More T6 armor sets

Some time ago I posted some screenshots of the Steel Behemoth set, one of the T6 full-plate armor sets. Well, after many months of further lootwhoring, I am now in a position to post a few more sets 🙂

Warded Brute

This is the full-plate protection set. It looks just like Steel Behemoth, except that it’s blue instead of orange. I think I like this color scheme better than the orange one:

Compared with the Steel Behemoth set in terms of stats, the Warded Brute set gives you 1355 protection at the expense of 1488 HP and some smallish amounts of DPS, armor, hit rating and hate increase rating.

Steel Behemoth

For the sake of completeness, I’ll repost the Steel Behemoth full-plate set from my previous post:

Great Impi

There are two heavy sets in T6, both fairly DPS-oriented; Masquer of the Sands is for DTs (it includes magic damage (unholy)), while Great Impi is suitable for conquerors and guardians. Compared to the two plate sets, this one has more DPS, critical rating, lots of hit rating, and even a little protection (400 to be precise); at the same time, of course, it has less armor and HP.

The mighty DPS gaurd!

The DT set (Masquer of the Sand) looks the same, just recolored (reddish instead of green).

I think that except for the headpiece, which is completely ridiculous, the rest of this set actually looks pretty good. It reminds me a little of these guys:

(Source: Wikimedia)

Primal Spirit

This is another DT set the PoM/ToS T6 set. In terms of stats, it’s a very nice set. It gives you a total of 777.4 magic damage and 2288 heal rating (see also my old post with the comparison of priest armor sets). This means that compared with the T5 PoM/ToS sets, you gain about 850 HP and 900 heal rating, as well as a little magic damage, hit rating, and 400 protection (not counting what you get indirectly from wisdom). In other words, the T6 set has almost as much heal rating as the T4 Thousand Blossoms set (which remains the set with the largest amount of heal rating), while having more DPS than any other priest set.

The main downside is that it looks fairly ridiculous. There’s the inevitable skull on the left shoulder, some elephant tusks on the helmet, some sort of miniature palm tree on the top of your head that will be all the rage at your next cannibals’ meetup, etc. :}

Coming Soon™ some day, hopefully: Cackling Marionette, the demo/necro set (a.k.a. how many dead babies can you fit onto a set of armor before your own pets start laughing at you?).

Steel Behemoth plate set

Steel Behemoth is one of the two T6 full-plate sets. I recently got the last piece I was missing from it, so here’s a screenshot of the whole set:

If you went on a safari wearing this stuff, you’d either get molested by a rhino or shot at by poachers 😛

I actually rather like the look of most of the T6 raid armor sets, and I’m glad that the developers took the trouble to design new sets rather than just recolor old ones like they did in T5. Of course, they had to cut some corners anyway, and so for example the other T6 plate set (Warded Brute, the protection set) looks the same as this one, just in a different color (a kind of violet). One minor complaint is that for a full-plate set, it sure doesn’t look very plate-y. In fact the chest piece is delightfully revealing:

There are of course the inevitable clipping issues, or in case of the dangly bit in the front (which is part of the leg piece), they aren’t so much issues as lifetime subscriptions and charter memberships 😛 Still, overall I’m definitely happier with the look of this set than I was with the T5 set.

In terms of stats, Steel Behemoth is a physical tanking set, with an emphasis on armor and HP; thus, it’s similar to the Courageous Souls set from T4, but with most attributes increased by 5–10% (the DPS and critical damage rating got a more substantial increase). In addition, wearing T6 armor gives you a buff called Emerald Lotus Coating, whose strength depends on how many T6 armor pieces you’re wearing:

• 2–3 items: 220 armor penetration, 152 spell penetration, 158 tenacity
• 4–5 items: 470 armor penetration, 330 spell penetration, 340 tenacity
• 6–7 items: 845 armor penetration, 590 spell penetration, 610 tenacity
• 8 items: 1250 armor penetration, 875 spell penetration, 900 tenacity

In addition, the buff includes some negative PvP stats to make T6 armor unattractive in PvP. For PvE, my understanding is that tenacity is only useful in T6 for now, since that’s the only place where mobs have critigation. Armor and spell penetration might also be useful in some lower raid tiers where the mobs have a lot of armor and protection (see also this interesting recent forum thread about penetration stats).

Penetration FTW!

Khitai world-drop blues

The introduction of the achievement system in update 4.5 has been an unexpected boon for my efforts to catalogue the world-drop blue loot. (For my previous posts in this series, see: level 10–19, level 20–39, level 40–49).

A large number of (moderately) rare open-world bosses were introduced for the Bane achievements, and these bosses always drop a piece of blue BoE loot, even in normal-mode playfields. The two big differences between them and the traditional open-world bosses that we’ve known since release are the following:

(1) From the traditional bosses, a blue drop is only guaranteed if you kill them in an epic instance; in a normal instance, a blue drop is very unlikely. By contrast, the new achievement bosses always drop a blue item, even in a normal instance.

