This mod aims to give weapons and armour more sensible stats plus clearer use cases and progression, while preserving that real KCD feel. It stays very close to vanilla and within the spirit of the game, while fixing obvious oversights and making some poorly balanced and obviously bad items more useful.

It is neither a balance nor a realism mod, although it improves on vanilla in both areas. 


What this mod offers:

• Armour stats now line up more with their visual appearance.  Armour that only covers half the limb now weighs less than full-limb protection, items without mail (e.g. kettle hat) are much less noisy than mail, there's more variance between chainmail types, spurs are less noisy, and so on.
  

• Mail and plate items now have strength requirements ranging from "trivial" (5) to "onerous" (15).  Additionally, items have been spread out into a wider range of light and medium armour tiers, to provide for a more natural sense of progression. (Unfortunately, due to how the game handles stat requirements, armor strength requirements are a cosmetic change only).
  

• Many neglected items have been improved to give them a use case, including the Tusk, Sheba, and Envoy swords, Axes, Cuman cloth/leather gear, jackets/vests, sabres, and a variety of other items.
  

• Some overly strong weapons like the Stinger and Polearms had their damage slightly reduced.  They remain very strong in their category but should no longer be a recipe for instant death. 
  

• Light armor perk rework.  Many more items now count as light armour (including some helms), and obviously heavy armour items like late-game brigandines now correctly count as plate.  (These changes are less aggressive and more realistic than Pandor's Light armor fix.)
  

• Dozens of miscellaneous changes to smooth out rough edges from vanilla. Saddles no longer break in a single hit, "Light" items now weigh less than "Heavy" items, "decorated" items now have higher charisma & conspic, Ravens Beak & Spiked Warhammer now have the correct icons, previously identical items now have different stats and use cases, and so on.
• (Optional) An optional version of this mod that incorporates no stolen tags, as these mods conflict.
  

How do I know if this mod is for me?
If you want something that makes neglected items more sensible or believe that almost all weapons & armour should be useful depending on your build, then this is for you.  If you want a difficulty or an economy mod, or something that adds a lot of new items, this mod doesn't do that. 

Notes on difficulty:
Although not a difficulty mod, some changes may affect your experience.

• It takes longer to be able to equip mail and plate armour (starts around strength level 6 with some exceptions). 
• The maximum achievable armour rating has decreased very slightly, due to late game combat jacket/jupon nerfs.
• The strongest polearms (e.g. Halberd, spears) are noticeably less damaging.
• There's a much wider range of useful light and medium armour pieces.  Non-plate wearing players can reach higher armour ratings more easily.
• Some Cumans deal up to ~10% more damage and take ~5% less damage due to sabre and caftan buffs (depends on your armour, and what they spawn with).
• Quests and quest items are unaffected.
  

Overall, I would say the game is slightly harder but the most egregious difficulty spikes have been reduced, and the player has a much wider range of options to handle it. I'd be surprised if you noticed a major change in difficulty. 

Requirements:
None :).  While it is designed for players with all DLC, this mod will work with any combination of DLC packages or no DLC at all.

Language / Localization:
This mod works in every language, as it only changes numeric values. 

Install/Uninstall:
Extract the zip folder contents, and move the MoreSensible folder to your Kingdom Come/Mods folder.  That's it.   

You can check if the mod is loading by using the tilde ` key to open the console when in-game.  The name of the folder ("MoreSensible") should appear in the console.  Alternatively, check the stats on the cuman harness, spurs, or a mail hauberk.  If you have issues with the mod making no changes in-game, read this first.

To uninstall, simply delete the MoreSensible folder from your /Mods folder.

If you prefer having no stolen tags, make sure you download the "No Stolen Tags alternate" version of the mod under Optional Files.

Updating to the latest version:
Delete the MoreSensible folder at Kingdom Come Deliverance/Mods/MoreSensible.  Extract the latest version of More Sensible Weapons and Armour to your /Mods folder.  That's it.  

Conflicts:
This will conflict with any mod that changes item stats or adds/removes weapons & armours.  A list of files modified in this mod can be found in the readme.  "No Stolen Tags" in particular is a known conflict.    There is an alternate version of this mod available under Optional Files that incorporates no stolen tags.

Earlier versions of this mod edited item names; I have removed these changes as other mods do it better.  If you want to rename items, consider one of:

• Better Sorted Inventory
• Renamed
• Inventoried
  

These should not conflict with More Sensible Weapons & Armor.

