Learn the craft of combining certain animal hides and plants to create medium and light armor, accomplished through a series of progressive improvements. Find your crafting station at smithies or clothiers (not tailors).
Becoming a Clothier involves scouring the lands for creature hides and plants that can be turned into leather and cloth, respectively, and tailored into wearable light and medium armor. This occurs at a Clothing Station. Before the items are sewn together, though, a supply of raw materials needs to be secured. Search for and harvest plants (cloth for light armor) and animals (leather for medium armor). Combining cloth or leather and tannins makes the crafting of a variety of light and medium armor possible.
Any cloth- and leather-based armor can be deconstructed at a Clothing Station for the raw materials and the traits they possess. Once these are further improved and traits added, you can create the ultimate outfit. Compared to the metal-based heavy armor of the Blacksmithing trade skill, these items offer lower defense, but a higher maneuverability.
Passive Abilities
There are six Clothier Passive Abilities:
Clothier Passive Abilities
| Ability | Name | Description | Prerequisite |
|---|---|---|---|
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Tailoring | This allows access to the better-quality cloth and leather types, from the relatively common Jute (cloth) and Rawhide (leather) to the very rare Ancestor Silk (cloth) and Rubedo (leather). If you want your outfits to be of increasingly better quality, and want to create items from a wider variety of cloth and leather, this is the main ability to pick from and constantly add points to. | 10 Ranks at Levels 1, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, and 50 |
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Keen Eye: Cloth | When searching for fibrous plants to collect prior to cloth-refining, if you’re within 20, 30, or 40 meters of such a plant, it emits a glow—especially illuminating at night. To pick plants more quickly, or if you find plant-location tricky, pick this. Note this only helps when searching for cloth, not leather. Ignore this skill if you’re only interested in crafting medium armor. | Three Ranks at Levels 2, 9, and 30 |
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Outfitter Hireling | Once per day (every 24 hours Ranks 1-2, and every 12 hours at Rank 3), and every time you log back in to your game (assuming a day has passed), your Hireling sends you cloth, leather, and other random items related to improving your Clothing, like tannins. This is helpful, and it’s another source of raw materials. | Three Ranks at Levels 3, 12, and 32 |
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Unraveling | Pick this to increase the chances of extracting a greater amount of clothing ingredients, better tannins, and trait materials from a single raw material. | Three Ranks at Levels 4, 22, and 32 |
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Stitching | To research two traits for your armor item at once—or three once Rank 3 is unlocked—and lessen the research time by up to 25%, this is a must-have skill. Grab this when you’re fully committed to trait research. | Four Ranks at Levels 8, 18, 28, and 45 |
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Tannin Expertise | When you’re improving an item, there’s a chance of failure. This mitigates that problem somewhat, increasing the chances of improving items with tannins. Since the higher-value tannins are difficult to come by and this allows you to more easily improve items without risking their destruction, it’s well worth choosing. | Three Ranks at Levels 10, 25, and 40 |
Scavenging: Locating Raw Materials for Cloth and Leather
Slightly different methods exist for obtaining the necessary raw materials to create light armor versus medium armor. For light armor, items from fibrous plants must be refined into various types of cloth. For medium armor, items from animal hides must be refined into various types of leather. There are 10 varieties of cloth and 10 varieties of leather. The former are simply harvested by locating an appropriate fibrous plant and picking it. The latter are looted from the corpses of animals, such as wolves, that provide leather in the form of their skin. Find such a raw material to receive around three to four of its type in your inventory. Keep searching until you have 10 or more of the same type—the minimum required to sew into cloth or leather during the refining process.
Once you’ve done a good bit of plant-picking and animal-rustling, you need to refine your raw materials, and the creation of cloth and leather begins. The following table lists the available raw materials, and the level at which you can expect to find both the cloth and leather. The material found is equally based on your current level and Tailoring Passive Ability rank.
Clothing: Raw Materials (Light Armor)
| Raw Material | Type | Available | Tailoring Skill Rank Needed |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Jute | Level 1-14 | 1 |
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Flax | Level 16-24 | 2 |
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Cotton | Level 26-34 | 3 |
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Spidersilk | Level 36-44 | 4 |
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Ebonthread | Level 46-50 | 5 |
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Kreshweed | Champion Rank 10-30 | 6 |
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Ironweed | Champion Rank 46-60 | 7 |
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Silverweed | Champion Rank 70-80 | 8 |
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Void Bloom | Champion Rank 90-140 | 9 |
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Ancestor Silk | Champion Rank 150-160 | 10 |
Clothing: Raw Materials (Medium Armor)
| Raw Material | Type | Available | Tailoring Skill Rank Needed |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Rawhide | Level 1-14 | 1 |
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Hide | Level 16-24 | 2 |
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Leather | Level 26-34 | 3 |
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Thick Leather | Level 36-44 | 4 |
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Fell Hide | Level 46-50 | 5 |
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Topgrain Hide | Champion Rank 10-30 | 6 |
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Iron Hide | Champion Rank 46-60 | 7 |
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Superb Hide | Champion Rank 70-80 | 8 |
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Shadowhide | Champion Rank 90-140 | 9 |
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Rubedo Hide | Champion Rank 150-160 | 10 |
Refining: Processed Materials
Refined plants suitable for crafting take the collective name “cloth,” while refined animal skins take the collectible name “leather” or “hide.” Both are collectively known as processed materials. It takes 10 pieces of raw material to create 7-10 pieces of cloth or leather, which is then used in the creation of light or medium armor. The type of cloth or leather indicates the level and quality of the armor you’ll be making. To start with, sew one selection of raw materials into either cloth or leather, and then start crafting armor sections afterward.