Gear sets

2nd Sword Division non-cosmetic gear set 3D renders. 3D model by Keith Kovach.

Not all armor sets will be the cookie cutter set. They will have the influences from the crafter available in it, if it's a crafted set. – Steven Sharif

Equipping the Titanbark gear set in Alpha-2.

We're going relatively traditional in the gear access points by being driven by level tier that players will have access to. So as you advance in your adventuring class you will begin to unlock the ability to equip gear of a higher level. – Steven Sharif

Gear sets (also known as tier sets) are a part of Ashes of Creation.

• In general, higher tier gear will be from gear sets.

Q: How often will armor be part of an entire armor set with other cosmetically matching pieces versus unique armor pieces that don't match or go along with anything else in the game?

A: There is a balance of both set pieces and non-set pieces and usually you're going to see at higher grades within a tier are going to be more predominantly set driven; and the lower interstitial power levels of the gear for that tier are the potentially bespoke pieces; and obviously those pieces are catered around a number of different interactions, such as ones you get from quests, ones that you get from drops, ones that you can craft, ones that you get from legendary bosses, ones that you get from guild-oriented tasks, or in-game favor and unique currencies. So there's different types of acquisition models and each of them has a spattering of either bespoke pieces or set-oriented pieces; and there are even varying levels of set pieces as well. So you might have a full eight piece set, or a three-piece set, or a five piece set, depending on where it lives within the tier. – Steven Sharif

• Players gain bonuses depending on the number and tier of pieces they have equipped.
  • An overarching set effect is granted to wearers of exclusively one "type" of armor, for example: all cloth, or all plate.
  • There may be set bonuses that members of certain communities will obtain based on gear set type.
  • Set bonuses will not provide new abilities, but certain higher-end weapons and armor will have active abilities, but the intention is that these abilities will not radically redefine the way an archetype is played.

• Racial appearance of gear sets is tied to the character model of that race.

• It will be possible to store and swap gear loadouts with a single button press when out of combat.

• Approximately 49 unique gear sets were obtainable in Alpha-1 from crafting, quests, drops and exploration. These were unique sets with different stats, but some may be similar in appearance.

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

• Certain set bonuses may trade off core gear stats.
• There are passive abilities that can be chosen to become more adept with certain set types.
• There will be viable non-set builds.

Modular armor

Kaelar base level Ashes of Creation Apocalypse robe set.

You can start to see like some of the components that we put together that we can mix and match and make new armors from. This is the base chassis for all of that. – Jeffrey Bard

Your base look for the character can be pretty boring, but what Steven gave us a challenge with from day one was to make sure even the base look, the t-shirt and pants, looked amazing... This is your zero character, if you will... Then you can go in and customize everything from the shoulder pads to the elbow pads, the belt that goes around them; do you want duel belts, you want to harness the clothes in the front. So every piece you see on here you can actually customize that at the front end. So what we do is we scale that up from zero, ten and twenty... We scale it up and we customize it; and then I want to really stress that each one of those looks as you progress is different. We're not just repurposing the same armor pieces. We're making unique sets that complement each other as you progress. – Mat Broome

Ashes of Creation Apocalypse will have three different armor themes: Plate, leather and robe.

You can actually have three different types of themes: You have plate, you'll have leather and you'll have robe. So for every armor set that we're showing at each one of those tiers, you're actually gonna have nine unique looks to pick from. – Mat Broome

Gear appearance

Alpha-1 female plate armor 3D render.

We want to be realistic with the application of particular types of armor, such as plate armor. In this regard for the different sexes there's a fine line that has to be drawn between accentuating the form of the sex as well as making it somewhat realistic and actually applicable to the environment. – Steven Sharif

• Gear is intended to be realistic in appearance.

• There will not be "oversized" weapons.

• Armor will not be overly sexual in appearance.

  I'm more of the mind that it wouldn't really serve a purpose to have bikini plate armor, just in like reality, if you're going to have armor, it should be protective. I think from a fashion statement is enjoyable for some people, but it's a an immersive issue. – Steven Sharif

  • Some armor and costumes will be more revealing than others, but there will not be nudity in the game.

  There might be sliders, but there are not gonna be naked sliders. – Steven Sharif

• Armor will take on a racial appearance. Weapons will scale in size based on race.

