Hi. I recently bought this game on Steam, and have been reading this forums. This is my first post, and I do not mean to sound rude, but it seems to me that very few of the people posting in this thread have any first-hand, practical experience with certain forms of body armor. I was involved in putting on trashcans and hitting other people in trashcans with sticks reenactment swordfighting/European Martial Arts for several years when I was younger, and have quite a bit of practical experience with various non-firearm weapons and forms of armor. There are a couple of problems I see people in this thread having: 1) Not understanding material strength 2) Not understanding the purpose of armor 3) Not understanding how (un)encumbering certain forms of armor can be There is a common series of misconceptions I often see in people whose primary acquaintance with things like mail, plate, coat of plates, etc is from video games (which are based on Dungeons and Dragons), or from pen and paper games like Dungeons and Dragons. In video games and PnP roleplaying games where you abstract the concept of 'health' into a numerical value you seldom come to understand the purpose of armor. In this game, the Zombie disease is spread via biting and saliva, much like Rabies is. The best way to not get Rabies is to not get bitten. A rabid dog can drool on your arm all it wants, and as long as there is no cut or other open wound to provide an easy path for the virus into your body and to the nervous tissues you're not going to be infected (although I would still very much advise you to seek post-exposure treatment). The purpose of armor such as chainmail, is very similar. You primarily wanted to stop your opponent from putting the sharp pointy bits of their sword (or similar parts of whatever other bladed weapon they were using) into your soft, squishy bits before you could do the same to them. However, you also wanted to avoid breaking the skin. Mail, like most other non-rigid armors, does next to nothing to stop you from being bludgeoned to death. That's what plate was for. When fighting someone in chain, who is nominally protected from sword attacks, a weapon like an axe or warhammer was preferable, as even if you couldn't cut them, you could still break their bones and rupture their internal organs. (And chain can and does fail, depending on the kind of metal it is made from, whether it is butted or riveted, the kind of weave used, the kind of metal from which the weapon hitting it is made, and a great deal of other factors). One of the common misconceptions about armors are their weight. People look at the mass of a suit of plate, which can be around a hundred pounds, and fail to understand that there is a difference between 100 pounds of metal in a backpack on your back and 100 pounds of metal and leather attached to individual parts of your body. Often the mass of armors is exaggerated. Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 would have you believe a chain shirt weighs 25 pounds. They don't. 10-15 would be more accurate. If you are an adult who is not completely out of shape to the point where you can't walk around all day, you should be completely capable of wearing a chain shirt without it exhausting you. A hauberk weighs more, and is more encumbering, and a coif (a kind of chain helmet) is also more encumbering. Still, it's entirely possible to engage in very vigorous activity for prolonged periods in armor and not succumb to heat stroke. Battles could last for hours, and you didn't exactly have breaks to drink Gatorade and rest during them. Plate is quite hot, but people did, again, fight in it for extended periods of time. You do move slower in Plate than out of it, and you will grow tired faster wearing Plate, but you are completely capable of running, jumping, and doing cartwheels in a suit of plate. Not even a good suit, mind you. Plate has an advantage over chain in that it is more evenly distributed about the body, whereas a hauberk mostly hangs from the shoulders. However, in a Zombie Apocalypse like the one presented in this game, you would not want a suit of plate. In this game, as aforementioned, the infection is spread by bite and saliva. The best way to not get infected is to not get bitten. The best way to not get bitten is to stay the hell away from the zombies. If you do have to get near them, you will want some sort of light weight armor to protect you from being bitten. There are a number of choices that many people already own, or are easily created. Leather Jacket: A leather jacket is going to protect you from being bitten. Anyone who thinks a leather jacket is not a good and sufficient protection against bites from humans, I invite to go try to gnaw through a leather jacket themselves. You're not going to do it. Zombies would have to tear the jacket off of you, because they are never going to bite through it. A leather jacket such as many people already own would be more than sufficient torso and arm protection in a zombie apocalypse. During the summer or in warmer climes they are indeed hot, but I have never seen anyone keel over from heat stroke from wearing a leather jacket in the summer. They just get rather sweaty. We can extend this to articles of clothing such as leather pants (when made from real leather), although denim is just as good. Denim Jeans: Denim jeans will protect you from being bitten. I've had a dog latch on to my shin and try to drag me out of a car before, and the dog did not manage to tear through my jeans before I slammed the car door on its head until he let go and ran off. To anyone who thinks that denim jeans are not sufficient bite protection, I invite them to go try to gnaw through a pair of jeans. As to them being hot, I'm wearing them right now and am cold. Work and Garden Gloves: These are going to protect your hands from bites, specifically the leather kind. I don't vouch for other kinds of materials. Once again, anyone who thinks a human being can bite through a pair of leather work gloves, I invite to go try to do it and post video of the results. Motorcycle Safety Gear: This is a broad category, but it includes all sorts of jackets, chaps, gloves, helmets, and other miscellaneous gear that people on motorcycles wear to to protect them from injury in case of an accident. There are many materials that are used for this purpose, such as leather. If leather is sufficient to protect one from having one's skin ground into hamburger when falling off a motorcycle at speed, it's going to protect you from being bitten. Occupational Safety Gear: Mail aprons and gloves are used by butchers and others in the food industry who need to cut things or use other sharp equipment. You can easily search for Meatcutter's Gloves on the internet. Such gloves are mail, and weigh between and eight and a sixteenth of a pound, and provide resistance (but not immunity), to cutting yourself with a knife. Knives are much harder and sharper than human teeth. mail , being full of holes, is very breathable. There is other gear that could be used, such a clothing for protection against heat and sparks from welding, but that is heavier and hotter.I should like to point out that in the case of mail, you don't actually need chain of the quality that one would need to protect one against blows from real weapons. The links need not be that numerous and small, as you don't have to worry about people stabbing you (although fingers getting in between them and tearing them apart is an issue). The entire purpose for armor in a zombie apocalypse (that is meant to protect you from zombies, in an apocalypse such as the one in the game) is to stop the zombies from being able to break your skin via a bite, as the disease is transmitted via saliva. If they can't bite you to create an open wound, your chances of infection drastically drop. Mail is not hard to make. It is time-consuming to make. Very time-consuming. It could easily take two weeks working eight hours a day to make a hauberk depending on the materials used and the pattern being used. However, you do not need, as I have mentioned, to make such mail. You don't need this mail to stop sword and axe and (maybe) arrow. You just need it to stop a human being from biting you. A human can exert about 120 PSI of pressure when biting. An average dog can do around two and a half times that. Denim and leather are capable of protecting against dog bites. They would be more than sufficient to protect against human bites. And humans cannot bite through iron wire, no matter how hard they try. That said, all the above listed "soft" armors are going to do is protect you from being bitten and scratched, which is your primary concern as it is the pathway for the disease to enter your system. Said bites and scratches would also allow pathways for OTHER disease to enter your system, and with no doctors around to give you a tetanus booster, you're going to want to keep your epidermis as intact as possible. These armors do not, however, protect you from the pressure of the bites, or from the force of a blow. Just because the zombies cannot bite you does not mean they cannot crush you, break your bones, and hold you down until you bleed to death internally. I understand that having actual realistic renditions of armor in this game would not be fun for a great many people. However, if realism is actually what you want, then that's what you're going to have to deal with.
