Banded versus bronze - is bronze worth the plat / weight?
 

Given the opaque nature of armor class in EQ, I'm struggling to determine if I should blow some plat on bronze on my warrior or hold out for drops while wearing banded. I'm using several bronze pieces from the knight card quest (breastplate, helm, shoulders, mask) but the rest is mostly banded.

Would it noticeably increase my survivability to get more bronze pieces or should I save up for things like magic weapons and good accessories while waiting for bronze to simply drop?

Bronze will drop, don't worry about it.

Banded is totally fine. And you already have some bronze.

Much better off saving for some proc weapons.

https://wiki.project1999.com/Banded_Armor
https://wiki.project1999.com/Bronze_Armor
AC does function to reduce melee damage taken on P99. Banded wins with only 19 less AC due to it weighing 39 less.

Fair point - I'm not a large race, so the weight issue is legitimate, haha. I reckon I'll stick with what I have for now. Tyvm for the feedback.

If you can handle the weight and can wear it, wear bronze. If you're an elf, wear banded.

Bronze comes to you for free from dungeons you're going to be grinding in.

Ogres and MAYBE trolls/barb/dwarf can consider bronze.

Everything else should just plan on banded.

Not really, no. It's barely better than banded and it's much heavier. People mostly use it because it looks nicer.

If you have the extra weight tolerance then sure use a few of the high AC pieces but I think wearing a full set of the stuff is generally a mistake unless you're an Ogre maybe.

To make matters worse though, the large pieces of bronze are more difficult to obtain and those are the races who are more likely to be able to use it.

Dwarves are really in the best position for bronze armor since they have a nice starting strength score and small bronze is the most common. Once people start hunting in Mistmoore the server will be flooded with the stuff. Also, small bronze weighs a bit less than the medium or large pieces (but so does banded).

If you really wanted to try to pick up some more pieces of bronze for cheap, then heading to Mistmoore is probably your best bet. People will gladly sell you pieces to get rid of the weight.