Everybody thought it would be like Extreme because Savage was above it. I think they would've actually used the term if they meant it to be that kind of jump in difficulty.

I think they left armor out for a couple of reasons. This is something new they're trying and they didn't want to accidentally pull people out of the savage tier to farm this instead. If they let you trade tokens for something like savage books, they would most likely lock down the content for weekly clears.