(2) From level 40 up, the loot tables of the traditional bosses include 12 armor sets (see my old posts for screenshots: level 40–69, level 70–80), which account for around 90% of the items in these loot tables. So if you’re only interested in farming the other items, those which aren’t part of the sets, you’ll have to kill the bosses a lot more times than on lower levels because most of the time they’ll be dropping the set pieces that you don’t care about. The new achievement bosses don’t have these 12 armor sets in their loot tables, so the problem is gone.

This makes the new achievement bosses very attractive for farming the open-world blue loot. They do have one disadvantage, however: they are, in principle, rare — you have to kill a placeholder mob and hope that your boss will then spawn in its place. But in practice, they aren’t *that* rare, so farming them isn’t that much of a problem.

When the Khitai expansion was released, the old open-world blue drop system was extended with a number of new level 80 items — armor pieces (which do not form complete sets), weapons, and accessories. Unlike in the old world, these items did not drop directly from bosses, but had a small chance of dropping from various bags which you could get as random drops from mobs (not just bosses) or as quest rewards. I got a few blue items that way, but the drop rate is very low, and there was simply no practical way for an individual player to explore the whole loot table.

But now, these Khitai blue BoE items also drop from the new achievement bosses in Khitai and the Dragon’s Spine, so they are quite easy to farm and I was able to explore the loot table in the same way as in my earlier posts for low-level open-world BoE blues; I kept killing the bosses until I had seen each item drop at least five times. Who knows, I just might eventually do the same for old-world level 50–80 blue drops.

Name	Level	Description
Administer’s Gloves	80	light hands, magic dmg
Band of Introspection	80	str/con ring
Bands of Consequence	80	heavy shoulder, str/con
Belt of Adulation	80	cloth belt, str/con
Bracers of Evaluation	80	light wrist, magic dmg
Bracers of Quick Study	80	ranger wrist
Ceremonial Blade	80	1he, wisdom
Cloak of Flourishes	80	cloak, magic dmg
Dagger of the Ninth Rank	80	dagger, magic dmg
Dragon Grips	80	plate hands, str/con
Drape of the Headless Man	80	cloak, combat rtg
Examiner’s Skirt	80	cloth legs, magic dmg
Exemplar’s Breastplate	80	plate chest, str/con
Girdle of Courage	80	heavy belt, str/con
Gloves of Remark	80	light hands, str/con
Greaves of the Bold	80	plate feet, str/con
Hammer of Fortunes	80	2hb, con, combat rtg
Harmonious Sword	80	2he, con, combat rtg
Heirloom of the Barren Line	80	DT talisman
Helm of the Wise One	80	medium head, wisdom (WTF?!)
Helm of Tribute	80	ranger head
Hoop of the Fox Demon	80	ring, magic dmg
Intruder’s Wrist-straps	80	light wrist, str/con
Lance of the Province	80	2hb, con
Lively Bands	80	ranger shoulder
Martial Blade	80	1he, con, combat rtg
Master’s Bolts	80	xbow bolts
Mysterious Necklace	80	necklace, magic dmg
Officer’s Chestplate	80	heavy chest, str/con
Pendant of Longevity	80	necklace, str/con
Prefect’s Hammer	80	1hb, hate inc
Red Fletched Arrows	80	bow arrows
Ring of Leverage	80	ring, combat rtg
Shield of the Scale Mountain	80	shield, con
Shirt of Contention	80	light chest, str/con
Shoes of the Long Road	80	cloth feet, magic dmg
Silent Treads	80	cloth feet, dex
Skirt of Sustaining Fire	80	cloth legs, str/con
Soulkindle	80	2he, HoX
Staff of Justice	80	staff, mage or priest
Steward of Secrets	80	dagger, combat rtg
Stifling Cord	80	cloth belt, dex
Survivor’s Luck	80	necklace, combat rtg
Swordsman’s Shoes	80	HoX feet
The Fifth Arm	80	guardian polearm
The Rose’s Bloom	80	crossbow
The Subtle Disguise	80	assassin legs
The Two Cranes	80	medium wrist, con
Thickened Silk Rope	80	cloth belt, magic dmg
Tightly-woven Armbands	80	BS shoulder
Truncheon of the Lawgiver	80	1hb, magic dmg
Tunic of Talent	80	light chest, magic dmg
Waterbuffalo Horn Bow	80	bow
Wind of Battle	80	cloak, str/con
Wise Man’s Trinket	80	talisman, int

(Click to enlarge.)

(Click to enlarge.)

An interesting difference compared to the old-world BoE blues is the absence of procs on these new ones — things like retortive revenge, sacrarial guard, and countless others. Such procs were a prominent feature of AoC combat and itemization at release; they were present on many pieces of gear and you could also get them from crafted gems. Later the developers seemed to change their mind; from the big changes in update 1.05 onwards, procs of that sort are more or less irrelevant, and none of the items added since then (including anything from the Khitai expansion) have them.

