What is the best equipment for an E9 Cyclops?

[Omnirizon]

Shadow Brand
Lucky Coin (?Silver Coin? can't remember what's called, but you know what i'm talkin about)
Starshine Skullcap
Rainbow Armor
Boots of Flying
Antimagic Amulet
Ring of Regeneration

maximize MR, as it is really the weakest link with an E9 'clops

protection is so high don't need etherealness, although luck is good for everyone.

with a shadow brand and such good defensive capability, don't need trampling or quickness. I think the mobility of flying is better choice.

[Lingchih]

Yes, luck protects 50% against everything.

[Twan]

Without informations about your nation, I can't see how people can give those definitive opinions.

If you have astral mages the cyclop of course don't need luck or ethearalness on items, just one mage or two to buff him. If you also have water mages, and plan to use just mages + cyclop he don't need quickness too (if you use the thug in an army, quickness items may be usefull, as mage AI isn't reliable to buff SC with a range 15 spell).

Anyway...

Behemoth boot + vine shield offer an excellent synergy (for a trampler vine shield or eye shield is far better than lucky coin IMO). But if he don't have mages to cast quickness nor haste nor flying on him (+ luck to replace the item), I don't think making your cyclop a trampler is the best use of the chassis (and the only way to give him quickness + trampling with items would create encumbrance problems, with the jade armor). So I'd use behemoth boots only if I have the appropriate buffers.

Horned Helmet reduce your defense for a negligible attack, you won't kill a size 6 ennemy SC, nor even an elephant, with it, and smaller ennemies are supposed to be trampled, so in general (if you are not fighting mindless) it's better to use an Horror Helmet boosting the cyclop's fear. Horned Helmet is only good if you also carry a weapon and plan to fight thugs/sc, it's main interest is one more attack to reduce ennemy defense.

Finally , if your goal is to kill a big army of chaff, using the cyclop as a mage and casting iron bane + blade wind x 4 kill far more guys than trampling, with reduced risk. And if your goal is to kill creatures able to survive against this (high hp, magical armors etc...), the cyclop would be better fighting with a weapon.

[sum1lost]

I agree that ethereal will not benefit you. Most things that can bust past your high protection will have magical attacks anyways.

[moderation]

I've been experimenting on w/ the Cyclops using a variety of nations, so I am mostly looking for the best configuration for it in the "best case scenario". I can see how things can depend on your nation. Having buff mages, particularly astral ones would be handy to save item slots (though of course it would suck to have your S1 buff Magic Dueled).

Omnirizon: By the way, why prefer the Shadow Brand over Frost or Fire? IIRC, the Shadow Brand deals damage that can be resisted with MR. Maybe the weakness that it causes is better against enemy SCs though.

[thejeff]

Shadow Brand: Larger area, MR resistable. Doesn't work on lifeless.

Frost/Fire Brand. AoE1. Doesn't work on Cold/Fire immune.

Shadow Brand is really nice against normal chaff.
SC's are likely to have enough MR to ignore it. But they're likely to be Fire/Frost immune too. Especially once you start fielding lots of Fire/FrostBrand wielding thugs.

Against standard Undead chaff (longdead/souless), Firebrand is really the only option. Though against truly huge hordes of chaff, damage shields are the only thing that works.
Even with a Firebrand and quickness, 1 SC can only kill 300 human sized units before hitting the 50 turn limit.

[Zeldor]

Trampling is the way to go against hordes of chaff. Stymphalan wings + boots of quickness + 2 shields [including fire one] do wonders. You need to be careful with that approach though. Flying carpet to retreat if you face something big