hit or toughen

[burnzey boi]

when you first bless an item, would you rather toughen or put on more hit points?

[Bungleau]

Depends on what the item is. For weapons, I like to add damage. By the mid-game, you don't care about your to-hit rolls any more, but you do care about slamming the damage.

For armor, I like to add extra AC. Every +1 is another ten percent, so a plate armor (4.0) that's blessed to +12 AC becomes 8.4... far better than the same +12 AC on a .6 pair of gauntlets (which would be 1.3).

For the smaller items (silver rings, bronze cuffs, coifs, gauntlets, and whatnot), I like to max out my protections by enchanting at the wizard's guild. Once you get to over 100% protected from fire, ice, and magic, you can do crazy things like call a firestorm down on yourself without worrying about it.

I really don't use the weapon enchantments, since I can cast more powerful spells myself.

'Course, that's my way. There's nothing that says you can't play the game just the way you want...

[aleph_null1]

Personally, I think W&W has a screwed up AC system, and never Bless any armor.

Bless weapons for Damage, nothing else. Hit is silly, and Toughness is silly (you DO have someone with Forge skill, right?)

Enchant armor for Ice, Magic, and Fire.

[Radek]

1. Weapons:

Toughness isn't so silly if the weapon has a bad toughness stat itself.

Each toughness blessing adds 20 to the toughness stat of the weapon. The basic rule is: Make sure that the toughness stat of your weapons is at least 50 but you need not to improve the stat over 50. Otherwise, your main occupation will be fixing weapons - even during a combat or your weapon will break.
Note that some weapons have no toughness stat at all, for example, the With's Stick or all rapiers. If you want to make these weapons usable then you must add some toughness blessings. There is one exception: the Assassin's Dagger has no thoughness stat at all but it never deteriorates, in the other words, it is "tough 100%" in fact. Do not add any toughness blessings to the Assassin's dagger.

How to improve weapons? Add damage blessings, as it was already recomended. Forget other kinds of blessings or enchantments for the weapons except for toughness in some exception cases.

2. Armor
Armor has also the toughness stat but it never deteriorates. Therefore, ignore the stat and forget toughness blessings for armor completely.

How to improve armor: Add AC blessings. Each AC blessing improves the AC of the armor by a fixed increment, which depends on the kind of the armor piece. The "main" armor piece (also robe, etc.) increments by 0.4, the other pieces increment less.
You can also add resistances by enchanting the armor. Nevertheless, note that the resistances will grow by a "fraction of a fraction" in general. If your own resistance is low then the increment will be low even if the armor is enchated to max resistance.
Another good idea is regeneration blessing. You can add only three such blessings and only to the "main pieces" of the armor. The blessings improve your regeneration of HP significantly. An armor with regen +3 makes miracles
Recomendation: Improve AC to some integer value of AC. Invest the remaining "slots" to regeneration and then to resistances.

3. Other items.

Other items never deteriorate as well. Therefore, forget toughness blessings.

How to improve rings and bracelets? First of all and AC blessing adds +1 to AC. This allows you to create a "Silmaril Ring", which gives you AC 14 and a "Silmaril Bracelet", which gives you AC 15. Two such rings plus the bracelet are AC 43. You don't need any other armor [img]graemlins/hehe.gif[/img]
Another possibility is resistance enchantments. AFAIK, the value will add to your resistance instead of being multiplied by your own resistance first. This gives you better protection than you can reach by enchanting armor for resistances.

[Bungleau]

Dare I mention it, but I believe that each +1 of AC amounts to an additional 10% of the base AC value. Leastways, that's what I seem to see. I'm sure you'll be able to prove the truth beyond a shadow of a doubt, Radek

BTW, for your "silmaril ring"... what base ring (and bracelet) do you start with? Inquiring minds want to know...

[aleph_null1]

Originally posted by Bungleau: BTW, for your "silmaril ring"... what base ring (and bracelet) do you start with? Inquiring minds want to know...

My favorites are Silver Rings and Bronze Cuffs. They end up +14 and +15 AC, respectively.

There are lots of them around Valeia, so make sure not to throw them away; Highland Rogues love them.

[Radek]

No, Bungleau. It's really the kind of the armor piece what matters, nothing else. Therefore, every main piece of armor will increase by 0.4, be it Plate of the Realm (base AC 7.20) or a plain robe (base AC about 2.00). Other increments known to me are 0.2 (IIRC, helms and greaves but I am not sure now) and 0.15 (hoods, boots and gauntlets, again, I am not completely sure).

The Silmaril Ring? It's always a Jewel Ring. The Silamril Bracelet is a Bronze Cuff [img]smile.gif[/img]

[burnzey boi]

why does dragon plate mail say regenerate when you bless it?

[Bungleau]

Because that's the only enchantment you can cast on it. Once you learn more artifact spells, you can enchant it with other things.