Slutty guardqueror armor

Having recently completed the T5 armor set on my guardian, I have to admit it looks a lot less horrible than the infamous abomination we got from T4, but it still merits an obligatory whine post.

I never particularly liked conqueror raid armor in the old T1/T2/T3 days. The skirt is just plain silly, the belt is a like that of a former wrestling champion that is using an overly broad belt to compensate for you can only imagine what, and the most charitable thing you can say about the helmet is that it looks like an old-fashioned chamberpot. So imagine my disappointment when it turned out that Funcom not only doesn’t have the resources to design 12 new sets of armor for T5, it doesn’t even have time to recolor each of the twelve T3 sets, so several classes now have to make do with armor that should really belong to some other class, and among other things guardians now get what is basically a slightly recolored conqueror set. The only piece of guardian armor they kept was the helmet, which is basically the T3 guardian helmet, complete with the silly horns and the can opener in the middle, just slightly recolored and with the horns pointing upwards instead of forward (now that’s progression!).

The only good thing about this set is the chest, which gives you plenty of opportunity to show off your boobs. I always felt a bit sorry when conqs started replacing their old T2/T3 chests with Khitai faction chests and T4 chests, so it’s nice to see that this model is now making a comeback.

 

Tireless Defender? More like tiresome defender 😛

Another annoying thing: in a desperate effort to avoid clipping with hair, the helmet makes your hair disappear completely, even if it’s long enough that it should be visible below the helmet. But then the lower-tier guardian helmets had the same problem.

The T5 conqueror set (Proven Champion) AFAIK looks the same, except in a different color and with a helmet based on the old conqueror helmet instead of the guardian one.

Set bonuses

I like the concept of set bonuses, but for many classes (including guardians) the bonuses you actually get from T5 armor are pretty underwhelming. The guardian T5 set bonuses work as follows: when you perform a certain combo, you get a 20-second buff (called Boon of X, for various values of X). Which buff you get (i.e. which of your stats it will improve) depends on your maneuver or tactic. The buff increases in power depending on how many pieces of the T5 set you have equipped (the first level of bonuses unlocks at 3 pieces, they get improved when you reach 5 pieces, and the strongest buffs unlock at 8 pieces). The buffs don’t disappear if you change weapons, switch stances etc., so in principle you could have two buffs active at the same time.

The following table shows the details. The ‘What it gives’ column shows 3 numbers — the first is when you’re wearing 3–4 parts of the set, the second is for 5–7 parts, the third is when you’re wearing all 8 parts of the set.

Combo	Tactic or Maneuver	Resulting Buff	What it gives
Guard V*	Maneuver: Mental Barrier	Boon of Protection	+100/200/300 protection for 20 sec
	Maneuver: Elusive Daring	Boon of the Spearman	+4%/8%/12% weapon damage (melee) for 20 sec
	Maneuver: Wall of Steel	Boon of Vitality	+2.5%/5%/7.5% received healing modifier for 20 sec
Counterstrike IV*	Tactic: Provoke	Boon of Dissipation	+200/400/600 critigation amount for 20 sec
	Tactic: Defense	Boon of Defense	+1.5%/3%/5% bonus armor for 20 sec
	Tactic: Attack	Boon of Guile	+36/73/109 critical rating for 20 sec

*Or the corresponding version of Deliberate Reprisal.

If you wear all 8 pieces of the set, you furthermore get a passive +350 critigation amount bonus (you don’t need to do any combos etc. to get this buff).

Comparison of legendary cloaks

The twelfth portent world-boss will start spawning in a few days, and many people will thus complete their legendary cloak quest. So I thought I’d draw up some tables that compare the stats of the new legendary cloaks with some of the existing high-quality cloaks in the game (faction/dungeon purples, raid purples from T3 upwards, and a select few dungeon blues).

A few notes on the tables below:

• Move your mouse over an item name to see where the item comes from; move your mouse over the “*” in the last column to see the stats that didn’t get a column of their own.
• The “Protection” column only shows the all-purpose protection; any protection specifical to individual types of magic, including any trickledowns from wisdom and intelligence, has been ignored.
• The “DPS’ column shows the DPS coming from combat rating (including “combat rating (cold)” etc.), including any trickledowns from strength or dexterity.
• The “Hate rating” column covers both hate increase rating and hate decrease rating (the latter is shown as negative numbers).
• The new legendary cloaks are easy to recognize — they all have “of the Living Legend” in their names.
• The cloaks are sorted by increasing DPS (for soldiers/rogues) or magic damage (for priests/mages); those with 0 DPS or magic damage are sorted by decreasing HP.

