Dread armour early in the game?

I've read some stuff on dread armour, it seems pretty good and the look is cool. I am just starting out, haven't reached Tarant yet, level 12 mage. I have just enough coin, will end up with 500 left, to purchase Dread armour. Is it a good idea to get it now or should I wait till later in the game? I am currently wearing leather armour that I got off a gaurd killed in the bank robbery.

 

Coming up with scratch is child's play, really. Here's how.

There are two divergences here, depending on whether you have a high Lockpicking, or have not. Have not will be explained first.

Have not high lockpicking:

Go to Shrouded Hills.
Go into Ristezze's shop.
Blow a Destiny Point if nessessary to pickpocket his shop key from him. (Or you can just save/reload until you get it right.)
Walk into Ristezze's bedroom.
Open the chest at the headboard of the bed - this is his shop inventory.
Take everything expensive.
Go back out front, and sell to Ristezze everything expensive in your inventory, including your own stuff!
Go back to the back, and take it back out of his shop inventory.
Go back, lather, rinse, repeat, until he's got no gold left. Then just take what you want, and go sleep a day.
Rinse, lather repeat, until you have what you want.


Option 2, for those who HAVE Lockpicking.

As above, only substitute Lloyd Gurllowes with Ristezze.
The barrel in his shop's room is his shop inventory. Pick the lock, open it up. It is his shop inventory.
Take the gorram Dread Armor.
Take everything else expensive.
Walk out to Lloyd, sell him everything expensive.
Rinselatherrepeat.

Ba-doom. You have the Dread Armor, and didn't have to pay for it. At most, this will only cost you 100 gold (which you should have many times the amount of) to have the wise woman I.D. it.

 

Actually, it is easier to spend a character point on pickpocket; getting his money directly; and waiting until morning while the chest is off-screen to get new stuff (cursor keys are your friends).

Spending a point on Unlocking Cantrip and getting the Dark Helm from the wise woman to boost your magick to max is better than simple lockpicking. (You can also rob the mages in Tarant with that much magick)

And you don't have to pay for identification either if you're getting the Dread Armor from Llyod. Just bring up his trade menu before robbing him.


And Dread Armors suck anyway. The Arcane set is much better.

 

Thanks for all the info. I don't mind stealing when I am in a bind, but prefer not too. It seems that I don't have to at this point in the game anyway. Plus I haven't even come across Arcane stuff yet, so Dread Armor seems to be the best option.

Edit: Just for fun I attacked the guards in Durnholm to see what would happen. I noticed that my hit points went down normally when hit but would replennish to max if the guard didn't get in a lucky hit, which he did a couple of times. I also noticed a bright triangle form around me once and Virgil also. One time this happened to Virgil right when he got killed and I ended up with 2 Virgils, 1 dead the other still fighting. Is this all caused by the Dread Armour?

 

*thinks it would be pretty awesome for Virgil to split into two clones and take on the badguys*

 

The 50 AC of a Dread Armor at 100% power seems impressive, but even at max AC 95 you only halve an opponent's chance to hit*, so if you can, try to bump up damage resistance to 95 instead. Though I think that DR doesn't protect from fatigue damage, so if you feel that's a serious issue, AC might be more important. The nicest thing about Dread Armor is that it never breaks.

* According to my untested calculations when aiming at my NPC followers and checking my chance to hit.

 

Look at it this way:

Dread Armor's better than nothing. It's better than a wool jacket or even proper leather armor. In fact, it's better than anything else you can get in Shrouded Hills. So you may as well stick it on Virgil until you can get better.

 

I think the patch prevents you from getting Dread Armor off the bandits outside Tarant - they replaced it with Barbarian [color]. My followers seem to think that there's better armor than Dread in their choice of costume.

I'm still trying to figure out the difference between AC and DR. I think the first is a to-hit modifier (like dodge?) and the second reduces your damage from normal combat, as opposed to electrical, fire or poison damage. If so then there will be automatic hit weapons and spells that will bypass your AC.

I still don't understand why they bother with other (weaker) shields than Iron AC 30, when it's so easy to get.