Dueling families of Tradmeet: the Wiki lies!

FredN

OK, the wiki I read says that if you kill Gristor and his guards, you won't have any consequences like losing rep, and he will drop a set of Elven chain mail. This is all complete and utter BS. Rasaad, Anomen and Nalia were all totally appalled; I had to appease them by pinky swearing never to do any such thing ever again. Worst of all, there was NO elven chain mail. What a fiasco.

Humanoid_Taifun

I believe you are confusing two different men.
Gristor has nothing to do with the quest you are talking about, and the wiki correctly identifies him as innocent (affecting your reputation if killed).

FredN

Huh; OK that is odd. This is the source upon which I was relying.
>Lord Skarmaen Alibakkar (Trademeet): The armor is available early in the game. It can be obtained during the questline to help Trademeet. After clearing the Druid Grove, two nobles will compete for the city's favor. If you work with Lord Alibakkar to steal a family mantle, you will receive the armor as a reward. You can also kill Alibakkar for the armor and other items.<
I had already given the mantle to the High Merchant, so, I killed the guy and he dropped nothing.

FredN

oh bugger. I tried it again several times. and yes he did drop the chain mail. No idea why id didn't work the first time I did it. How odd. Amusingly enough, Nalia is the one who gets the most benefit from it. Her AC goes up and she can still spelcast fine. If my swashbuckler wears it, my thieving abilities suffer, and my AC is also 2 less. I am far better off wearing the Night's Gift. Aerie can wear it, but for odd reasons her AC doesn't increase. She does, however, get a bonus to her AC by wearing a magical +1 buckler. An interesting example of "share the wealth".

jmerry

The advantage of that elven chain on a non-mage thief is that it's not enchanted, so you can use it with a protection item. Even then, it's not obviously better than nonmagical studded leather, and light armors do come in sufficiently high enchantment levels for enchanted armor to be worthwhile sometimes. For a mage, archmage robes beat basic elven chain. Though they are quite expensive if you have to buy them, and the alignment restrictions can be troublesome if you're running two mages of the same alignment.
You'll also get enchanted elven chain later on. Including a set that gets a ToB upgrade.

The one class that elven chain is really good for? Bards. It's the only kind of armor they can use (before UAI) that allows spellcasting. Unless you're willing to throw away the spells entirely, it's elven chain or nothing.

For the BG1 campaign, elven chain is available through Dorn's quest. One of the enemies in the big battle east of BG city drops it.

FredN

Heh; had to look it up. My level 29 Blade has +5 Aslyferrund chain mail. Good stuff! Makes me immune to normal weapons? OK that would be useful in SoA, but in ToB? No enemies I know of use "normal" weaponry. Nice thought though.