Hall of Monuments: Resilience

[Confused? Start here.]

Resilience translates to "elite armor set" (all pieces excepting head armor, which is optional). There's 8 HoM points available: one for any armor, one for three different armors, two for getting five different armors, one for getting seven, and one each for (either) Kurzick/Luxon armor, Vabbian armor, and Obsidian armor. This is a monument where money is very necessary regardless of how many points you go for. Your goal here is 4-6 points.

Elite armor sets typically cost 75k (15k less without headpiece), or 50k for the Eye of the North armors (10k less without headpiece), plus a lot of materials. Kurzick/Luxon, Vabbian, and Obsidian armor require some very expensive materials, and a few other armors here and there require moderately expensive things such as Monstrous Fangs. A lot of armor, however, requires only materials you may already have picked up or can easily gain more of or craft. You can get a full overview of armor and their material requirements on the wiki.

The "least number of armors" method to get four points is to make sure two of your elite armors are Kurzick/Luxon and Vabbian, since those each award a unique point. (You could use Obsidian instead of one of those, but since that's typically far, far more expensive and/or time-consuming to get the materials for, I don't recommend it if you don't already have some.) With the addition of one more elite armor, you'll go to four points: "any", "kurzick or luxon", "vabbian", and "3 total". Adding two more elite armors would bring you to six points (for hitting "5 total").

In addition to your 60 or 75k, you'll need a lot of amber chunks or jadeite for Kurzick or Luxon respecively, and a fair number of rubies and sapphires for Vabbian.

Getting jade or amber can be done in two ways. The first is to throw money at the problem; the gems are available via the rare material vendor or players. The prices right now are high and unstable, but if you've got the money, you certainly can just go that route.

However, since you probably would also like some progress towards the Honor monument, you may want to do this another way, and that's by earning Kurzick or Luxon title points. Every 5000 points earned (see the Honor monument section for methods) can be turned in for one piece of amber or jade. This allows you to get quite a few "free" (investment of time, rather than money) gems.

You may be able to get additional amber or jade as drops—they're rare, but they do happen, more often in hard mode—or by salvaging items. The chance of getting an amber or jade from an amber or jade weapon is pretty slim, though, even on "highly salvageable" items. Since you'll usually get a decent amount of other materials by salvaging, it can be worthwhile to try on lower-value items, but be aware you're unlikely to pick up many this way.

You'll need 80 total jade or amber for a full set of armor (10 fewer without headpiece), so you may end up purchasing a few to get to that total even if you get most of them through faction and drops.

Rubies and sapphires are a bit harder to come by. You can turn in trade contracts obtained for doing various quests in Vabbi at a 7 contract:1 gem rate, but you will not earn enough trade contracts on a single character to get the necessary number of gems (though if you have alts, you can do the quests again on each one). However, the gems can drop from some enemies (more likely in hard mode), as well as from Nightfall treasures, and in end chests or hidden treasures in EotN dungeons.

Rubies and sapphires can also be expert salvaged occasionally from certain gem-studded items, mainly found in Vabbi; your chances are a somewhat better if they have a "highly salvageable" inscription.

You'll only need a total of 16 of each (or 14 without the headpiece), so you may find it easier to buy some of the necessary gems... but these were not cheap even before the release of the HoM calculator, and since then they have gone up in price, so even only needing a few can require a fair amount of money.

If you don't want to try to get or buy the gems necessary for Kurzick/Luxon and Vabbian (and, if that's the case, you probably don't want to try to get Obsidian armor, either), you can go for four points by getting any five other unique elite armors, or five points for getting a total of seven.

In Prophecies, these armors are available in the Southern Shiverpeaks area, although they are only available for the six core classes. Both Factions and Nightfall have armors that can only be crafted in the area you are taken to when you beat the final campaign mission, so you must bring the materials and money with you into that last mission to get Elite Canthan, Elite Imperial, Elite Exotic (ritualist and assassin only), or, in Nightfall, Primeval armor. Nightfall also offers Ancient armor, craftable in the Bone Palace in the Desolation, Elite Sunspear, craftable in the Command Post after getting the armorer, plus the aforementioned Vabbian armor.

Lastly, each of the factions in EotN has an associated armor: Asuran, Monument (Ebon Vanguard faction), and Norn. These armors are cheaper than the others (50k for a full set), but require you to obtain rank 5 in the appropriate title track to get them crafted. EotN also offers Deldrimor armor, but this does not come in full sets and cannot be displayed in the HoM, except for the Silver Eagle set available to warriors in lieu of Deldrimor pieces.

If you play a Dervish or a Paragon as your main, you will have fewer choices than other professions, and you will not be able to get Kurzick/Luxon armor. You can still get the goal 4-6 points, but if you're interested in maxing out your points in Resilience, you'll need at least one alt of a different profession to get through enough of Factions to get the Kurzick/Luxon armor.

Also note: Once you install an armor into the Monument of Valor, you no longer have to keep it. You can expert salvage it to try to get some of your materials back, though of course you will only get one type of material when you do (hopefully the more expensive ones). This makes it easier to manage storage space for people with only a couple characters, although if you spread your armors out across your alts, you won't have to worry much about this.

Lastly, you may be thinking, "Okay, but how do I get all this money?" Well, that's a good question, and I'll cover that in another post.