Soldier and melee DPS cloaks

This table includes cloaks for tanks and melee DPS, as long as they don’t require dexterity. For cloaks that are strictly specific to BS or HoX, see the priest and mage tables, respectively.

Item	Armor	Prot.	DPS	Mgc Dmg	HP	Hate Rtg	Hit Rtg	Crit Dmg Rtg	*
Valka’s Illimitable Aegis	172				624	37		67	*
Fallen Leviathan’s Mantle of the Living Legend	187	126			600		55	70	*
Cape of the Imperium	170				600	36	40		*
Infernal Mantle of the Living Legend		120		90.0	416		45	40	*
Abyssal Cape of the Fallen Empire	151	262			416	30			*
Amra’s Pride	160	255			400		55	66	*
Dragon Scale Mantle of the Living Legend	190		7.8		320	41	38		*
Cape of Reprisal	160		12.3			-36		58	*
Vicious Cape of Ill Intent	172		12.8				50	60	*
Conversant Mantle of the Living Legend			14.5				60	74	*
Abyssal Cloak of the Death Master	167		14.5				62	67
Cape of Eleven Fallen Heroes	184		14.6			30	50	70	*
Cang Jei’s Eleven Sacred Obscenities			15.4			-30	55	70	*
Terminator’s Mantle of the Living Legend	150		16.0				62	74	*

Note: Terminator’s Mantle of the Living Legend is only available to rogues (and since it has strength on it, it will only be of interest to barbarians).

Rouge Rogue cloaks

I didn’t make a table for rogues, because fuck rogues, that’s why. On second thought, I’ll make a table for rogues after all. This is really more of a ‘ranger and assassin’ table — it shows cloaks that have dexterity or combat rating, but not strength.

Item	Armor	Prot.	DPS	HP	Hate Rtg	Hit Rtg	Crit Dmg Rtg	*
Fallen Leviathan’s Mantle of the Living Legend	187	126		600		55	70	*
Abyssal Cape of the Fallen Empire	151	262		416	30			*
Archer’s Serpentweave			11.7	304			66	*
Cloak of the Garrison			12.3		-34		65	*
Bladekissed Cloak of the Final Goodnight			12.8			50	60	*
Conversant Mantle of the Living Legend			14.5			60	74	*
Abyssal Cloak of the Death Master	167		14.5			62	67
Cang Jei’s Eleven Sacred Obscenities			15.4		-30	55	70	*
Slayer’s Mantle of the Living Legend			15.7		-22	45	72	*

Priest cloaks

This table is mostly of interest to PoMs and ToSses; it includes a couple of BS-specific cloaks (they have heal rating and combat rating (2HB), so they aren’t interesting for other melee classes). For other cloaks that are of interest to bear shamans, see the melee DPS table.

Item	Armor	Prot.	DPS	Mgc Dmg	Heal Rtg	HP	Hate Rtg	Hit Rtg	Crit Dmg Rtg	*
Thunder Mantle of the Living Legend	187	126				600		55	70	*
Cape of Atlantis						544	-35	55		*
Savior’s Mantle of the Living Legend		126			425	448		50	60	*
Amra’s Pride	160	255				400		55	66	*
Shawl of the Departed					115		-35	45		*
Great Cloak of Tribal Prayers	172		11.0		193			52	67	*
Beast Hunter’s Mantle of the Living Legend	188		15.7		227			55	70	*
Cloak of the Shivering Stars				48.0	201		-10			*
Great Cloak of Blessed Winds				70.2	193			45	54	*
Wings of Salvation				71.0	118	448			65	*
Marked Serpentweave				74.4		312			67	*
Mantle of Valka’s Wrath				78.0				52	60	*
Cloak of Wakening Nightmares				88.0				48	56	*
Mantle of Eleven Resplendent Prayers				93.2	72		-30	50	70	*
Star Touched Mantle of the Living Legend				100.0		336		60	68	*

Mage cloaks

This table includes HoX-specific cloaks, but a melee-oriented HoX might also find a few cloaks in the melee DPS table interesting.

Item	Armor	Prot.	DPS	Mgc Dmg	HP	Hate Rtg	Hit Rtg	Crit Dmg Rtg	*
Thunder Mantle of the Living Legend	187	126			600		55	70	*
Cape of Atlantis					544	-35	55		*
Amra’s Pride	160	255			400		55	66	*
Wings of Salvation				71.0	448			65	*
Cloak of the Fortified Mind				74.4		-34		65	*
Abyssal Cloak of the Hell Walker				75.0	264	-30	41	56	*
Abyssal Cloak of Crimson Slaughter	56		7.2	76.0		-35		60	*
Shroud of the Ghost Crows’ Spite				78.0			52	60	*
Ash Mantle of the Living Legend			13.1	80.0			52	74	*
Cloak of Wakening Nightmares				88.0			48	56	*
Infernal Mantle of the Living Legend		120		90.0	416		45	40	*
Shroud of Eleven Forbidden Names				96.8		-30	50	70	*
Demon Mantle of the Living Legend				101.4			59	74	*

Level 40-49 world-drop blues

This is a continuation of my previous posts about world-drop blue items (level 10–19, level 20–39). In today’s post we’ll deal with the world-drop blues in the level 40–49 range. I collected the data in the same way as in the previous post: I was farming bosses in epic playfields until I saw each of the following items drop at least five times.