Detailed Changelog:

Clothing & Armour:

Chest pieces:
All armour pieces heavier than cloth now have strength requirements.  

• Gambeson rework. Gambesons now have different stats based on whether they are “long” or “short”, “light” or “heavy” and so on. Turned “heavy” items into a “new” tier of heavy gambesons which have higher defence stats but are very heavy for when you want to go thicc Henry.  Non-gambesons (e.g. tarred jacket, quilted vest) have greatly reduced weight and now form a lighter tier at the bottom of the category.  You should now have much more variety in weight levels with your choice of build/gear.
• Chainmail rework. Body chain has much more sensible stats that correspond to its appearance, as well as a much wider range of tiers within the class.  Chain body items in the base game were borderline nonsensical, with roughly identical weights and stats. More details here.
• Cuman clothing rework. Long caftans are now a thin, light robe with less noise and greatly reduced weight, in line with their model. The short caftans, which are visibly heavier & more padded, are now more robust with higher defence.  Cuman tunics were also slightly buffed.  Overall, Cuman gear should be more attractive now and I made a number of noise reductions and charisma buffs to items for players who want to channel their inner Hungarian.  Nichok nichok nichok!  
• Cuman armor rework.  Light lamellar and heavy lamellar body and pauldrons now have more sensible stats that better fit their design.  Heavy lamellar in particular is now an attractive early-game alternative to chainmail and plate.  Cuman harness and brigandine are now lighter, quieter, and have more sensible stats.
• Reweighted plate armours so there’s now a clear progression from short light brigandine to light brigandine, to brigandine.  Plate coat armours overall got 1-2 units heavier, and the plate armour jack gained slash defence at the expense of thrust defence, reflecting its design. 
• Tweaked body plate stats to better reflect their designs (e.g. made the decorated cuirass more conspicuous, made the shortened Milanese lighter than the Milanese).  Cuirasses are now mostly lighter than brigandines and provide more interesting tradeoffs.  I'd like to do another pass on these to somehow further differentiate the cloth vs no cloth design (e.g. brigandine vs cuirass) but I'm not sure how to do it without unfairly disadvantaging one type or the other.  
• Nerfed exterior jackets (combat jacket/jupon etc) as these were as good as, or better than gambesons at half to three quarters of the weight.  Reduced their stats from 4/7/12 to a max of 2/4/8 and reduced weight and noise slightly to compensate.  Added minor differences in weight, noise and protection based on whether it’s a vest (sleeveless) or short/long sleeved.
• Strengthened leather jerkins and made them quieter, better reflecting the design and also making it more viable for unarmored/stealth builds as an early cuirass.  There's been a real shortage of light cuirass options; in between these and the Cuman harness, light armor players should now have a lot more choice.
• Once-over on all the Warhorse DLC gear.  These have all been tweaked in some way to accentuate their uniqueness.  Pieces that were not close to the best in class, now have other advantages (e.g. weight, durability).  Additionally, all of these have a value now.  In the base game they have 1 value (presumably so the player can’t get a lot of free money), but this means they are also almost free to repair, which breaks the economy in other ways.  I’ve decided it’s best for them to have a normal level of value and to cost money in repairs.
  

Light armor rework:

• Some helms now count as light armor.  Weak kettles, skullcaps, bascinets, and one of the light Cuman helms now count as “chainmail” for the purposes of the Light Armour perk. More details here.
• Vambraces, Cuman Harness, riveted gloves, weak Plate Couters also count as light armour.
• (controversial) Reinforced Cuman, Long Noble, and Heavy hauberks (the 3 best hauberks) now count as “plate” and sound as such.  There is a tradeoff here between sacrificing some small immersion (a couple of hauberks sound like plate) in return for the player not gaining +50% dodge bonus on a 20 weight hauberk that adds +22 defence.  
• (controversial) Plate jacks and brigandines (Milanese, Aachen, light) now count as plate armour. Brigandine legs were already defined as plate and I believe this fits the intent of the game.  Short light brigandines, and the lightweight dark brigandine, still count as leather, and have stats closer to leather than plate.
  

