New player with a couple of questions.

[Thystonius]

Bah. You should have bought a hardened leather shirt, 5% AC 1 DR. No maluses. I used it until I could buy enhanced remgard vest 17% AC 8% BC, and now using Serpent's Hauberk.

Your AC is more than enough at your current level, keep grinding for 2 RoLS and go to Remgard after that. I went through with 194% AC (my base AC is only 120%), but it was a PAIN when affected by the spiders. The Master Plague Striders were the worst. After hitting Remgard I bought a lot of eq that made my stats shoot up, AC was 225% and boy was it easier!

In case you want to go to Remgard at low level, higher AC is needed. But if you get higher damage (and work on BC so you can get Bark Skin), you can kill the gargoyles faster, which gets you the RoLS faster on average but also grows your character while needing less and less potions.

I use the RHP potions that drop in the caves, got nearly 2k of those. At lower level I lived off meat, but that was before version 0.7.

[Duke]

I'd also ditch the Fencing blade for the Balanced Steel Sword: 4 AP, AC 32 %, AD 3-7.
and also switch to the Lightweight Chainmail: AC 10%, AD 1, BC 13%, 7 HP.
Both can be bought

crossroads guardhouse

[Aereas]

Eventually I'm going to use the Blackwater Leather Armor. Just using the best BC I have right now for damage mitigation.

[Zukero]

Eventually I'm going to use the Blackwater Leather Armor. Just using the best BC I have right now for damage mitigation.

Don't do that.
BW stuff induce the Blackwater Misery condition, whose downside can only be thought of being compensated when using the full BW set. Even then, I think it is terrible gear overall. Might fit some playstyles before reaching the harder zones to get the best gear (Remgard, and Green Maze).

Edit : I noticed you have 76% BC already. It should be really sufficient until you reach the desired AC. Then use level ups on BC and eventually AD. I finished all of v0.7.0, and I only sit @ 84% BC, and that's because I spent the last 10 level ups on BC. Never had an issue.

[Antison]

Eventually I'm going to use the Blackwater Leather Armor. Just using the best BC I have right now for damage mitigation.

Don't do that.
BW stuff induce the Blackwater Misery condition, whose downside can only be thought of being compensated when using the full BW set. Even then, I think it is terrible gear overall.

I could not disagree more!!! Blackwater builds is one of the strongest, if not they strongest build types to date. Checkout my blackwater build's stats (below, 2nd from the bottom) in respect to the others.

[Zukero]

Well, I guess it certainly matches some playstyles/builds, but even then, you have to use the whole set. Equipping simply the armor is not worth the misery.

[fiernaq]

But of course. Any single piece of BW gear is decent but marred by the curse. The set as a whole is extremely good. I actually carry it in my bags with me in case I need to swap to a more BC oriented build since my primary build has all of 21% BC.

[Aereas]

I was considering using at least the armor and dual-wielding the weapons on a 2nd character I started. I'm going to shift focus to the second character for the time being since I sunk 2 skill points into sword + shield mastery on the other guy and it's horribly underpowered (imo).

[Pyrizzle]

You suffer only one count of Blackwater Misery no matter how many items you have on that will cause it.

With the 2 daggers you are loosing 50% AC but gaining 90% AC (45x2)
and also the amount of BC you gain from the armors is unrivaled.

[sorrow]

So you only gain 40% ac