The main problem in discovering world-drop BoE blue items from level 40 onwards is that the loot tables now also include 12 full armor sets, one for each class (see my old post about the level 40–69 armor sets). That’s 12 × 8 = 96 items; half of them exist on every odd level, the other half on every even level; thus, on our level range (40–49) there are 480 items from these sets. I’m really only interested in documenting those items that are not part of these sets. As the following table shows, there are 63 such items in our level range. Thus, out of 480 + 63 = 543 items, only 63 are of interest to us. In other words, when you kill a boss, there’s only an approx. 10% chance that you’ll get a non-set item; or in yet other words, you can expect that you’ll have to kill ten times as many bosses as you had to do at lower levels where there were no set items. (Due to this fact and due to the boredom from all this farming, it took me several months to reach my goal, i.e. to see each non-set item drop at least 5 times)

This same problem of course continues at higher levels, all the way up to (and including) level 80, where it is compounded by the fact that mobs have more HP and take longer to kill, plus from about level 55 or so the epic bosses start to hurt noticeably even on a level 80 character. So this post is probably the last one in this series; I doubt I’ll ever get around to exploring the level 50–59 range in the same way, let alone the higher levels.

Name	Level	Description
Battlebrawn Necklet	49	necklace, combat rtg
Battlescar Tasset	44	heavy legs
Battlezeal Belt	43	medium belt
Blacksever	48	2he, int
Bladeblur Mantle	40	cloak, con, evade
Bloodblight Bolts	48	bolts
Bloodburr Jerkin	49	medium chest, combat rtg
Bloodrighteous Belt	48	heavy belt
Bloodsear	40	xbow
Cicatrix Boots	42	heavy feet
Cloudbreaker	43	guardian polearm
Cloudguard Belt	44	cloth belt, mana
Compendium of Many Hurts	49	talisman, magic dmg
Compendium of Will	41	talisman, magic dmg
Earthscar	42	2hb, combat rtg
Embergrim	44	1he, combat rtg
Evanescent Boots	46	light feet, combat rtg
Fleshrender Hauberk	46	heavy chest, str, con
Frostlight	40	2he, str, combat rtg
Heartblight	45	dagger, combat rtg
Hexhammer	46	1hb, combat rtg
Howler Hide Cloak*	40, 42, 44, 46, 48	cloak, combat rtg
Icebiter Belt	40	heavy belt
Iceblessed Arrows	46	arrows
Mark of Hate*	40, 42, 44, 46, 48	DT talisman
Mark of the Lifereaver	43	DT talisman
Martyrs [sic] Robe	42	cloth chest, int
Mindmuse Necklet	41	necklace, magic dmg
Ophidian Leggings	47	cloth legs, combat rtg
Painthreaded Leggings	48	cloth legs, magic dmg
Porcupine Tunic	41	cloth chest, combat rtg
Providence	41	medium chest, combat rtg
Razorlegs	47	medium legs, combat rtg
Shadowsin Treads	45	cloth feet, dex
Sightshift Mantle	48	cloak, -hate, protection
Silentgrace Boots	45	medium feet, combat rtg
Skyscreamer	46	bow
Sleekspeed Leggings	48	light legs, str
Soulhallowed Jerkin	42	light chest, magic dmg
Soul Anvil	42	shield, con
Soulbleeder	47	staff, magic dmg
Soulfeast*	40, 42, 44, 46, 48	staff, int
Soultainted Belt	44	light belt, combat rtg
Sparkblessed Bolts	40	bolts
Sparkfrost	48	xbow
Spellwarder Braid	45	ring, con
Styptic Belt	43	cloth belt, combat rtg
Thighthew	40	light legs, combat rtg
Vigorspine Tunic	49	cloth chest, combat rtg
Wardthreaded Leggings	40	cloth legs, magic dmg
Whipspeed Slippers	46	cloth feet, magic dmg

*An interesting new phenomenon at this level range are a few items (Howler Hide Cloak, Mark of Hate, Soulfeast) that exist at multiple levels — at each even level from 40 onwards. The table above shows them up to 48 but actually they continue all the way to level 80. The different-level versions have the same appearance and the same stats, only in different amounts. These items are bind-on-pickup, not bind-on-equip, but they seem to be part of the same system as the bind-on-equip items (and the 12 armor sets), so they are included in this post as well.

(Click to enlarge.)

(Click to enlarge.)

(Click to enlarge.)

