Shadowhunter Armor

Difficulty:  Low, but requires you to kill plenty of Shadows and Fragments (or trade for the pieces)  
Level Restriction:  30+ to wear Neo-GSx and 50+ to wear Sharded GSx
Timer:  None
Can be Solo'd?  Yes
Rewards:  Shadowhunter Armor

Back in the day, virtually every PK you saw wore some form of shadowhunter armor.  The reason is because shadowhunter armor does not drop on death and has reasonably high armor level.  Some of it can be quite stylish too, since it always matches.  It is crafted from the droppings of fragment-type monsters and shadows of various sizes.  

Shadowhunter armor comes in three different racial forms and has three different qualities.  Ghuru'ndim armor, Amuli, is the most demanded form of shadowhunter armor.  It has the lowest armor level of the three types, but covers the body in only 2 pieces so it is easy for a mage to buff and is quite light.  The Sho make Koujia armor, which is only slightly stronger and heavier than Amuli, but comes in three seperate pieces.  Next to no one uses this because it isn't terribly strong and it isn't as simple to buff as Amuli.  Aluvians make Celdon, which is the strongest type of shadowhunter armor.  It is the heaviest type of shadowhunter armor and it comes in 4 seperate pieces.  Melees prefer Celdon due to its strength.  New in the April 2006 patch is Alduressa Shadowhunter Armor.  This type of armor is basically identical to Amuli in that both styles have two pieces and the same armor level.

Each type of armor can come in three different qualities - lesser shadowhunter armor, shadowhunter armor, and greater shadowhunter armor.  The lower grades of armor are not only less protective, but are also notably heavier.  Lesser armor is more or less identical to the store-bought equivalent, except that it is no drop.  Each different type of armor requires the construction of a different type of fused gem.  Lesser armor requires a glimmering gem, regular armor requires a sparkling gem, and greater armor requires a scintillating gem.  Here's the table of construction:

Once you have created a gem of your size, you need to redeem it.  You will have to visit Koga Hideki in Kara, Jibril ibn Rashid in Al-Jalima, Alean the Steel Forger in Eastham, or Iian di Alduressa near the Knights of Karlun base depending on what race's version you want.  When you turn your gem in, you only get half the set of armor.  The first gem gives you the bottom half and the second gem gives you the top half.  

Back in the day when shadow armor was first introduced, it was much stronger than it is today.  Turbine thought this wasn't a good thing, so they had the master smiths killed over and over again (that's why they are all living by lifestones) .  Now they have a ton of vitae and cannot make armor nearly as well.  This old form of armor is known as Pre-patch Shadow armor and is quite rare and expensive, since it was only around for a month.  

To make up for this, Post-patch armor can be imbued with the power of the elemental Atlan stones.  Unimbued armor has sorry protection against the elements, but if you add the power of an Atlan stone, you can raise that particular elemental protection to unparalleled, as well as raise the base AL by twenty points.  This process is not without drawbacks, of course.  The resistance of the armor against the opposite element (fire and frost, electricity and acid) is reduced to 0 and the armor becomes unenchantable.  The other two elements are also improved, from poor protection to average.  For a melee, stoned armor is much more useful because of its improved protection and AL.  If you are a mage though, you probably will want to stay away from using stones, since you won't be able to cast on it anymore. Adding stones also changes the appearance of your armor and can look quite cool.

During the Thorns of the Hopeslayer event, a one-time enemy called the Nexus Crystal appeared.  There was a long and involved battle required to reach this fellow, but eventually one player from each server (that existed at the time... Wintersebb and Solclaim did not exist back then) killed the crystal and received one of the best rewards in the game.  On the corpse were four scintillating gems and the Nexus Core gem, which could be crafted into a suit of Nexus Shadowhunter Armor.  If you think shadow armor is nice, you'll love this stuff.  No one chose to create Koujia, so the stats for that form are unknown.  The Amuli is AL 240 and the Celdon is AL 260, both with above average protects against slash, pierce, and blug, and average protects against the elements.  In addition, the coat or breastplate cast leadership mastery VI, Magic Resistance V, and Mana Renewal IV.

Nuhmudira has restored the Master Smiths to their previous strength!  They can again make the higher AL versions of Shadow armor, although the Neo-GSx works differently than the pre-patch version.  Now when you turn in a Fused Gem, you get the version of your armor that can take an elemental stone.  Return it for the Neo- version.  This kind of armor has a wield requirement of level 30.  You can also buy dyes from the Smiths' apprentice if you want to change the color. 

You can also make your Neo-GSx even more powerful by adding special shards found on Crystal Shard monsters.  These are rare-dropping items that come in 8 variants, one for each type of damage and one for armor.  Adding the shard to a piece of GSx changes the wield requirement to level 50+, adds 50 points of armor to the piece of armor, and adds a Major Ward spell, depending on what shard you use.  The armor also changes to a nice-looking Black and Gold.  If you dyed your GSx, you will need to return it to the Smith who made it for an un-dyed version before you add the shard.  You can even dye your Sharded GSx!  Bring a dye pot of either red, light blue, or purple to Miko Li, Jojii Adherent in Kara at 83.3S, 47.2E.  He'll alter the dye to allow it to be added to your sharded GSx!