Helmets:

• Tweaked helmets and added strength requirements.  Helmets were mostly well balanced in the base game, albeit a bit lacking at the lower end. 
• Kettle hats/skullcaps are now less noisy. Kettle hats with a brim gained extra slash defence at the cost of stab defence, reflecting that the brim would catch angled slash attacks, expanding the area of face coverage without actually covering the face. 
• Other helms have almost all been tweaked based on their appearance, e.g. the Hounskull is weaker to stab damage due to the large gaps in the visor.
• Tweaked mail coif stats, noise and durability to make them more sensible.
  

Added strength requirements to almost all heavy gear:

• All cuirasses (7), brigandines/jacks (8) and chainmail (varies, but around 8-14 for most).   Needs feedback, but this is a good starting point. Notably, to wear full armour now you’ll need to be quite strong.
• Gauntlets (7-13 strength).  Arms tire very quickly with extra weight on them, even as little as a 16oz boxing glove (0.45kg).  Plate gauntlets and forearms would require significant extra strength to be used when swinging weapons and holding a shield. 
• All plate armpieces (7-14 strength) except for the vambraces you get during archery training.
• All leg plate (5-13 strength).  Weaker/lower level players now have more of a reason to use the half brigandine legs.
• Larger shields (7-14 strength).
• Plate helms.  Weak kettles and the common bascinet are unaffected, but higher quality helms now require strength ranging from 6-12 (with some rare exceptions).
  

This should add a lot more flavour to the game and prevent the acquisition of game-breaking power too early.

Nb.  Unlike weapons, there is no "you cannot equip this" error implemented for armour in-game, so the strength requirement is a cosmetic thing, you will need to roleplay it.  (I can't tell if wearing too-heavy armour makes you slower or fatigue faster, but it's possible).

Leg pieces:

• Added strength requirements to all leg plate. 
• Half brigandine legs are now lighter and weigh less than their full brigandine equivalents.
• Slightly weakened the padded chausses against stab damage.  Tweaked mail chausses stats to better reflect that it’s mail overlaid on top of padded chausses (which is why in vanilla it has unusually high blunt resistance for a mail item).
• Some minor tweaks to better differentiate the silent and quiet shoes as well as some boots.  Generally stealth gear has taken a charisma debuff, so you'll need to dress up in something else if you want to rely on charisma during conversations.
• Boots have more sensible stats that align with their design and appearance.  More information here.
  

Arm Armour:

• All gloves/gauntlets lost -1 defence point.  With 11 defence, these were too strong relative to armguards (10-20) given how little of the arm they cover.  This has been offset by granting +1 defence to all full-arm armpieces. (For arm armour, the overall result is that the lows are lower, and the highs are higher, with a wider range of choices in between).
• All pauldron stats have been tweaked so that defence and weight better line up with their visual appearance, for example if they have a shoulder plate or not.
• Plate couters are lighter & less noisy.
• Vambraces & Cuman Vambraces offer less protection now; previously they were nearly as good as plate full-arm armour.
• Reduced leather and hunter's gloves sale value as these were way too high.  Even a commoner should be able to afford these.
• Spread out the gauntlets a little more, so there’s clearer progression from leather-> hunters->riveted->composite-> plate
  

Weapons:

In terms of weapon meta, relatively, axes should be slightly stronger (damage has increased in line with or slightly ahead of armour buffs), swords should be very slightly weaker overall (damage is unchanged, but many armours gained 1-3 extra points of slash defence), and maces should be roughly the same - although Cumans have gained a few points of blunt resistance thanks to the Caftan buff. 

Swords:

• Queen of Sheba's sword gained +15 durability points on top of its base of 10.  It's still fragile for lore reasons, but should now at least be usable for more than a couple of hits. 
• Buffed Tusk sword and added a strength requirement. Tusk now does some blunt damage as part of making it unique. I’m not sure how this will play out in practice, whether it only applies on hilt attacks or to every strike.  Test it and let me know. 
• Envoy's aide de camp sword is now much stronger, befitting its rarity.
• Stinger experienced a slight thrust damage nerf.  For a sword it could kill a three-layered plate-armoured enemy in two hits, which was a bit too powerful.
  

Axes:

• Weighted low-tier axes more towards slash damage as they greatly underperform swords. Early axes are the worst weapons in the game and penetrate poorly.  Low level axes now do 15-20% more slash damage and 15-20% less blunt damage. More detail on axe balance can be found here.
• Increased top-tier axe damage slightly, and reduced the stab damage of some axes in line with their design (short spike). Some weaker axes gained +1-2 slash damage.
• Some unusually weak axes like the Bardiche and Cuman Axe were buffed and now have more of a use case. 
• Depending on their visual design, many axes may now lean slightly more towards slash or blunt damage instead of using the default 50/50 split.
  

