Hail Elyrians!

Last week, we shared the Dras armor concept sculpt with you all and in keeping with the theme this month of Queen's Gaze, I figured we'd keep the focus on the Al'tifali. So, for this week, I thought it would be fun to share a "Heavy" armor concept sculpt for the Waerd:

When we talk about armor "types," then, do we really just mean "light, medium, and heavy" and is that all the armor variance there is in CoE? Well, you probably already know the answer is no, but let me explain:

Technically, there is no mechanical difference between a piece of light armor, medium armor, or heavy armor. The various designations are little more than a handy nomenclature we can use to better organize what we're producing. But to the Soulbourn engine, armor is armor; what differentiates two pieces of armor isn't their class or category, but is instead their properties, materials, and construction.

A piece of "light" armor functions exactly the same way as a piece of a "heavy" armor - though each has their own strengths and weaknesses when it comes mitigating types of damage.

There are a couple of reasons we blur the lines like this. The first is probably the most obvious: With no player-classes, dividing the armor into rigid classes of their own only really makes sense if we implemented some sort of "armor wearing" skill, which is something we're not directly doing. But, the second reason to break down those divisions is our crafting system's basic framework, where raw materials become components, which are then assembled into a final product.

You can see it in the tribal concept sculpts we've shown so far. They often build on one another so that a tribe's medium armor is like its light armor, but embellished to reinforce it for heavier duty. In our crafting system, this is literally how such armor is made. In the case of the Waerd for example, you might have a recipe for Waerdic chainmail, which you could use, as written, to produce their medium armor. But the same recipe can, by swapping out equivalent components, be used to create something more like the heavy armor concept you see here.

Or, to explain in a little more detail, they look similar because they share the same basic design, but what sets them apart are the properties granted by the differing components. Here the component chain tunic component is replaced with a bolstered chain component, swapping out the straight chain for a layer of chain and a girdle of plates that adds additional protection from certain types of damage. Essentially, in addition to giving you an idea of the style of each tribe, these sculpts also help to illustrate some of the ways crafters can differentiate themselves and their products by using what they know (the patterns for various compatible components, in this case) to alter the final product of a recipe.

Enjoy!