Armor Refinement

Armor Refinements are crafted modifiers applied to non-medable armor to push individual resistance caps higher (a Reinforced refinement) or push the Defense Chance Increase cap higher (a Deflecting refinement). Refinements only adjust the caps — the underlying armor still needs to carry the property values to reach the new ceiling. Introduced in Publish 81; the system was expanded in subsequent publishes with the Refinement Amalgamator and the central Armor Refiner NPCs.

Two restrictions worth knowing up front:

• Mage-Armor armor is normally non-medable but can be made medable by removing the Mage Armor property at any NPC mage guildmaster for 250,000 gp. The property can later be re-added under the same NPC, provided the armor has fewer than five properties and is not an artifact. The New Haven mage guildmaster will not remove Mage Armor from a blessed item — every other city's mage guildmaster will.
• Transmogrified armor (Transmogrification Potion -altered) cannot be refined.

How Refinements Work

Each refinement raises one cap and lowers another by one point. The trade is paid in cap headroom, not in current values:

• Reinforced — raises the chosen individual resist cap by 1; lowers the DCI cap by 1.
• Deflecting — raises the DCI cap by 1; lowers the chosen individual resist cap by 1.

Re-refining a piece of armor overwrites the previous refinement. The re-applied refinement gump lets you pick which resist (Phys/Fire/Cold/Pois/Enrg) is being adjusted on a Reinforced application. The hard ceilings are documented in the reference section below.

Refinement Components

Refinement components drop in five levels, each producing a different number of cap modifications:

Each component carries a type (Reinforce or Deflect) and a material family (Tailor / Blacksmith / Carpenter), determined by the armor type the refinement is intended for. The full component-to-armor-type map:

Where Components Drop

Refinement components are insurable and drop from:

• Treasure Maps
• Message in a Bottle (MiB) chests
• Merchant vessels (sea-encounter loot)
• Pirate vessels (sea-encounter loot)
• Champion Spawn bosses
• Felucca town shop container stealables — gold strong-boxes in Felucca tailor shops contain a 2-modification Woodland-armor refinement. The strong-box is locked and trapped, but the contents are stealable.

Refinement Amalgamator

Combine lesser-level refinements into greater ones using a Refinement Amalgamator, available from Cleanup Britannia rewards at 10,000 points. The amalgamation ratios:

• 2 Defense → 1 Protection
• 3 Protection → 1 Hardening
• 4 Hardening → 1 Fortification
• 5 Fortification → 1 Invulnerability

A full Defense → Invulnerability climb requires 120 Defense components (2 × 3 × 4 × 5).

Crafting the Final Refinement

A GM crafter combines a component with 20 of its raw material to produce the usable refinement. The output names by skill family:

Examples:

• 1 Polish of Invulnerability + 20 Malleable Alloy = 1 Polished Plating of Invulnerability
• 1 Cure of Defense + 20 Leather Braid = 1 Cured Thread of Defense
• 1 Varnish of Invulnerability + 20 Solvent Flask = 1 Varnished Resin of Invulnerability

Once crafted the refinement can be used by any character regardless of crafting skill, but only at one of the Armor Refiner NPC locations.

Armor Refiner NPC Locations

Double-clicking a refinement at an Armor Refiner NPC opens the application gump; the player picks which resist (or DCI) to modify, the gump rolls the bonus-modification chance based on the refinement level, and the cap shifts accordingly.

Authoritative Mechanics Reference — Caps and Limits

The hard ceilings on resistances and DCI through refinement, transcribed from the Broadsword authoritative reference:

Other authoritative facts:

• Same raw material is used for both Reinforce and Deflect refinements within an armor family — the divergence happens at the component step, not the raw-material step.
• Refinements are insurable and survive death.
• Component vs. final refinement: components are the dropped ingredient; the final refinement is the GM-crafted output that is actually applied to armor at the Armor Refiner NPC.
• The Mage Armor removal fee (250,000 gp at NPC mage guildmaster) is a separate, parallel system — it is not a refinement, but it gates whether a piece of armor can become medable and therefore usable by mages who want meditation regen on a normally non-medable suit.
• The gump during application shows the bonus-modification chance percentage for the selected level (e.g., a Defense-level refinement shows 0% chance of a bonus modification; a Protection-level shows roughly the bonus chance for an additional cap shift).

See Also

• Defense Chance Increase — the cap most often raised by Deflecting refinements
• Mage Armor — the property that separates medable from non-medable
• Imbuing — alternate path to property modification on armor
• Cleanup Britannia — source of the Refinement Amalgamator
• Publish 81 — the patch that introduced refinements
• Treasure Map — primary refinement-component source
• Message in a Bottle — secondary refinement-component source
• Champion Spawn — boss-tier refinement-component source