Everyone says troll armor, but its not always an option. Sometimes there are trolls in your area, and sometimes not. A basic set is 3 trolls if you get some other cape, or 5 trolls if you want the cape too. Upgraded is going to at least double that, I don't know the full total, but be prepared to find and kill at least 10 of the things if you want to go that route.

mining is a win-win. you need copper and tin anyway, for other stuff than just the armor. And if there is a troll in the current square mile of forest, it will come looking for you as soon as you hit that copper node.

Originally posted by jonnin:

Everyone says troll armor, but its not always an option. Sometimes there are trolls in your area, and sometimes not. A basic set is 3 trolls if you get some other cape, or 5 trolls if you want the cape too. Upgraded is going to at least double that, I don't know the full total, but be prepared to find and kill at least 10 of the things if you want to go that route.

mining is a win-win. you need copper and tin anyway, for other stuff than just the armor. And if there is a troll in the current square mile of forest, it will come looking for you as soon as you hit that copper node.

Yeah honestly it's not very hard to mine some ores and transport them using boat.

Gotta agree that troll armor is better and easier to make than bronze. If you spend a lot of time in the Black Forest then you should be coming across a lot of these guys. And after you beat the second boss they'll start coming to you.

I'm playing a couple of games right now one with my wife and one solo. My wife and I went troll armor and so I decided to be different and go bronze in the solo game. For me bronze armor made the first forays into the swamp easier. Not by a lot mind you and it could have seemed easier as I had been there before in my co-op game.

I wouldn't let the movement penalty deter you from going bronze because you get movement penalties once you upgrade to one of the other metal based armors.

On the topic of your near future, I agree with everyone else saying it's more efficient to just wear troll armor and skip bronze until you find something better... but I like the bronze armor. It looks great, and it makes you feel really tanky in the Black Forest. Running from a troll while shooting arrows is neat, but parrying a troll and tanking a couple hits before you own them is borderline sexual.

Troll armor + stealth is totally doable instead, but if you want to feel like a badass (and you're not in a rush to play though the limited content available) get yourself some bronze armor and a big shiny bronze shield. You're not ever going to have sneaky armor again unless you just keep wearing the troll, so it isn't as though leveling sneak really has any value outside of early game hunting (which also works fine in non sneak+ armor)

Originally posted by CritMasterFlex:

On the topic of your near future, I agree with everyone else saying it's more efficient to just wear troll armor and skip bronze until you find something better... but I like the bronze armor. It looks great, and it makes you feel really tanky in the Black Forest. Running from a troll while shooting arrows is neat, but parrying a troll and tanking a couple hits before you own them is borderline sexual.

Troll armor + stealth is totally doable instead, but if you want to feel like a badass (and you're not in a rush to play though the limited content available) get yourself some bronze armor and a big shiny bronze shield. You're not ever going to have sneaky armor again unless you just keep wearing the troll, so it isn't as though leveling sneak really has any value outside of early game hunting (which also works fine in non sneak+ armor)

The difference between troll and bronze is literally 6 pts of armor. 6 points does not make you any more tanky. That's at best negating 6 points of damage per hit.

Originally posted by Weaver:

The difference between troll and bronze is literally 6 pts of armor. 6 points does not make you any more tanky. That's at best negating 6 points of damage per hit.

Fair point. Like I said,

Originally posted by CritMasterFlex:

I agree with everyone else saying it's more efficient to just wear troll armor and skip bronze until you find something better.

But,

Originally posted by CritMasterFlex:

I like the bronze armor. It looks great, and it makes you feel really tanky

My point was that bronze is neat and if you're not in a rush you should just play the progression for fun. I feel like a Viking already instead of a rogue. I didn't bother with bronze at all the first time I played through to current endgame, but I'm having fun with it since I came back to the game. To your point, I guess trolls are just a lot easier to fight than I remember because of experience, but it def makes a difference against groups of greydwarves/skellies that are landing multiple, smaller hits.

I find it easier to craft bronze armor than try to hunt&farm trolls which i never seem to find. And bronze armor is better as well.

Originally posted by kekkuli:

I find it easier to craft bronze armor than try to hunt&farm trolls which i never seem to find. And bronze armor is better as well.

Completely explore your starting island, mark any trolls and troll caves on the map you find for later hunting. There you go, all the troll hide you need. While at it, also mark tombs and thistle.

Originally posted by Weaver:

Troll armor. Skip bronze armor its a massive resource sink that only provides slightly better (6 points, 15%) protection than troll armor while slapping you with a 10% movement penalty. The fact you need 2 copper and 1 tin per bronze makes it the most useless grind in the game, save the bronze for tools and weapons.
Also Skeletons are weak to blunt damage so break out a club/mace and a shield.

A million times this. In the time it takes to get an upgraded bronze outfit you could be starting on your iron set, with only slightly less durable troll gear.
You won't even have to find the materials, they will find you.
Relative to any other metal, bronze also takes three times as much coal too, which also means three times as much tree-cutting/furnace-sitting/food burning. And once you are in the swamps you will find a way to get coal faster without all that nonsense.

Also, shields are nice

Troll armor. Skip bronze armor its a massive resource sink that only provides slightly better (6 points, 15%) protection than troll armor while slapping you with a 10% movement penalty. The fact you need 2 copper and 1 tin per bronze makes it the most useless grind in the game, save the bronze for tools and weapons.
Also Skeletons are weak to blunt damage so break out a club/mace and a shield.

Shields, clubs and stagbreaker if you dont have bronze yet.

I assume you arent at bronze yet so the next step is troll hide armor. you get 5 hide from a troll and it takes 5 hide for each armor piece. at lvl 2 they are as good as base bronze armor