(Click to enlarge.)

A few examples of interesting and recycled models:

• Frostlight (lvl 40) and Blacksever (lvl 48) use the same model as Gorthogs Axe (lvl 24).
• Soulfeast uses the same model as the Rod of Righteous Might (BRC quest reward).
• Soulbleeder (lvl 47) uses a very popular model (staff with a snake head): it is also used by Ancient Serpent Staff (from the Treasury of the Ancients), Souleater (lvl 55 BoE world drop), Forbidden Firestaff (Sewer King, Main System), Incandescent Cane (Aturballon, the Catacombs), Deathwalker Staff (level 70 crafted), Kefmeh (level 78 quest reward from Onyx), Amun-Nepthek’s Staff (from Amun-Nepthek in Tarantia Commons) and Mindcurse Staff (Atzel’s Fortress).
• Soul Anvil (lvl 42) uses the same model as the Arcane Shield (from the Treasury of the Ancients) and Bloodbane (from the Amphitheatre unchained).
• Howler Hide Cloak uses the same model as Frostfur (quest reward from Behind the Ice in Atzel’s Approach), Nera’s Cloak (green quest reward from the Eiglophian Mountains) and Northern Frostcape (Atzel’s Fortress).
• Bladeblur Mantle (lvl 40) and Sightshift Mantle (lvl 48) use a very widespread red cloak model; it also appears as Chancellor Cloak and Spectral Cape (both from Toirdealbach’s Tomb), Lifeswath Mantle (lvl 72 BoE world drop), Redblood Cloak (Shaddrizzar, the Cistern), Spellbane Mantle (lvl 40 BoP), and no doubt several others.
• Earthscar (lvl 42) has a very peculiar-looking model; I don’t remember seeing any other item that looks the same.

Yet more unchained loot

(Earlier posts in this series: part 1, part 2.)

The Red Ruin heavy set

If you open the unchained caches on a guardian, you can get three armor sets: Fallen Empire (full plate), Red Ruin (heavy), and Pharaoh’s Guard (social). I was pretty luck with the Fallen Empire set and got all 8 parts of it within a few weeks after the unchained dungeons were released. I completed the Pharaoh’s Guard set about one month later. With the Red Ruin set, however, I was plagued by bad luck; it took me until today to get the chest piece (after opening 134 blue and 111 purple caches; meanwhile I got most of the other parts of the set multiple times, of course).

The main problem with this heavy set is of course the helmet, which makes you look like Hannibal Lecter’s more dangerous and less well-adjusted cousin:

Having zoomed in and checked carefully, I think I can safely say that there are no holes for the eyes whatsoever. Let’s hope the helmet is well-padded as you’re going to bang into a lot of things if you wear it 😛

If you get rid of the helmet and the belt (the latter seems to have been pilfered from a semi-retired wrestling hero), you’re left with a pretty decent-looking set of slutplate armor, though I think I still prefer the Fallen Empire / Acheronian Keeper set. The shiny black color makes that set look much more badass and menacing, as you would expect from an Acheronian set. You can almost hear the screams of victims on the altars as you walk around wearing it 😛

Much like the other “new” unchained armor sets, the models of this set are anything but new. It’s the same as the full-plate set from Xibaluku (Voidcage (chest), Impenetrable Legguards, Nescient Helm, Warlord’s Cinch (belt), Spiteful Gauntlets; there reportedly also exist boots called Bloodfeint Sabatons; I’m not sure about wrists and shoulders). The same models are also used Some of these models are also used in the normal (level 63) version of the Amphitheatre of Karutonia (full plate: Bloodbrute Chestguard, Bloodbrute Legguards; heavy: Frostmaw Helm, Frostmaw Gauntlets, Frostmaw Boots, Frostmaw Vambraces). The helmet model is also reused as the Mask of the Master Gaoler, which drops from Norach + Surberec in Xibaluku since 4.1.

In terms of stats, the purple parts of the Red Ruin set are similar to e.g. Tiger heavy armor from Khitai, but with a bit less constitution (and some combat rating replaced by strength).

Moar pets

Mini-Pet: Queen Cao-Polyphya

This pet dropped from a Mystical Excavator’s Kit.

Note: the pet is the ugly malevolent hag on the left,
not the beautiful guardian on the right 😛 (Click to enlarge.)

She does various emotes and has a couple of magic-looking animations:

(Click to enlarge.)

Mini-Pet: Acheronian Raider

This pet dropped from a green cache. He doesn’t seem to do anything particularly interesting, just a few emotes such as /track and /poundchest.

(Click to enlarge.)

