Can anyone provide a detailed description of how this works?

If an item has AC 20 17 14 20 that's GOOD right?

Is it limited by TYPE? So like you get no advantage from a bracelet even if it's high AC?

Sometimes I put a piece of armor on and it says I'm losing the ability to block attacks, other times it says I'm more confident. It's the same piece of armor. Sometimes I get no echoes at all... even if I wear something and get an echo then remove it and wear it again there may not be an echo. Am I bugged?

Thanks.

I see so much speculation about Gates. In general, thicker armor you think (by description and stuff) should be good is good.

But more importantly, just don't worry about it. If you're at hero-ish level, and fully equipped, and not wearing a bunch of mage gear (clothing that is +hp but no ac sorta thing), you're probably already close to maxing out your bonus from gates. So I'd recommend that you never choose a piece of armor that is huge -ac over a piece of armor that is -saves, +dam, +hp, or +importantstats.

The type of gear your wearing is very important for expample dont you use gear labels treasure use metal, light, or bone armor if you can. By what i have seen bone and metal armor help more. If its a dwarf or svirf stone armor can work. The reason for this is the skills metal armor use light armor use bone armor use and stone armor use act like enhanced damage and spellcraft but for AC

Is it limited by TYPE? So like you get no advantage from a bracelet even if it's high AC?


-If you ID the item and it has AC values then it counts towards gates (+/- ac modifiers on items also count)

Sometimes I put a piece of armor on and it says I'm losing the ability to block attacks, other times it says I'm more confident. It's the same piece of armor.

-Minor flaw in the code. You only get echos when you wear/remove gear but you go in/out of gates based on your ac (not counting dex bonus/penalty). So if you use a skill like berserk which makes your ac worse then put on a piece of gear you might get the losing gates echo. It wasn't wearing the gear that made you lose gates it was going into berserk, the piece of gear just wasn't enough to make up for the berserk penalty and put you back into gates.

If the piece of gear you put on has plus AC affects it could also knock you out of gates.

Like in the above example... is the AC vs. each of the 4 the types.

So if it's 20 20 20 20 that's a lot of AC right? Or do I want those to be 0s?

when you are looking at those armor AC values then bigger is better.

when you are looking at AC from skills/spells/ or as +- on a piece of gear (like with +dam/+hp and all) then negative numbers are good and positive numbers are bad.