Adventuring Fellow Equipment Guide

Category:Guides
==Current Adventuring Fellow Equipment System==
*There are 4 paths that your Adventuring Fellow's armor can follow:
**Heavy Armor (Scale Mail Set, Adaman Cuirass Set, Hachiman Domaru Set, etc.) - Formerly San d'Oria path
**Light Armor (Leather Vest Set, Gavial Mail Set, Yasha Samue Set, etc.) - Formerly Bastok path
**Mage Armor (Robe Set, Noble's Tunic Set, Blessed Briault Set, etc.) - Formerly Windurst path
**Freestyle Armor (RSE sets, Scorpion Harness, Demon's Harness, Bison Jacket Set, etc.) - Formerly Beastmen path
*The country that controls the region you are fighting in no longer has ANY bearing on Adventuring Fellow equipment.
*Fellow equipment is now affected by Monster Classification, or families, of the monsters you kill.
**Heavy Armor: Beasts, Birds and Lizards.
**Light Armor: Plantoids and Vermin.
**Mage Armor: Amorphs and Aquans.
**Freestyle Armor: Arcana, Demons, Elementals and Undead.
Note: It is unknown at this time which path your fellow's armor will wear if you kill dragons. There are conflicting reports regarding killing Beastmen, though it seems to be generally accepted that Goblins do not affect equipment at all. It's likely/possible that Beastmen do not affect at all, though any of their pets or elementals do. Please post findings in the talk page
*It is unknown as of yet what causes one piece of armor level faster than another, though it may be random.
==More Adventuring Fellow Equipment Findings and Easter Eggs== 
*Each armor piece operates independently. Thus, by satisfying the above requirements, any unlocked piece of armor can change.
*Once your armor hits level 12, even if you level in a correctly controlled region, your armor will reset to level 1 if left unlocked.
*There is a chance that rather than increase one level, the armor piece designated for change will be reset to level 1. In all likelihood, the higher the level you advance, the higher the chance that your armor will reset. 
*Your NPC's equipment may change after entering a new area with your NPC already called. This usually happens after killing monsters in the previous area (i.e. zoning into the Crawlers' Nest from Rolanberry Fields after killing a few Quadav).
*If you call your NPC while wearing reward scenario gear, your NPC will also be wearing them. If there is an HQ version available, the NQ version will not work. For example, your NPC can appear with an Egg Helm and a Dream Robe +1, but not a Dream Robe.
*Your armor will not change in Promyvion, regardless of whether it is locked.
*With the June 9th update, you can now pay 8000 AF points to glamorize (upgrade to the next level armor) or 1000 AF to unglamorize (assumed to degrade to the lower level armor).
==Theories Regarding Individual Armor Pieces==
There seems to be some kind of "strength" involved in the tier of the NPC's armor, similar to that of Moghancements. Let me explain:
*I started out this entire experiment by levelling my NPC in Rolanberry Fields (S) with only hands unlocked, as explained above. I did this for at least three calls. After the first, I switched from my previous armor to the Light Armor tier. After the second, I got the second level of Light Armor hands and after the third, the third level.
*After the long frustrating process described in the cases above, I wanted to work on Heavy hand armor. I left the hands unlocked and returned to levelling in Uleguerand Range as described above on mobs I knew would level me along the Heavy Armor tier.
**After a number of calls, my NPC's armor did not level up. Upon returning to the Rolanberry Fields (S), they levelled up immediately. I can only assume that I had not overridden the "strength" of the Light Armor tier. Based on the number of calls in the particular zones, It seems to me that the Uleguerand Tigers and the Variable Hares did not give as much "strength" as the Goobbue Farmers did. That, or only one of the mob types was contributing to the Heavy Armor tier.
**This concept is further supported by the fact that my NPC's original Scorpion Harness did not revert to the Heavy Armor tier until after three calls in Uleguerand Range (though, interestingly enough, it did start at the third level Mythril Breastplate instead of the first level Scale Mail). While trying to figure out what was going on, I had eventually gotten it to the fourth level Eisenbrust.
**When trying to level the Eisenbrust up along the Heavy Armor tier, it also refused to change for a number of calls after killing worms, bats and scorpions, until after many calls it reverted to level one Mage Armor. This leads me to believe that my NPC had a certain amount of Heavy Armor "strength" built up that I had to overcome in order to change armor tiers. Likewise, after getting the first level Mage Armor, it only took a couple of calls back in Uleguerand Range to switch her body piece back over to Heavy Armor.