Sabres:

• Improved Sabre damage.  Slightly buffed the Nicopolis sabre (not as much as I’d like given it’s an early game weapon and has implications e.g. for Capon’s hunting quest), and meaningfully buffed Common & Hungarian sabres, as Cumans spawn with these often and they are toothless by midgame.  
• Buffed sabre defence; each of these has gained 5-20 defence to bring them up more in line with shortswords.  I need some people to try out a sabres playthrough and test these.
  

Polearms:

• Spear, Hunting Spear have been nerfed and should no longer be capable of 1-hit kills on a moderately armoured enemy.  Halberd also received a minor damage nerf.
• Bardiche and Lucerne Hammer received a minor (~+5) damage boost as they were below where they reasonably should be compared to other items.
  

Bows & arrows:

• Sinew bow gained +4 damage.  Honestly this one is just for me but given how long it takes to draw, I want it to hit like a freight train. In vanilla I can’t tell the difference between the yew longbow and the sinew. 
• Upper-tier arrows have increased in value.
  

Shields:

• Rebalanced all shields.  Shield weight, size, and defence stats now line up more accurately with their shape and design.
• Shield strength requirements have increased.   Shield weight and strength requirement now goes from light to heavy and small to large as the shields get larger and more protective.
• All unique/quest shields are superior in some way to their closest level "normal" equivalent.
• Cuman shields have slightly lower defence, befitting their smaller size, in return for lower weight & strength requirements (metal) or drastically lower weight and durability (wooden).  
  

Horse gear:

• All saddles now have durability!  No more will your saddles be destroyed in one hit, requiring hundreds of groschen in repairs. Durability varies by quality.
• Tweaked horse head armours.  Chanfron and Steel Chanfron are now lighter, befitting their models, whereas the much larger Chanfron & Criniere is now heavier and much more protective as it also covers the neck.  
• Leather chanfron is now stronger against blunt damage and weaker against stab, differentiating it from the plate chanfrons.
• Tweaked horse bridles.  There's now a difference in durability depending on quality. 
• Spurs are now less noisy overall, and have varying noise levels by their quality.  Cuman are the quietest, followed by gold and silver. Travelers and Knights spurs are the noisiest, but still quieter than in vanilla.
• Silver and Gold spurs are now much higher visibility and more conspicuous. Other spurs have somewhat lower visibility and conspic.
• Some caparison stats changed mildly to better line up with their design. The "robber baron" (dark grey and black) version is now much stronger and should be attractive to wear. 
  

Misc:

• "Bright" items, especially the Bright Milanese Brigandine, have much higher visibility and conspicuousness, fitting their design.  Wear one to stand out across the battlefield.
• Increased charisma for some "decorated" items, e.g. Aachen Decorated Chausses which had weirdly low values (7) for cosmetic armour.  Not sure I've caught them all.  Let me know if you find more.
• (WIP/partially implemented) The best stealth items are now slightly weaker at defence, with slightly lower visibility, higher conspic, and reduced charisma. They should be harder to see and less protective in combat, but also enemies should become alerted faster once they spot you.  Grey/brown/green items offer low average visibility & the lowest conspic, but are often slightly noisier, more visible, and more protective than purpose-made stealth gear. Now there are tradeoffs for wearing stealth gear, instead of simply equipping the best black items you could find in vanilla.  More information here.
• Reduced value of silver spurs (-20%) and gold spurs (-50%) as these were too easy to create game-breaking wealth with. They remain highly valuable.
• Reduced value of St John's Wort, Dandelion, and Marigold by 60-80% as these can be picked up in massive amounts and offered game-breaking money.
• French altar candle now has both a weight and a value and may be worth stealing.
• Increased tailor kit efficiency from 0.1 to 0.15 (small kit), and 0.5 to 0.7 (large kit). This is just for me as I didn’t romance Theresa and got sick of running through 3-4 kits to repair a single gambeson.  
• Repriced some armours to better line up with their new place within the armour tiers.  More information on this can be found in the patch notes. 
  

Future changes (if I have time):

• Create a version of the mod which incorporates an economy mod, as the other mods are outdated and have gamebreaking effects.