Goodo, when you loom an item upkeep remains the same, the item improves to +1 and gets better.
I think you'll notice +1 speed and damage more than you'll notice +1 armour tbh. But of course this is only the best if there is a weapon you consistently use, i personally have a soft spot for the fighting axe and enjoy that as a shielder you can surprise people by instantly becoming a 2hander with it, then switching back.
The reason looming gloves is good is because there are few situations where you'd wear something different, whereas many people change weapons a lot, if you think you've found a weapon you love loom that like i did with my first Great Long Bardiche.
The best thing with the Fighting Axe is the 2h, you can open doors quicker and break them with others. More importantly when you switch to 2h, and there is incoming cavalry you can really nail someone with the right swing, if you jump and time it at the right time you might aswell crush the poor guys skull. If he's heavly armoured then go for the horse etc. I also love the military pick and "Sword" because of the really spammable stab.
I retired now, got my loom. I think I'll go for a 21/15 shielder build this time. I realized that there is room to improve as a shielder still, and therefore I will do it one more generation until I notice that I'm doing really good. When I'm finished I'll maybe change my build. I got a sweet spot for this build now, lots of weapons to adapt to the situation and the Norman Shields are a beast.
I've gotten somewhat better at manual blocking if the shield breaks and the 1h are really spammable. I noticed backpedaling and spamming stab really annoys people.
Pikeman coming up next generation, but that's only a maybe. I don't like the animations, they are really slow and not reliable. You have to know a lot about hidden game mechanics which in my opinion is total bullshit. So maybe I will make a 2h poleaxe spam build or something. We'll see.
Now that I'm generation 2, does leveling up require more XP? I know I have more XP per tick now which is great. How many times can you respec?