a range 3 melee weapon with bow mastery:

Once you start looking into what you can do with this set bonus when combined with reach weapons you'll be in a whole new world of DPS joy.

This is one of the best set bonuses in the game.

S+++

Affinities: 2 red, 2 green, 2 half blue, 1 half red. It's a lot better than many other armor sets would offer but it's still not super impressive because the layout kind of sucks.

A-

Score: I class this set at the top reach X armor set in the game and the top of the 'monster charge sets'. I even consider this set to be a better Spear set than the ubiquitous Screaming Armor (but it's not as good as Screaming Armor at all the other things that set does).  

Dragon Armor is the current pinnacle of light armor in the game and it's an absolute powerhouse when used correctly. I have no hesitation in putting it into the S Tier for armor, it's just at the bottom of the S Tier category - it's not going to pass Cycloid, Rolling, Screaming, Rawhide, Dancer, Warlord or Lantern any time soon overall, but it's in my top 5 for offensive armor sets.

S

So next time you are considering quarry monsters, despite it's relatively low key reputation. Take my recommendation and hunt the Dragon King and Sunstalker together. You will really enjoy what comes from it.

Get your skull on.