Editing Changelog (section)

== v0.54.9 — Hide Gear No Longer Needs Cave-deep Materials ==
* '''Starter armour is starter armour again.''' Stitch Hide Leggings sits at [[Crafting]] 32 and gives 5 defense — but it was asking for Deepchitin, which only drops in the Cavern Depths. Getting there meant [[Hunting]] 60, or three guardians down and [[Expeditions]] 30, by which point the Depths are handing you a 20-defense set for free. Hide Vest, Wooden Shield, Bone Helm, Copper Cap, Bronze Helm, Bronze Shield and Bronze Greaves were all locked the same way: the gear you make to reach a place was sitting behind reaching it.
* Every crafted armour recipe now asks for a material you could already have gone and got at that recipe's own level. The whole low ladder — everything from Copper Cap at 25 up to Bronze Greaves at 48 — takes RIDGEPLATE, a new Redwood Wilds plate that drops from Redwood hunts (from [[Hunting]] 25) and the Redwood patrol ([[Expeditions]] 15). Fiber Tunic and Iron Plate take Bogscale, Iron Helm takes Deepchitin, and the rest of the ladder steps up one biome at a time from there. The deep materials keep their place at the top, where the recipes that want them are already past them.
* Because the materials got closer to home, the recipes also got cheaper: Bone Helm's bill drops from 3 Slagplate to 2 Ridgeplate, Fiber Tunic's from 3 Reefshell to 2 Bogscale. Mangrove-Frame Shield moved from [[Crafting]] 63 to 66 so it sits at or above the Slagplate it now asks for, instead of reaching two biomes past the swamp it makes you stand in.