Each race is getting its custom geo pieces, which then will share thematic components such as color palette, attachments, design filigree. Those types of things will get shared across the geo but generally you're going to see unique races with unique geo. – Steven Sharif

• The appearance of crafted gear is influenced by its rarity.
  • Particle effects are used to denote the importance and rarity of some weapons.

• Crafters are able to influence what their crafted items look like.

• Cosmetics can be used by all races but there may be slight variations to make them work with the body builds of each race.

• Dye cosmetics can be used to change gear colors.

• Helmet display can be toggled on and off.

• Hair will likely be masked if helmet display is toggled on.

• Weapons are able to be sheathed.

Racial weapons and armor

Armor racial appearances in early Alpha-1.

Violet light and myself are wearing exactly the same armor set right: Same stats, same everything, but it drops for her it looks one way, it drops for me it looks another way; and... a small part of that is gender, but then the other part of it is race. So because I was a Vaelune in that playthrough my armor was in the Vaelune style; and when she picked it up it was in the elven style because she was an elf. So that gives you an example of sort of the breadth of looks that we're going for and how we try to capture like who you are as as a character and allow you to build your look that way. – Jeffrey Bard

Dünir and Empyrean racially styled armor concept art by Keith Kovach.

We have essentially sets that exist across all races; and each race that dons those armor sets is going to have their own racial influence on the presentation of those particular sets. So that's something that's unique in how each of the races get diversified. – Steven Sharif

Weapons and armor are not race locked, but armor will take on a racial appearance.

The customization of equipment per race is really focused on Armor sets not Weapon props. Weapon props will, from a model standpoint, will translate pretty one-to-one across the races. – Steven Sharif

• Racial appearance of gear is focused on Armor. Weapons will not change in appearance but will scale in size based on race.

Let's say for example you have the Eagle set or something, right: The Eagle set has in art, it has a thematic design that's going to include certain attachments to the armor. It's going to include color palette and theme. It's going to have some aspects to it that define it as the Eagle set, right. When a Elf wears the Eagle set or when an Orc wears the Eagle set, you obviously have two different cultures there; and you don't want to stomp out that culture by assigning a de facto 'This is the Eagle set and this is how it looks on everybody.' What we want to have is cultural influences play a role in showing how that set looks. – Steven Sharif

• Racial appearance of gear sets is tied to the character model of that race.

When you say, what if I'm an Orc but want to look like an Elf and I want my Eagle set to be the Elf representation? Well the issue becomes there that Orcs have a different organic model. You know, their body is different than that of the Elf. So, from a scope-creep standpoint, it's one thing to add different influences that represent the cultures that are donning the armor; it's another thing to adapt each influence as a matrix that can be worn pretty much by everything. From a scope perspective, that's a very difficult task for the character artists to tackle. So instead what we've done is, in order to facilitate a variety of cultural representation between the races but allow for the sharing of assets like different armor sets, we give different representations of those armor sets to each race. – Steven Sharif

Q: Since a single armor set will look different on each race, how will we have large varieties of in-game achievable gear for each race if we have to make nine different looks for each set?

A: The approach for that is to create a modular piece set for armor creation; and the way we achieve that is by two steps: So, on the modeling side, each race has these geo sets basically where you're creating pieces of the armor for heavy plate armor, for medium, for robes; and you get to grab those modular pieces and mix and match as design makes a request for a particular set to the art teams. So, design comes along and they say, "hey we have a theme for a set that we want to create", so let's use Carphin in that example; and that theme from design's standpoint is going to include color, it's going to include materials, it's going to have an etymology for the set to give a background so that they can incorporate certain types of attachments- whatever they want to include on the art side. Then, the character team says, "okay let's take our base sets of geo and let's mix and match those pieces to create the Carphin set and then we're going to do a materials pass on it, and then we're going to do a color pass on it"; and that way we have a lot of essentially pieces of the puzzle to create these many different unique sets. Now we can also deform pieces across from race to race. So, even if we create unique geo on a per-race basis, we can grab the pauldron from the Human set and put it onto the Vek representation; and the end game there is that we have a particular set, for example Carphin, and that Carphin is communicating the theme; and when you don the armor for the Carphin set- you've acquired the Carphin set and you put it on- it is going to look Vek if you're a Vek. It is going to look Kaelar if you're a Kaelar, but it is still going to have the identity and the theme of the Carphin set. – Steven Sharif

See also

• Gear
• Armor
• Weapons
• Crafting
• Cosmetics