Accessories from the Excavators quest

I got the following beautiful bind-on-pickup purple cloak, Great Cloak of Blessed Winds (117 wis, 193 heal rtg, 45 hit rtg, 54 crit dmg rtg), on my ToS from a Mystical Excavator’s Kit (purple cache that you get as a quest reward from the excavators quest):

Given the stats, I would imagine that PoMs can also get it. The amount of heal rating is unusually high for a cloak; only the Cloak of Shivering Stars (from the Coils of Ubah Kan) is comparable (201 heal rtg), but has just 80 wisdom and no hit rating. The T4 cloak has only 72 heal rtg, but on the other hand it has 122 wis and an extra 20 magic damage. (Two of the legendary cloaks from the Portents quest will have still more heal rating: 227 on the BS legendary cloak and 425 on the non-DPS healer cloak.)

Judging by the dev’s post on the testlive forum, there is also a Bear Shaman cloak with the same style, but orange instead of white; as well as a dexterity necklace and a HoX ring.

Updated drop statistics

Unopened Chest (green)

This cache can drop one or two of the following things:

What	How many times it dropped
3 Daggamalt	55
3 Sweetpressed Haste	51
3 Moonspill	37
Manual of Instruction [2000 Mastery AA XP]	54
Manual of Discipline [10000 Mastery AA XP]	25
Flask of Completion [20000 Mastery AA XP]	11
2 Ta Neheh Leaf Elixir	9
2 Kingsmight Ale	7
2 Bloodpurple Ale	5
money (1–5 silver)	102
an old-world level 80 blue BoE item (not from one of the level 70–80 sets); e.g. I got a Freestrider Tasset, a Deathvigil Tunic, a Marrowbite Hauberk, a Demonflesh Tasset, and Bladefervor Boots	5
Pet: Shredder	4
Pet: Emperor Scorpion	3
Mini-Pet: Undead Guardian	1
Mini-Pet: Acheronian Raider	2
Pharaoh’s Guard armor (1× Sleevelets, 1× Gloves, 1× Boots)	3

These are statistics from opening 328 green caches; in 44 cases, two items dropped instead of one, and in one case there were in fact 3 drops (money + Pharaoh’s Guard Gloves + money), though I guess it might be possible that there’s some mistake in my records. There were two occasions where two separate money drops came from the same cache, which I guess answers my questions from one of the previous posts (if the game decides to give you two money drops from the same cache, they will be shown separately in the money channel, rather than added up and shown as a single drop).

From the 103 money drops seen so far, it seems pretty reasonable to conclude that the amount of money in each money drop is distributed uniformly in the range [1, 5] silver. (The actual minimum and maximum I’ve seen were 1.0062 and 4.9796 silver.)

One notable new drop compared to my original post is 4-hour mana food. Perhaps it’s just a coincidence that it never dropped for me in the first few weeks, or perhaps they added it in one of the subsequent patches. In any case, mana potions were dropping from the very beginning, which suggests that the drops from the green caches are independent of the class of the character that’s opening them.

Acheronian Cache (blue)

Here are the results after opening 134 blue caches on my guardian. Again each cache can drop 1 or 2 of the following (a double drop occurred in 40 out of 134 cases):

What	How many times it dropped
money (10–49 silver)	7
Food:
2 Ta Neheh Leaf Elixir	14
2 Kingsmight Ale	7
Blue potions:
2 Dire Sweetpressed Haste	4
Green armor:
Pharaoh’s Guard Armplates	1
Pharaoh’s Guard Gloves	2
Pharaoh’s Guard Goldmail	3
Pharaoh’s Guard Helm	5
Pharaoh’s Guard Shenti	1
Pharaoh’s Guard Sleevelets	4
Blue armor:
Belt of Red Ruin	8
Belt of the Fallen Empire	6
Greaves of Red Ruin [feet]	9
Greaves of the Fallen Empire	14
Rerebrace of Red Ruin [shoulder]	13
Rerebrace of the Fallen Empire	12
Tasset of Red Ruin [legs]	16
Tasset of the Fallen Empire	17
Purple armor:
Gloves of Red Ruin [hands]	1
Vambrace of Red Ruin [wrist]	1
Vambraces of the Fallen Empire	1
Buffs:
Elixir of Brute Force [366 combat rtg]	3
Elixir of Guile [73 crit rtg]	5
Elixir of Invigorative Rejuvenation [15 nat stam regen]	6
Elixir of Precision [73 hit rtg]	6
Refined Elixir of Precision [183 hit rtg]	3
Minor Elixir of Resurgence [self-rez]	1
Pets:
Mini-Pet: Demigod	1
Pet: Living Statue	2

Regarding money drops, we still don’t have enough data to say anything much about the distribution; the 7 drops I’ve seen so far were 10.4923, 10.8027, 29.6378, 36.7848, 46.032, 46.0483, 48.1415, 49.3365 (plus 15.0030 and 34.5042 on other characters). IMO the safest guess would be that it’s uniform in the range [10, 50] silver.