In Summary:
This is what I believe based on my experience:
*Not all mobs belong to a tier. Goblins do not appear to affect armor at all.
*Each armor slot builds up a tier strength according to the number of mobs you've killed that are associated with that tier.
*The minimum required to upgrade your armor is thirty kills (all associated with the current tier). Thirty is my maximum number of kills based on my current NPC bond. Lower numbers might also suffice, if they represent the max number of kills your NPC will stay for.
*In order to change tiers, you have to surpass the current *total* tier strength with that of another tier.
**For example, if you have level three Heavy Armor, that means you have to surpass ninety strength in another tier. I'm sure there is some margin by which you have to clear the current strength in order to get the armor to change.
*After the fourth armor level, level progression per each thirty kills is not guaranteed. There appears to be some random chance applied after each successful call (successful being thirty kills of the same mob type).
**It appears that the odds of a level up from levels 4-8 are 25% to 33%.
*Armor does not appear to regress, as it did under the previous system.
*It is unknown whether 'glamorizing' your armor at Ajahkeem actually adds tier strength, or just changes the armor to the next level. The difference would be this: If I had level one armor and glamorized to level two, would I need thirty or sixty additional strength in order to get to level three? This needs to be researched.
If you are able to answer any of these questions or add to the list of what mobs contribute to what tier, please post here.
--Celvantes 03:24, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
Edited some of this but kept most of it, as this still contains some potentially valid information that should be investigated further. Post further findings in the talk page. --Onyxium 18:54, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
As for the individual pieces leveling mechanic, it seems mostly random to me. With one fellow that I was leveling along the heavy armor path (killing various flavors of tigers), he leveled hands, chest, legs then feet. On another character, I leveled my fellow along the caster style armor, she's got baron pants and feet, still wearing doublet set's gloves, and scale chest piece. This is from killing nothing but Clippers and Pugils. The caster armor character has been leveled mainly during the night time game hours, while the heavy character has generally been during day time game hours. nearly anything can change the order, I would assume. Could be anything from weather, game day, time, or moon phases, to maybe even national control of the region. This certainly requires more research.
User:Jamesls
I recently Glamorized the chest piece of my adventuring fellow, then went off to fight some more enemies with him. After just one full call's worth of fighting (20 Enemies) the chest piece upgraded again, this leads me to believe that you keep the Armor's tier strength when you glamorize, since normally it would take 3-4 calls to raise the armor from a 0 point (wherein the armor just went to the next tier). So from my perspective, glamorizing your fellow's armor does not reset the piece's points to 0. Or in other words, it keeps it's Tier Strength. Longstrider 06:44, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
I spent weeks in Ro'Maeve killing only Evil Weapon type monsters with my NPC, doing the page 1 of the nearby Fields of Valor. This was not only for xp but also to lvl my NPC's leg armour along the freestyle path. I got her up to Fisherman's Hose. Then I made a huge mistake. I brought her out whilst camping/fighting an NM, but since the PH's were Arcana also, I didn't think it would cause me any problems. The mistake I made was thinking that 5 or 6 Bats in the local area wouldn't make a huge difference because of all the huge build up of weeks and weeks of Weapon fighting and the fact that most of the mobs faced at the time the problem occured were Arcana anyway! The end result was this; The next time I checked my NPC she had taken it upon herself to change her legs to Cuisses, the lvl 2 Heavy Armour path. This had to be caused by the bats since I had not used my NPC for anything else. I immediately attempted to reverse this disaster by taking her straight back to Ro'Maeve and doing 3 straight pages of FOV, another 18-20 weapons and her legs changed to lvl 1 RSE, the path I had chosen but right back at the start... Until this happened I had seen nothing to doubt the theory about built up strength along the paths. Indeed, in a previous era I had spent many an hour with her in The Boyahda Tree trying to progess her hands along the Light Armour path and it took Many calls to convince her to overcome the "strength" of the previous path. I'm wondering now, if there is a random element involved, or if I made some other unforseen mistake, or if that NM just hated me for beating it so easily, wish I had some answers but for now i'll be back in Ro'Maeve for the forseeable future. Hoping to update this with more info on the strength theory.--Caderyn 17:30, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
It almost looks like NMs may be worth more points to an armor upgrade than normal monsters? What NM was it? Urat 17:13, February 27, 2010 (UTC)