Alright, big post. Time to split it to several to make things more clear:
I appreciate the offer, but I'd really rather be able to support myself. The thing is I usually play in my normal gear from about 15k down to around 5k, at which point I go cheap mode and die a lot. But my normal gear isn't that expensive! My bad luck streaks must be legendary or something.
What was upkeep supposed to do? I only recently started playing so I wasn't here for that.
Good that you want to be independant. My suggestion is that you do whatever you need to do so you can get 40k in the bank and then start using normal gear. Don't try to drop beneath 40k and if you ever hit 20k, go cloth armour and quarterstaff (non-leecher, moneymaking outfit) to get back up to 40k. Might suck, but you should try to never run out of money. PS: the quarterstaff is a deadly weapon. Don't let it's price fool you. Same thing goes for the Voulge. Both are "crap" weapons, but are also more than capable of bringing tincans and whatever down. Note the secondary piercing mode for the Voulge too.
About upkeep:
Upkeep was introduced to give new players a chance. Back then, when you bought an item and could equip it, there was nothing that stopped you from ever NOT equipping it again. Gold, and thus gear, was seriously hard to get. This wasn't bad in the beginning since everyone started out with peasant stuff, but some grinders kept playing all the time and quickly started to outgear the others. Wasn't that bad for the non-grinders who started with them, as they usually got some medium stuff themselves, but for the people that THEN started playing, it was bad. Really really bad.
New players that joined, found a game filled with many medium armoured guys and a few grinders with full plate armour, plated chargers, steel shield, heavy lance (or worse), a greatsword and a big ass 1handed sword (this was also before the "slots" patch). This looked badass when you started, but as people quickly realised; you would have to play a LOT before you got any gear yourself. All the time spent running around being useless. Getting some basic armour (heraldic mail for example) could take a LOT of time and was frustrating for most people. Think how much fun you would have if you were lucky to get 200 (and only 50 if you lost) gold in one round, everyone else used whatever the best gear they had, and all you had were the starting equipment. That was how it was.
To the last bit first, I play battle a lot, but if I start taking big gold hits I usually switch to siege because I tend to earn more there since there are more ticks per round. Sometimes though, even siege breaks me.
Rageball, siege, battle, DTV. In that (decending) order is the gamemodes I usually earn the most gold in. Upkeep is tied to each "tick" (when you receive XP/gold) but only happens at the end of a round (or goal in rageball). Since you can't repair something twice, I usually find siege better for getting gold. Why? Because the rounds are generally long or very short. Short means it's a very low chance for stuff to break (maybe 1 or 2 ticks) while long rounds means that whatever broke has a higher chance of having broken "twice", making you bypass 1 of them. You also keep a multi longer as even if you lose, the defenders would have to let the time run out (lots of ticks!) or the attackers would have to breach all the defenses (takes time). It's not often a flag gets ninjaed, and when it does it's usually at the beginning, making for low break chances. This is why I prefer siege to gain gold.
Note: these are just my thought and experiences. I haven't done a study or anything of it, I just generally earn more money in siege.
My build is 21/17, going for 18 agi (though that will be at level 31 so, whats the point of that? lol). 5wm, 5ath, 7ps, 7if. I use a bec, crossbow, and steel bolts for my normal setup. Barbuta / Heraldic Mail with Surcoat / Mail Mittens / Iron Greaves.
I mean, I know I could downgrade and save money, but I already wear 38 body armor.... its the weapons that have the highest repair costs, but I've tried lesser polearms, and they suck. The crossbow is the first thing I unequip during lean times..
If you plan on retiring, make lvl 30 builds. Always. Note that you can convert skillpoints to attribute point and back again. 2 skillpoints becomes 1 attribute point and vice versa.
Here's your equipment list as you posted:
bec 10 000
crossbow 10 000
steel bolts 2 500
barbuta 5 600
Heraldic Mail 5 000
Mail Gauntlets 2 000
Iron Greaves 3 200
Secondly, the bec. This is one of the most expensive weapons in the game and also the first thing you should/can downgrade. I dunno if you prefer the bec because of the speed or the pierce damage, so I got two suggestions for you.
- Speed: The Hafted Blade. Way cheaper and +1 faster. It's also longer, which I think is a much more important thing. You could also go for the Long Hafted Blade, but that one is also expensive. It's cut though, so remember that when you fight tincans. The spears are also a good choice, although they don't really have very good sideswings. Unless you like stabbing, I wouldn't take a spear. Are spears bad? No, but a quarterstaff is even cheaper and faster. The quarterstaff is a bit shorter than the spears, but still longer than your bec.
- Pierce damage: Let me just say this. Against armour, Pierce is just as good as Blunt. There is a difference, but it's very small. This is why I recommend the Long Hafted Knobbed Mace and the Long Hafted Spiked Mace. Both are good and VERY similar to the bec. You also get the added bonus of knockdown. The main drawback is the "unbalanced" tag, but that really isn't that bad. You get slighlty less damage than the bec, but the knockdown and added reach makes up for it.
