Survey: which dragon armour is the best in general?

[Turukano]

That's a kind of survey in the style of What 3rd rune is easiest for most characters to get?.

If you ask for the best general purpose dragon armour, you will often get the following answers:

• mottled DA for a caster or hybrid - because casting penalty is very low
• fire DA for a fighter - because it grants good AC and rF++ (rF is more important throughout the game than rC) and has a bearable encumbrance rating
• take the first DA you can get

Dragon armours which are said to be less useful are

• steam DA: mediocre AC and only rSteam
• ice DA: rF- hurts
• storm DA: only rElec
• gold DA: nice resists but needs a lot of Str, furthermore it cripples EV

*******

But after all, my personal favourite has become swamp DA.

I like playing hybrids which means I'll usually play a fighter with additional buffs like charms (e.g. haste) and a 2nd, maybe 3rd school like necro (e.g. borgnjor) or tLoc (e.g. cBlink). In a 15-runer spells like these are very welcome.

My pros for swamp DA:

• more AC than mottled DA and a more important resistance
• less casting penalty than fire DA, and no struggling with rC- (which sometimes blocks a ring slot with rC+ to compensate the penalty)

What do other players think about it?


Edit: and_into's post reminded me I forgot pearl DA, thanks. However, swamp DA is my favourite.

[ackack]

Steam is very good, it's just somewhat uncommon. These days I would say steam > mottled, since the protection is comparable until you dump tons of scrolls in and you can cast Ozocubu's Armour on top of steam (this used to be one of the best things about mottled, but you can't do it these days.)

Most of the other dragon armours are okay. I think swamp and storm are both less bad than their reputations, but a good argument against both is that you don't get them until very late, meaning that you are not spending a bunch of enchant armour scrolls that you might have otherwise. Fire and ice are situational but can both be excellent.

[and into]

It is hard to say in general, because finding and using dragon armor well for a long period of time in a game always feels to me very contingent.

On paper, PDA is the best for all but extremely low strength characters. And finding PDA early enough will usually be sufficiently good reason to drop extra points in strength on such characters.

In practice I like swamp DA too, simply because in 50% of games, the appropriate hide is readily available fairly early, often around the time (or slightly before) I finish maxing out enchantment on auxiliary armor slots.

[KoboldLord]

When you get the hide is usually more important than any of the actual mechanical bits, assuming your character is a remotely appropriate recipient for dragon armour in the first place. Fire and ice dragon armours are the only notable possible exceptions, since they include a critical weakness that pretty much must be accounted for but may not be correctable when you first get access. If you can't correct rC- or rF- when you get them, it's probably best just not to count them as gotten yet.

Pretty much everything else is ignorable or situational. They're nice if they fall in your lap, but you can get through the game fine with a nice set of leather or plate and you won't be disadvantaged.

[Lyrick]

I forgot pearl DA

Wishing you luck Pan scumming

[Hopeless]

I forgot pearl DA

Wishing you luck Pan scumming

Yeah out of hundreds of games I think I have found pda 2x. Maybe. I could be just remembering seeing it in a shop when I didn't have the $ and then dying without wearing it.

[tabstorm]

Swamp and Pearl are my favorites, FDA is 3rd but it's unfortunate that it often locks down a ring slot to remain neutral to cold. IDA is basically unusable for this reason. Mottled is probably "better" than swamp but if I do Swamp before my poison branch the rPois saves me a great deal of aggrivation.

[XuaXua]

Wasn't there some sort of study done on the more skilled Crawlers that determined the majority of DAs used for winning were FDAs? I recall a thread about this.

[Hurkyl]

So... if I clear depths and have only seen a single enchant armour scroll so far, this is the ideal time for Golden Dragon Armour? Doubly so if the only source of rC+ is body armour?

(alas, shortly beforehand I acquired a +10 Plate Armour of +Inv +Blink rF+ Dam +4 Acc -1, so I guess I'm not going to make the GDA after all)

[duvessa]

So... if I clear depths and have only seen a single enchant armour scroll so far, this is the ideal time for Golden Dragon Armour?

