Originally posted by squashplayer1:

My padded armor is not fully upgraded yet, but I assumed that the lowest level of padded armor is already greater than the highest level of wolf armor. But that would maybe too complicated for the devs to understand.

You're blaming the devs because why exactly?

They're not hiding any of these numbers from you. The only way to not know would be to not compare what you were about to make with what you were currently wearing in order to see what the armor difference (or lack thereof) would be. There's only one person to blame for that, and it's not the devs.

To be even more clear, the jump from Wolf to Padded functions exactly the same way as the jump from Iron to Wolf. The highest tier Iron has identical armor to the lowest tier Wolf. So even within the context of understanding how gear progression functions in the game, this isn't unprecedented.