De-Legro,
I have extensive experience with items from the noble side. I have a limited amount of experience from the advy side personally, but also have had advy characters explain to me quite a bit as well.
I have held an item for over a years time myself personally and got the item prestige up to +9, along with an extra state increase included in it. I know what I'm talking about and have experience in this area.
However, my statements are not that it isn't possible to operate under the current system. What I am saying is that the current system is not optimal. If Tom is seeking to find changes for the item system (with things such as creating armors), then I think one change should be that Unique Items don't degrade, OR they are easy to repair (but perhaps highly expensive). Maybe even phase out the adventurers some in this regard. I don't know. What I do know, is that under a new system, items could gain a greater status of importance, and if you remove the work (on the player side), but increase the value on the game side of the items (in actuallity, or simply by making them easier to keep) you will increase their usage and importance.
