Masterwork armor doubts

[Oompa]

4E is just a vending machine. Put gold into ritual, get magic item out of ritual. To upgrade gear you disenchant your darkhide getting 20% back, then put that into the ritual and poof, out pops elderhide.

An +6 sword costs as much as making it in an ritual or buying it in an shop..

 

[Lord Sessadore]

In another thread, it was mentioned that the masterwork armors can be interpreted not as different materials, but different techniques.

I'm with bjorn here. There's really nothing (that I've seen, anyway - haven't gone over it with a fine-toothed comb, and no books with me right now) in the masterwork armor descriptions that says they use any different materials. They could, but they don't have to. It's just special techniques used with powerful magic to make the armor tougher. I think it's cool - gives some flavor on how you get that +6 armor, instead of just some dude sitting in a lab somewhere with a pile of expensive, undescribed stuff doing something (who knows what?) for x amount of time and popping out a mighty magic item.