What should I do with this?

[Manolios]

I was making my way through the River of Flame in hell difficulty when I notice this laying in a pile of dead Urdars.

Superior Sacred Armor
Defense: 691
Durability: 47 of 60
Required Strength: 232
Required Level: 66
Item Version: 1.10 Expansion
Item Level: 85
Fingerprint: 0xfa726df
+15% Enhanced Defense

Needless to say I immediately thought of Larzuk and I realized that there is some great potential for this armor. The problem is that I don't quite know exactly what to do with it. The options I see are as follows.

1) Stone - I have all the runes except the lum (thank you hellforge) which shouldn't be to difficult to find with an evening or two of countess runs.

2) Fortitude - I really like the stats on this armor. The problem is that I don't have a Lo yet and with my rune luck it would be a long time before I find one. The hellforge seems to like me but I've never found a rune higher than um.

3) nothing! - should I save my socket rewards and collect a cool 35k gold?

4) other - This is the whole point of the thread. I'm looking for suggestions as to what you would do with this.

Number three is really out of the question. If nothing else I'll just throw it in an ATMA stash and drool over it once in a while. I'm leaning towards stone simply because I'm close to being able to make it already but I'm really wondering what you would do with it. Is this the right move with this armor or am I overlooking any good options? Any advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[Rizzo]

Stone

(10 chars)

[Thirty-Thirty]

Excuse my ignorance, but I thought Sacred Armour could only get defense of 600. With the 15% bonus from being Superior, that's 690. Where does the extra 1 come from?

I thought Larzuk only gave one socket to Superior items, though I figure I must be wrong. Presuming you get the sockets for it, definitely Stone. I think you'll get at least 2418 defense, and it can roll up to 2694. (My maths might be out. I can't remember how the game rounds.) It might become the highest possible non-ethereal defense possible.

You may wish to post it in the pricecheck thread. It might be very valuable to someone who does have a Lo.

[tweety]

The ED of it being superior is always applied to the maximum defence+1 for any peace of armor.

I would not do anything with it, Stone is nice, but for a character the sacred armor's strength requirement is a bit too high. For a merc you can use an ethereal, with the eth bug you can get a lot higher defence.

[Dan334477]

Pardon my ignorance, but what is the eth bug? A forum search yields no results (terms are too short I think).

[jjscud]

In old patches (1.10 at least) upping an Eth item lost its Eth bonus. In 1.11, the added code to put the Eth bonus back when you up an item BUT the socket cube recipie also calls that same bit of code so if you socket an eth item with the socket recipie, the Eth bonus gets applied twice.

[Dan334477]

Wow, that's a handy bit of knowledge. Wish I knew that before making my stone a few days ago :(

Oh well. Still a nice piece of gear for my merc.

Thanks.

Edit: Does that also apply to weapons?

[Milb]

Edit: Does that also apply to weapons?

Nope, only armors for some reason.

I would also stash the armor, unless you are prepared to give a character that much strength, then Stone is the only viable option for it.

Milb

[Lord_Vega]

I don't think that armor is really good for much more than laying in your stash or simply looking at it, sorry

I know from my very own experience, that making stone in a sacred armor is a big mistake, as that armor will only be worn by the strongest (str-wise) chats you've got (perhaps a werewolf or a barbarian) and cannot be used by any other char.

Heck, even my Duress, made in a Balrog Skin, was a total mistake, as again, the str requirement is pretty damn high even there, and at 165, my PvP bowazon can't even think of using it, in case she might have to drop fort (as I've learnt today, you Tgods counts as two lightning absorb items already, thanks CRG ).

Anyways, it's a waste of a LO to put fort in it, and it's quite too high for stone too me thinks.

[Thirty-Thirty]

The strength requirement is a bit steep...

...unless you want to have a character with possibly the most stupifying defense possible on non-ethereal armour. I guess it depends why you play the game. I'm sure there are plenty of chars that will be great for PvM even with 232 strength. And if you put your mind to it, you can probably get a lot from gear. (IK gloves and belt gives +45 str and pretty good other stats.)