It is the worst possible case for gold dragon armour. If you make dragon armour from a hide then you need a lot of enchant armour scrolls to make it not suck, because it effectively started at -1. Even after the massive nerf to floor item enchantment, by the time you find dragon hides you have probably also found plate armour that is better than -1.

[ElderVIII]

From my experience, the only time I would ever consider GDA is if I was running a melee character and I found one by Lair, and even after that I wouldn't wear it until I was getting into extended and have 5 more enchant scrolls than the enchantment on whatever plate I was wearing at the time.The investment required to make it usable is generally not worth it, especially just to plug one pip in a resistance gap.

[Sprucery]

For some reason, I seem to almost always have something else to wear than DAs. I just checked, out of my 18 winners, 3 wore DAs in the end (1 FDA, 1 GDA, 1 faerie DA). Of course, some of the others wore some sort of DA at some point, but still.

It's quite possible that I dump the 8 first EA scrolls on aux spots, so I don't usually have a stack of EA scrolls waiting for a dragon hide.

[partial]

GDA is goat in pitsprint

[Rep Henry Clay]

I understand the criticism of GDA, but I think the resistances granted outweigh the EV penalty. It is only useful for a narrow range of high strength characters, but for a berserker in heavy armour using shields I don't think you can get better armour late game IMHO. rF+, rC+, and rPois are all good. Even if you already have those resists it frees up those slots for other uses.

[nago]

No, that's not the point because any good player suggest against gda, it's only a secondary drawback.

The main point is because usually gda (or better, a gd hide) can be found only in some depths vault/V:5 or zot, aka at the end of the game.
It's a terrible choice (from any point of view) to postpone so ***much*** time to enchant any other good armour - plate, cpa, other dragon armour, which by the way are most of the time quite better - losing like 10 or more AC (keep in mind the most sensible choice is often to use ?EA asap!). Or even worse, to ditch a +10 plate of whatever for a +0 gda. In DCSS you don't want to get a "armour late game", you want to make a good one (for your char) as early as possible! (and this include aux slots!)

Maybe this bad idea depends on the fact resist are often *too* much overvalued: all of them most of the time only a convenience and useful against only an handful of enemies (and ring swapping does exist!) - AC on other hand is checked against 99,9% of attacks in a 3 rune game (including most elemental ones!).
FInally, over all that said, you can add to the mix the fact that yes, gda will cripple your ev and spellcasting - and those two can again be considered better than one pip in rf,rc and rpois!

That said, the're are cases where using a gda is the most sensible choice, but *all* of them involve specific situation when a gda/hide is found very early (e.g. before you get your nice already +3 plate of something from a kind orc) *Never* in late game!

p.s. I still haven't tried "new" shield well, but I wouldn't *ever* suggest to go with 1 hander with a berserker (unless your first gift is a vampiric demon foo or things like that) because the char will always have better AC/EV and lots of exp to spare than any other other char so he will benefits more of a stronger offence than a third worse layer of defence. But DCSS is quite forgiving, one game once hundreds can be won with terrible weapons and strategic and tactical decisions (i've seen player in zot with an hand axe!) so I suspect it isn't so much important

[Jeremiah]

I would think a GDA might be worth it if you're playing an Ogre, and you get a mottled/swamp dragon armour early on and fully enchant it. By the time you get to Zot you might have enough enchant armour scrolls again to enchant a GDA. (As an Og can't wear boots/gloves so there are less other alternatives to spend your ?EA on.)

Related question: what's the heaviest armour I should think about getting if I'm fighting unarmed? I'm not exactly sure how heavy armour affects unarmed combat, but I generally see it being said that it is better to use light armour.

[Sandman25]

<offtopic> I used hand axe of pain in Zot, it was an awesome weapon with Makhleb. Shield is very good for large species who usually have low EV and need less XP to remove shield penalties.</offtopic>
If you are lucky to find a good randart early, you can have many scrolls of enchant armour when you find dragon hides.