Is there a reason, why epic and flawless HEAVY armor needs hardened steel now? Why not only STEEL?
For epic and flawless light armor, you need thick hide + other stuff.
For epic and flawless medium armor, you need iron + other stuff.
For epic and flawless heavy armor, you need hardened steel + other stuff?
So before patch we needed 1 Heavy pauldron (normal) + 5 steel reinforcements + flawless padding. For the normal heavy pauldron, you needed 10 heavy leather, 30 iron and padding.
Hardened steel was NEVER anywhere involved.
In my opinions those epics armors should cost more expensive stuff than just regular iron/steel since they are supposed to be the higher end of those armors. The change toward the hardened steel seem to be logical and to be expected. The thing is tho they should have done about the same with the other armors too. Maybe obsidian ingots to make those a bit more useful for all the trouble they are to craft.
The cost should have been whatever the materials needed for the base version, added to the list of flawless materials needed. I don’t know why they couldn’t do that and just call it a day?
In my opinion those “epics” armors weren’t really that hard to make for something supposed to be Epic with no real thing above them that you can craft and repair. And i shouldn’t be equipping all my thralls fighters with “Epic” armors that easily.
According to the old wiki page, only steel reinforcements were needed.
Now steel reinforcements + hardened steel (I dont use heavy armor, just for my thralls).
Well you still need the hardened leather or layered silk/fur, where you need the alchemical base.
So there is the “expensive material”.
And for the new armors, you need obsidian bars.
The devs said, they wanted to get rid of crafting the baseform and then the epic/flawless. They never said, they were unhappy about the costs and most answers here, want even higher costs?
BUT WHY?? Grinding is NOT content. It prolongs the game, but not in a nice way!!