Shattered Kingdoms

Is there any way to tell in advance if an item you have might be stolen by thieves? I've been having trouble finding equipment on the ground, "Oh, this looks good!", replacing my Academy equipment and finding next login that I'm short a slot.

When you buy something in a shop, the keep will say, "Are you sure you want to purchase this?" to alert you that you might lose it.

As for things found on the ground, that's a gamble that can be negated with help from a lore/identify.

I have identify... could you explain how it would help?

I'm hardly able to afford my training, so I haven't been able to buy from shops much yet. I'm at Journeyman wearing newbie gear still.

The "quality" of an item determines it's level. Items above your level are able to be stolen upon logout, and the higher above your level they are, the more likely the chance.

The ranges are:
poor
below average
average
above average
superior
outstanding
near god-like

With poor quality being around amateur level and near god-like quality being grandmaster level. Anything that is average quality or below will never be stolen, I think, which a lot of storebought EQ falls under (And the ones that don't get that warning from the shopkeep if you aren't high enough level). Another interesting note is that enchanting an item increases it's level, but the first 10 enchantments on an item do not make it more likely to be stolen by thieves: So don't worry about putting 4-5 enchantments on a weapon and making it more likely to be stolen.

Really solid advice, Edoras. Follow up question:




When an item comes pre-loaded with enchantments, are those enchantments factored into the "First 10" mentioned above?

I don't think it factors in. It would make sense to me that the starting level of an item and the starting enchantments of an item are unrelated.

Generally it always meant to me that unless I faded a weapon/armor and re-enchanted it, I wouldn't have to worry about losing to thieves any more than if I hadn't bothered.

OK, I'm still having trouble finding any replacement for my newbie (cloth) armor. I'm almost to Veteran and here are my problems:

--Items I find in the ground while exploring are stolen by thieves.
--Items I buy in major cities are junk. I've wasted at least an obsidian this way, and it was very hard for me to earn. I'm sure the pros have good gold farming methods but I'm happy to get a single gold piece after fighting a NPC for a minute or two. Takes a while at that pace.
--Items I found in an out-of-the-way city shop are all going to be stolen by thieves just the same. They don't really cost more than the 'junk' items that the big cities sell, but apparently they are higher level / better quality.

Any general suggestions of where to look for replacement equipment?

If you have access to the enchant spell or want to have someone enchant your armor for you, even storebought armor can be made usable. Especially if you use cloth armor - you can get access to water/energy when you reach Champion or Grand Master by asking people in-character.

If you were using heavy or light armor my answer might be different, but since cloth armor isn't really all that protective anyway, all you really need is to enchant it a little bit or maybe magical vestments.

Major cities sell really good jewelry, in my opinion. I'm surprised you're finding so many items that are getting stolen - most items you find in training areas are usually pretty low level.

I know this isn't a direct answer to your question, but if you'll bear with me I think this will be very helpful for you. There are three main things which impact the effectiveness of armor against physical blows. They are the armor grade, the armor class, and the magical protection enchantments.

The armor grade is either cloth, light, or heavy, and the armor grade decreases physical blows to the covered area by a static amount. Heavy armor carries reasonable innate damage reduction on the area of the body it protects, cloth carries a very light damage reduction.

The armor class is a value for every piece of armor that makes people more likely to "miss" you. In general, heavier armors have a higher armor class, but this isn't guaranteed to hold true for all armor: Low-quality mithril has a lower armor class than scale, and some energy armor, although cloth-grade, has a higher armor class than some adamantite. The armor class cannot be directly determined, but when you use the "compare" command for armor, you can determine the relative armor class compared to something else of the same armor slot.

For enchantments, there are five total defensive types of enchantments: Magical protection, magical resistance, fortitude, willpower and reflex. The only one of these that impacts the physical protectiveness of a piece of armor is magical protection. If a piece of worn armor has magical protection on it, whatever area of the body it guards take less damage from all physical strikes to it.


Now, the level of an item is not directly correlated to any of these things. Although higher level armor is more likely to have a higher armor class and better starting enchantments, that isn't a guaranteed thing. In fact, most cloth armor is always a low armor class, and is also cloth grade, so the most important thing you can ever get on cloth armor isn't high level armor: It's good enchantments. To be honest, as a cloth armor wearer, you really shouldn't even bother buying cloth armor for protective purposes.

Let's take, for example, a cloth vest from the Taslamaran newbie area, and a cloth tuxedo bought from the fancy tailor shop in Taslamar. The cloth vest costs maybe 1 gold, while the tuxedo, being a tuxedo, costs 3 platinum.

The vest and tuxedo are both cloth, so they're both the same armor grade.
I compare the vest and tuxedo with the compare command, and realize that the vest and tuxedo both protect my chest the same. Therefore, they have the same armor class.
I identify the tuxedo, and I realize that it contains enchantments for magical energy. Since this isn't magical protection, I realize that even though the tuxedo is higher level and is also more expensive and likely to be stolen, it isn't in any way, shape or form more protective.

My main point is that as a cloth wearer, you honestly -should- wear armor from the newbie areas. Cloth is cloth, and until you start fighting NPCs that are putting you in danger via magical spells, the only thing that should matter to you is physical protectiveness for dagger throwing and/or physical blows as you're training: And in fact, if you're playing a class with the magical vestments spell, that spell is much more valuable as you level up than having higher level armor. Holding it should reduce physical damage you take by a pretty decent amount. It also lasts a very long time after it's cast. Since casters come by coin much slower in general than other characters, you should probably work on just saving up coin for training the new skills and spells that will open the world up to you once you can learn them. As another example, a lot of my priests actually end up enchanting the mess out of the Taslamaran newbie area cloth when they get started, and then wear that gear even as a grandmaster.

Thank you Edoras, that was very helpful! I guess part of my disappointment comes from not being to find cloth armor that is even equivalent to the newbie areas. Along these lines: I identified most of my newbie armor and found that many of the pieces carried some enchantment... like a small boost to str/dex/con. As I went along unwillingly replacing them with better items I found, I threw them away. Then those better items were stolen by thieves and I was left trying to scrap up some coinage to cover the empty slots...only to find that the items I was buying that looked nice (say, a tux) did nothing. And I can't enter the newbie areas to get the starting items again.

Well, at least I'm encouraged to hear that I don't need to waste a lot of money trying to find better cloth.

to ladyjennbo: I haven't been buying jewelry from cities because I simply can't afford it. It's hard enough for me to cover the cost of training skills.