Depending on the background players pick when they're creating their character in Nightingale, it may seem like a bit of a visual downgrade to go from high-society threads to literal hide rags, but those rags just have more defense.
Nightingale: Best Minor Cards, Ranked
Nightingale players may be surprised to find out just how many Minor Cards there are in this game, so let's go over the best ones found so far.
There isn't a 'ton' of different armor sets in Nightingale, at least not until the endgame, and the ones players have access to in the early game are thankfully pretty simple to make. Let's go over a few methods of getting some strong early-game armor to survive the Faewilds.
Method 1
Crafting & Upgrading Simple Armor
The first and most 'standard' method is simply crafting all the different Simple types of Clothing through the Simple Sewing Bench which players will typically get from the Essence Trader in their Abeyance Realm.
The Simple 'tier' of armor includes:
- Boots
- Breeches
- Capelet
- Gloves
- Headwrap
- Shirt
- Pack
All of these Armor pieces will require varying amounts of Leather and Plant Fibre, so make sure to hunt a lot of basic Prey and Predators in your Abeyance Realm or an Antiquarian Realm to get the necessary Hide to make it at a Tanning Rack.
Depending on the material used, the amount of armor these Simple clothes will grant varies a bit, but typically it's about 16 Armor each. From this point, players will want to progress the story or just explore in general until they find the Simple Upgrade Bench Recipe. Build this Bench and use it to upgrade all of your Gear to the Uncommon Rarity at least (doing so requires 40 T1 Essence per item upgraded). After this, players should be at around 40 Gear Score which can take them even further into the main campaign, and will get access to even better Armor at the Essence Trader in a Provisioner Realm, but that's arguably past the point of the 'early-game'.
The only other things you can do to make this early-game armor even better is use the Simple Enchanter's Focus to make Charms or Infusions to then slot into their Uncommon Gear as well or possibly even use T2 Leather to make even stronger Simple Armor at a base level.
Method 2
Stealing & Upgrading An NPC's Armor
The second method for getting good early-game Armor involves a bit of thievery. The earliest chance you will get at it attempting this is when you find the Essence Trader in your Abeyance Realm and help the nearby NPC finish crafting a few things in order to make them 'Recruitable'. After recruiting this NPC as a Companion, simply interact with them, go into their inventory, and steal their clothes for yourself.
From here you can then upgrade said clothes just like you would the Simple Clothes, though it may be just a bit weaker than if they had gone the Simple Clothing route. Still, this way, you can look dapper and raise your Gear Score simultaneously.
Method 3
Getting The Nightingale Twitch Drops
As for the last method, this one is only available until March 4th, 2024 at 10:00 AM MST (at least at the time of writing this), as the developers at Inflexion have already extended this campaign past its original end date of February 27th. To do this, players will need to link both their Twitch Account to their Steam and or Epic Account using Inflexion's official website.
After doing this, they'll then need to watch a specific amount of Nightingale streams by drop-supported streamers to get the required gear. The gear and watch times are as follows:
- Umbrella: 2 Hours
- Outfit 1: 4 Hours
- Outfit 2: 6 Hours
- Distinguished Puppy: 8 Hours
These are some pretty high watch time requirements, so it's highly recommended to at the very least break up those watch sessions or keep a stream open on an active tab instead of even attempting to watch a stream for 8 hours straight.
As for the actual 'quality' of this Gear, it's pretty absurdly strong (each piece at about 58 Armor by default). Just by upgrading every piece in either Twitch Drop outfit once, players can reach around Gear Score 70, which is the Gear Score they'll need to unlock some of the late-game Major Cards and access their Realms. Honestly, it's a bit game-breaking that players can get such a great set of armor so early in the game just by watching some streams, but it's not like this is a PvP game, so it's not a big deal.