Note: The good thing with going with cheaper weapons is that a lot of people run around in light armour, expensive weapons. This makes you able to loot their weapons when they die. You can't loot armour, but you CAN loot weapons. Look around for opportunities, you might be surprised by what you pick up. Hell, I found my favorite weapon by picking it up from the ground and I doubt I'd buy it if I hadn't tested it first.
Armour:
Long story short, reduce your head and leg armour, increase your body armour. Think about it, where do you get hit the most? The body. Anyone hitting your head would do a LOT of damage anyway. Having a helmet is needed to not be one hit, but having a heavy one doesn't really improve it that much. Ofc, use a heavy helmet when you can, but if you have to choose between helmet or body, go for body. Hits to the head fucks your day anyway. I use a metal helmet not to defend my head that much, but to make my enemy not target the head (as naked body parts makes people aim for them).
On the other side, anyone hitting your legs would do reduced damage anyway, so NO ONE aims for the legs. Body armour also gives you leg armour (and you even have one of the armours being more focused to the legs anyway) so hitting the feet is something very few people do. This makes leg armour generally not that important. The exception for this is horsemen, but they get hit in their legs because of their elevated position and not because people aim for it.
To put it like this:
If you go from Iron Greaves to Rus Cavalry boots, you lose 17 leg armour and gain 3k gold
if you change from Baruta to Iron Hat with Fluted Varangian Helmet, you lose 7 head armour and gain 2k gold.
Then you can boost your body armour with 5k (doubling it!) and get Blue Brigandine over Mail, giving you +8 body armour.
That gives you a total armour of:
Which you can compare to your old ammount:
Which one seems the best?
And keeping the heraldic mail and reducing the boots/helmet would still leave you at this:
Head: 43
Body: 42
Legs: 31
All these are suggestions though. Take what you want (maul chausses are sexy), just follow this: Reduce helmet/legs, increase body. Try to save some gold if you can.
EDIT:
My gear is above, please tell me which part I am not allowed to use because I'm new.
The crossbow and the bec. It's not because you are new, but because they are both top tier (where top tier means expensive and not the best) equipment. People aren't meant to use them and the ones you do can do it since they either a) saved up a lot of money or b) only does it occasionally. Having one of them works just fine regarding upkeep, but two does not. If you look around, most crossbow hybrids use either cheap armour, cheap melee weapon or the crossbow only at a few times. Pure crossbowmen usually use the 2 slot crossbows and the 2h mace (4k).
My WPF in polearms is 140, 54 in crossbow. Oh I forgot to mention that I use steel bolts amongst my gear, but those don't cost much to repair anyway. I do play siege when battle starts costing too much, but I tend to make more there than I lose (?).
Also, I read the forums quite a lot before buying ANY of my gear, and made what I thought at the time were well informed decisions, so kindly take your condescension and shove it up your ass.
As mentioned earlier, get more crossbow wpf if you regurarly want to use a crossbow. 54 is if you "use it once in a while".
Also good that you read the forums. Sadly a lot of the stuff around have been changed so many times, people don't know etc., and this game is complicated enough from the start. No wonder you/them/me (my first gen, 1h/2h/pole cav build and 90% of what I bought was horrible :rolleyes:) fucked up with choices a lot of times. That's one of the better ways to learn, though.
PS:
Since you wanted peoples gear list:
Blue Tunic over Mail
Blue Kettle Helmet
Mail Gauntlets
Mail Chausses
Swiss Halberd.
What I would use 24/7 if there was no upkeep or upkeep was even more reduced:
Sallet with Coif
Blue Churburg Cuirass
Cased Greaves
Plate Mittens
Archers don't wear armor because they stay at range, and less armor means more speed. Thank you, but I guess I should have specified that I was referring to melee characters.
See "ninjas".
Good post Jarlek.
My gear:
Nordic Warlord Helmet
Lordly Light Kuyak
Mail Mittens
Rus Cavalry Boots
Masterwork Heavy Lance
Mighty Long War Axe
Champion Arabian/Champion Courser
Cost:
54,872 gold with arabian
52,706 gold with courser
With Courser I don't lose gold. Well atleast I lose it really slow if I do. Arabian warhorse is completely different shit. With that gear it costs quite much in upkeep. The horse itself is really big factor in my experience. Even if it's only couple thousand denars, it has bigger effect than the other gear as a whole. When I downgrade other gear to pay for the arabian, it still seems to eat my gold... Keep in mind I had to build some gold buffer before I started being cavalry. Sometimes you have bad days and lose gold. Then next week you have couple good runs with x5 and get good amounts of gold. That's why I like to keep my gold atleast over 100k.
Build is 18/21 lvl 32 cav/inf build with 6 weaponmaster. All in wpf in polearms naturally. The thing I have on my advantage is that I don't use shield so I don't have to pay for that. Sucks sometimes when ranged spam hits tho, but I can't afford a shield and can't use it because of the slot system and my secondary weapon.