Shattered Kingdoms

Okay so I rolled my first character other than a melee build, a priest. I was wondering what armor quality can or should be used. For example for example adamantium is the sought armor quality for heavy armor. What would a priest look for?

Okay, first step is the help file Armor2. That'll give you a list of armor types, and a general (non-comprehensive) list of what falls under what. What it will also tell you is what armor types each class fall under, except priests are special.

Priests start with light armor, leather, mythril, etc. However, when they choose a faith, their armor type changes. A priest of Mira, for example, is a clothie. A priest of Dulrik or Algorab are Heavy armor, like you're used to. Again, the Armor2 helpfile will give you a full list of what faith gives what armor type.

I see didn't even occur to me that would be in a help file, so for light armor what is the best quality? same for cloth?

Also does this difference make one version of a priest more powerful than the others?

Not really. Each faith has other specialities, like faith spells. Not to mention the social interactions each faith offers. I'll speak of Sadr, as that's the faith I'm leading. Her faith has light armor. But her spell is Symbol of Pain, which is a decent debuff. The general rule of thumb is that the better the armor, the less power the spell has. This is entirely subjective, of course. But think of what you're wanting to make. If you're wanting the type of priest to bash things in the name of their God/dess, focus on that, focus on a war god, and go heavy. If you're wanting a mystical spellcaster, pick a clothie and stay in back. There might be priests that are technically better, in game terms, but the RP is always the reason I choose.

As to light armor, Mythril's a good benchmark to hit. I don't think it's the best, but it's high quality, and will get you to endgame, I believe. Light armor isn't my specialty, even though Thallin belongs to that class. (Each Faith has a set of Sacred Armor, so I just wear that.)

The only thing the weight of a priest's armor really impacts is how vulnerable to ranged attacks they will be. Even then, the difference is relatively negligible. Each weight of armor gets its own bonuses, though. Like, cloth priests have Remove Compulsion spells added, and heavy priests get Lighten Load added. The light-armor faith spells are some of the better ones in the game, as a rule.

The weight of armor in the faith is probably the last thing to consider when choosing one, though. The first and most critical thing should be the RP of the church and suitability to your alignment.

There is a significant group of players who make faith choices based on alignment-compatible selection of their religion spells.

I would also argue to take care to choose your faith based on your capacity to get along with its in-game leadership, if they're active, and with its immortal patron, if she is active. There's so much that's left to the discretion of players and staffers when it comes to religion RP that these people do make a difference in the experience you can expect to have.

Or do like I did, and pick a relatively dead faith. Lead it yourself! As to picking something based on the IMM leading it, well, I don't know the IMMs well at all. In fact, I know almost noone on SK! So, that advice is a bit misleading, though I have had non-priests shy away from faiths in the past due to A-holes leading the church.

There's only a few religions that I would consider to be a sub par choice in terms of mechanics. You really can't go wrong with any of the heavy armor religions because all of their faith specific spells are above average and they get lighten load to help with lugging around diamond/tanso/adamantite armor.

A couple of the cloth armor religions (Meissa and Marfik) are meh, but all cloth armor priests also get remove compulsion as a bonus spell which is extremely nice. It allows you to dispel the charm/control effect on necromancer/sorcerer pets. You can't really go wrong picking any of the cloth armor religions.

The light armor religions is where you can get the short end of the stick, in my opinion, since they do not get either lighten load or remove compulsion. Sadr, Thuban, Ain and Zavijah have outstanding faith specific spells - the rest are meh.