Been finding all those patches of Novictum hide and wondering what on earth you can do with them? Well they can be used to create the Crepuscule Armor sets. There are five different varieties of this armor set, each offering a different set of stat bonuses and AC's. There really is something for everyone here, these armors honestly offer such a wide variety of stat bonuses that everyone will find something they want in here, and they are not all that hard to get, although you may struggle to gain them at a level when they are useful for combat...still, lets take a look shall we?

Artillery Crepuscule Armor

This set is perfect for any gun freaks out there – bonuses to almost all of the ranged skills as well as some other nice bonuses like dodge ranged and at higher levels a crit increase.

Control Unit Crepuscule Armor

A tradeskillers set pure and simple – a complete set of this armor will add very nicely to all the tradeskills including comp lit and nano programming. I would seriously recommend tracking down at least some of these pieces if you take your trade skills seriously.

Exterminator Unit Crepuscule Armor

Nano set – this buffs all nano skills as well as Max Nano, % Nano cost, Nano Resists and Nano Init – anyone looking to build a nano buffing set of armor need look no further!

Infantry Crepuscule Leather Armor

Melee users set – as well as buffing all the close combat skills you could want also adds decent bonuses to addalldef, addalloff, max health and melee init.

Support Unit Crepuscule Armor

A more general set covering the areas the others neglect, this set offers things like run speed, adventuring, perception, map navigation, damage bonuses, max NCU and exp %.

Whilst the AC’s might mean its not exactly at the top of your shopping list (although by and large they are pretty decent), are NoDrop and the process for getting them not easy to do above your level (as it involves Shadowlands mobs) these armor sets do offer some pretty decent stat bonuses that mean they do work out as pretty decent stat buffing armor to have at your disposal.

They also make very good twinking armor, although the results are NoDrop, the composite parts aren’t so there isn’t anything stopping you passing the parts down to another character before they are assembled.

So how do you go about making them?

To make a piece of one of the Crepuscule armor sets you will need to locate the following shopping list out in the wilds of the Shadowlands:

• 1 Piece of Novictum Spangled Hide
• 1 Spirit Bauble
• 1 Canister of Pure Liquid Notum

However getting the exact piece or armor you want requires a specific combination of the various different types of hides and baubles, so you need to find out exactly which combination will yield you the piece you are looking for.

Patches of Novictum Spangled Hides

These come in six varieties, and each one is used for a different type of armor

• Large Patch of Hard Novictum Spangled Hide – Makes Chest Piece
• Large Patch of Soft Novictum Spangled Hide – Makes Pants
• Patch of Hard Novictum Spangled Hide – Makes Boots
• Patch of Soft Novictum Spangled Hide – Makes Sleeves
• Small Patch of Soft Novictum Spangled Hide – Makes Gloves
• Small Patch of Hard Novictum Spangled Hide – Makes Skinchip

Ok, patch of hide in hand you then need to combine it with a Canister of Pure Liquid Notum - This requires 5.5 x the QL of the hide being used in nano programming. Thankfully only one type of canister here you will glad to know, also it is possible to add small patches together to make a normal patch then add another small patch to make a large patch. This process takes QL x 4 in Chemistry to achieve but it does mean that you don't have to search high and low for those large patches.

Combining the hide and the canister will give you a ‘living patch’ of the appropriate type. The quality level will be the same as the patch, so try not to waste higher level canisters on a low quality patch. In the other direction the canister has to be within 20% of the quality level of the hide, so if you have a QL100 hide your canister will need to be at least QL80 (this may vary as I haven’t tested all the various hide / canister combos personally but like other tradeskill processes you’ll usually need both parts to be fairly close in Quality Level)

Now you have your living patch you will need to apply a spirit bauble to the patch to convert it into the relevant armor piece, this is where the different types of Spirit Baubles come into play. This time there are five different ones to keep an eye out for:

• Spirit Bauble of Artilley Expertise
• Spirit Bauble of Control Expertise
• Spirit Bauble of Extermination Expertise
• Spirit Bauble of Infantry Expertise
• Spirit Bauble of Support Expertise

The results are fairly self-explanatory, if you use a bauble of Infantry Expertise you will get the relevant piece of Infantry unit Crepuscule Armor, use a Support Bauble and you’ll get the relevant Support Unit piece.

Viola! You should now have your armor piece.

Finding the Parts

Ok, so that’s how you make the pieces, but what about actually finding the pieces? The recipe is pretty darned useless without the ingredients! Shadowlands is a very large place, so even though most of the parts can be gotten off a large variety of mobs, its best to try and hedge your bets a little and try and find a spot that drops a better percentage then most. Let’s look at each piece in turn

Novictum Hides

These do drop all over the place from almost any outdoors mob in the Shadowlands – however the smaller pieces are much, much more common. It’s very likely you’ll have small parts coming out of your ears and be just about ready to commit suicide looking for the large patches. The mini boss mobs in the wild seem to drop these at quite a good rate. Look for mobs that are slightly larger then their regular friends or named slightly differently (Like the Limping Predator amongst all the Heartland Predators for example). Any named mobs have a good chance as well.

Thankfully as mentioned above you can now combine the smaller patches to make the large patch yourself if you have the skill.

Canisters and Baubles

These drop randomly from outdoor mobs, but you can narrow it down a little.

I have any canisters drop below QL30, so I’m not certain that these drop in Nascence at all, but the database would indicate that the armor could be made in QL1 if the parts dropped so I would not rule it out. Also the baubles do drop at even very low levels (QL7 being the lowest I have found) so that would suggest that it is just a case of fining the canister somewhere in Nascence. Remember you can use higher level canisters but given the armor is NoDrop that's probably not practical if you want to actually use the armor - although you could buy the canisters one at a time if you can find someone willing to sell them.

In Elysium you can find quality level 30-60ish ones in decent supply from the Hiathlin camp under the cliff face in Eastern Elysium close to the Yuttos camp and Port Seven.The drop rate here is very very good, just remember you can only have one at a time due to the unique flag. 60-80ish one occasionally drop of the ‘Kolana’ style mobs nearer Monopolis as well.

For quality levels around 100-130 Scheol is packed with some decent spots to pick up these pieces. The Chimera Canines in Upper Scheol (on the path down to the lower portal) drop the canister and the odd bauble, but the drop rate is much better in Lower Scheol.

In Lower Scheol head east along the lower section of the cave towards the stairway to Ergo, just before it on your right you will see an arched enclosure – inside you will find a group of esoteric Hiathlins that drop the canister and baubles fairly regularly.

Hecklers are also a source of the higher level versions.

Conclusion

The armor is certainly nice, although I'm not convinced is really achievable to get your hands on it at the levels you could get good wear out of it. However as buffing armor it's worthy of your attention and there will be at least one or two pieces of interest to you regardless of your profession, since between the various types almost every skill possible is buffed.

Requiring Nano-programming is odd for an armor process but given its one of the more common trade skills that people raise its better then it being QFT or something like that.