Mystical Acheronian Cache (purple)

Here are the results after opening 112 purple caches on my guardian. Each cache can drop 1 or 2 of the following (a double drop occurred in 19 out of 112 caches):

What	How many times it dropped
Blue potions:
5 Potent Daggamalt	6
5 Dire Sweetpressed Haste	5
Purple armor:
Breastplate of Red Ruin	1
Cuirass of the Fallen Empire [chest]	3
Gauntlets of the Fallen Empire	3
Gloves of Red Ruin	4
Helm of the Fallen Empire	4
Mask of Red Ruin	1
Vambrace of Red Ruin [wrist]	6
Vambraces of the Fallen Empire	8
Other purple gear:
Claw of the Death Master [1hb: 116.1 dps, 86 str, 47 hit rtg, 47 crit rtg, 55 crit dmg rtg]	1
Clasp of the Fallen Empire [necklace: 68 str, 37 hate inc rtg, 192 protection]	1
Emblem of Red Ruin [necklace: 86 str, 42 con, 18 hate dec rtg, 67 crit dmg rtg]	1
Trinket of Old Acheron [necklace: 534 combat rtg, 50 fatality rtg, 28 hate dec rtg, 67 crit dmg rtg]	1
Ring of Ancient Python [52 con, 52 hit rtg, 267 protection]	1
Ring of the Fallen Empire [80 str, 50 con, 35 hate inc rtg]	1
Buffs:
Refined Elixir of Guile [183 crit rtg]	4
Refined Elixir of Invigorative Rejuvenation [30 nat stam regen]	3
Refined Elixir of Precision [183 hit rtg]	3
Refined Philtre of Constitution [+5% con]	28
Refined Philtre of Strength [+10% str]	26
Other:
Minor Elixir of Resurgence [self-rez buff]	10
Phial of Tranquility [1 Expertise point]	5
Pet: Scorpion Archer	2
Mini-Pet: Un Nefer	2

One particularly annoying detail: not one, but TWO hate decrease necklaces (both bind-on-pickup, of course) can drop for a guardian. Perhaps they were inspired by John Donne‘s bitter but delightfully snarky lines:

  My constancy I to the planets give;
  My truth to them who at the court do live;
  My ingenuity and openness,
  To Jesuits; to buffoons my pensiveness;
  My silence to any, who abroad hath been;
      My money to a Capuchin:
    Thou, Love, taught’st me, by appointing me
  To love there, where no love received can be,
Only to give to such as have an incapacity.

Mystical Excavator’s Kit (purple)

These are the purple caches that you get as a quest reward for the excavator quest (to clear Ardashir Fort, Vile Nativity, Sepulcher of the Wyrm, and the Coils of Ubah Kan). Here are the results after opening 24 purple caches on my guardian. Each cache can drop 1 or 2 of the following (a double drop occurred in 4 out of 24 caches):

What	How many times it dropped
Purple gear:
Fellhammer of the Sanguine Disciple [2hb, boe: 133.3 dps, 67 str, 45 con, 391 combat rtg, 38 hit rtg, 60 crit rtg, 90 crit dmg rtg]	1
Halberd of the Archaeologian [polearm, bop: 142.7 dps, 169 str, 221 combat rtg, 100 hit rtg, 86 crit rtg, 55 hate inc rtg, 123 crit dmg rtg]	1
Partizan of Red Ruin [polearm, boe: 135.8 dps, 50 str, 40 con, 7.7 nat stam regen, 409 combat rtg, 50 hit rtg, 75 crit rtg, 80 crit dmg rtg]	1
Buffs:
Refined Elixir of Brute Force [732 combat rtg]	2
Refined Elixir of Invigorative Rejuvenation [30 nat stam regen]	2
Refined Elixir of Precision [183 hit rtg]	6
Refined Philtre of Constitution [+5% con]	4
Refined Philtre of Strength [+10% str]	5
Pets:
Mini-Pet: Forsaken Child of Yig	2
Mini-Pet: Queen Cao-Polyphya	1
Other:
Phial of Tranquility [1 Expertise point]	1
Minor Elixir of Resurgence [self-rez buff]	2

The Halberd of the Archaeologian uses the same model as Polearm of the Black Pharoah (from Coils of Ubah Kan).

The Partizan of Red Ruin uses the same model as Blighted Halberd (from Xibaluku) and Imperial Acheronian Halberd (from the Iron Tower). A recolored version of the same model is also used for the Whispering Touch (T3 crafted polearm).

In terms of stats, the bind-on-pickup polearm (Halberd of the Archaeologian) is very nice; basically the same stats as on the T4 polearm, just in slightly lower amounts. The bind-on-equip polearm (Partizan of Red Ruin) is much less attractive; compared to other purple polearms in the game, it’s low on strength and constitution and it seems to be a bit more dps-oriented. I guess you could say it’s somewhere on the level of T1/T2 polearms. At least it’s better than the other bind-on-equip purple polearms (The Herald of Blight, Return of Time).