Armor

Armor refers to a set of items which increase the player's defensive abilities when worn. Armor can be made with leather, gold, iron and diamonds (and fire too, but fire is unavailable without the use of an inventory editor, or using the option of cheats in 1.3.1) and consists of chestplates, helmets, boots and leggings. The player's current protection is visually reflected by the armor meter, containing 10 total bars, with each armor bar giving 8% damage reduction for a total of 80% wearing the best armor.

Player armor


Helmets, chestplates, leggings, and boots can be crafted out of leather, gold, iron, diamond or fire*. Chain armor can not be crafted legitimately, but can be obtained through trading with villagers or as rare drops from mobs that can be found wearing them.

While worn, each piece of armor adds to the player's total defense points, which serve to reduce certain kinds of damage to the player. Whenever a piece of armor absorbs damage for the player, the armor itself is damaged. After taking enough damage, the armor piece is destroyed. Each individual combination of armor type and material gives a different amount of defense points and has a different level of durability. Diamond gives the highest defense along with the most durability, and leather gives the least defense and least durability.

When the player takes damage of a sort that is not affected by armor (see Effects below), any armor that he or she is wearing does not take damage.

A player can wear a pumpkin as a helmet. Although this will (partially) block the player's view and not provide protection from attacks, it will prevent enderman from becoming aggressive towards the player when the player looks at them. The player will still be attacked if he or she physically attacks the enderman, even if they are wearing a pumpkin. Pumpkins do not help to reduce damage.

A player can wear a head as a helmet, changing their appearance. Heads do not help to reduce damage.

Effects
The following types of damage are reduced by armor and, consequently, damage the armor itself: The following types of damage are not reduced by armor and have no effect on the armor itself:
 * Direct attacks from mobs
 * Direct attacks from other players
 * Getting hit with an arrow
 * Getting hit with a fireball from a Ghast or Blaze
 * Touching a block of fire or lava
 * Touching a cactus
 * Explosions
 * Drowning in water (Xbox 360 Edition)


 * Ongoing damage from being on fire
 * Suffocating inside a block
 * Drowning in water (PC)
 * Starvation
 * Falling into the Void
 * Poisoning; e.g., from a cave spider attack or a Potion of Poison
 * Instant damage from a Potion of Harming
 * /kill command
 * Wither potion effects
 * Fall Damage.
 * Getting struck by lightning.

Protection enchantments protect from types of damage that armor doesn't protect against without an enchantment, like falling damage. Armor durability still doesn't decrease when protection-enchanted armor takes environmental damage.

Defense points
The following table shows the amount of defense points added by each individual piece of armor, as well as the total points added by a full set of armor for each material.

The following table shows the number of defense points per unit of material. Thus, a pair of iron boots provides 50% efficiency-4 ingots to 2 points of armor, whereas a diamond chestplate  provides 100% efficiency-8 diamonds to 8 points of armor.

Thus, a full set of diamond armor gives .833 defense points per diamond, whereas a full set of leather armor gives .292 (65% less) defense points.

Armor enchantment effect calculation
Note: Some of this information is outdated, since the 1.4.6 update.

Armor can get protection enchantments such as "Protection III" or "Fire protection IV". The maximum level of a protection enchantment is IV (4). Protection enchantments stack (up to a cap). The type of protection enchantment determines whether the protection enchantment comes into effect, according to the following table:

This means that "Protection" is always at least as good as for example "Fire protection", even against fire damage (with the exception of "Feather falling", see below).

The enchantment damage reduction is applied to the damage left after the armor's basic effect, and the base "enchantment protection factor" (EPF) of an enchanted item is   floor ( (6 + level * level) / 2 ) Which gives the following EPF for enchantments of level I-IV:

For Feather falling, the EPF of the specific piece is doubled.

The total EPF is the sum for all armor pieces, and capped at 25. An EPF of 25 can be reached by two level III pieces and one level IV piece (2*7+11=25). This also means that Feather Falling is unnecessary to reduce fall damage if you can reach an EPF of 25 without Feather falling boots.

The actual EPF applied is randomized to between 50% and 100% of the EPF calculated above, rounded up, and capped at 20. This means that, with an EPF of 25, the effective EPF will range from 13 to 20.

Each point of the effective EPF increases damage reduction by 4% up to a maximum damage reduction of 80%. Since this is applied after the base armor damage reduction (80% for diamond), you get a total 90.4% to 96% damage reduction for a diamond armor set with an EPF of 25. Leather armor with an EPF of 25 has damage reduction of 65.44% to 85.6%, making it better than unenchanted iron armor and potentially better than unenchanted diamond armor.

Note: Total damage reduction based on damage armor can affect. Damage that bypasses armor is reduced, with an EPF of 25, by 52% to 80%.

Durability
The following table shows the amount of damage each piece of armor can absorb before being destroyed.

Any "hit" from a damage source that can be blocked by armor will remove one point of durability from each piece of armor worn. Damage taken that armor doesn't protect (such as falling or drowning) will not damage the armor, even if it is enchanted to protect against that type of damage. The following chart displays how many hits each piece of armor can endure.

The following tables shows the durability per unit of material of each piece of armor, compared to that of the boots. Note that the durability per unit does not depend on the material.

This means that for the same number of leather/iron ingots/gold ingots/chain/diamond, boots can take 1.5 more damage than leggings.

Thus, chestplate and leggings offer more defense points per unit, but have a lesser durability per unit.

Enchantability
Armor can be enchanted, and the material it's made of determines how enchantable it is, according to the following factors.

Notice that golden armor is highly enchantable, compensating somewhat for its poor defensive properties. (See the enchanting page for the exact details of how this works.)

Dyeing


As of 12w34a, dyeing armor is accomplished by crafting leather armor with any type of dye. Dyes can be mixed together (e.g., orange dye + bone meal + leather cap = beige leather cap) and armor can be dyed multiple times (e.g., blue leather shoes + rose red = purple leather shoes.) Zombies can wear dyed armor. It is impossible to get a color darker than #191919, leaving fewer than 12326391 (231 x 231 x 231) colors available. Current estimates put the realistic upper boundary of available colors at just over 4 million. Leather armor can be "washed" by right clicking a full cauldron to remove all the dye.

Although Leather Armor got a texture update in snapshot 12w36a, in the previous snapshot, 12w34a, it was possible to trick other players into thinking you had Diamond, Iron, or Gold armor instead of the Leather Armor you were actually wearing. You can very simply do this by experimenting with dyes to get a color matching that of the armor you want to emulate. Keep in mind that this does not work with chainmail, quite obviously because chainmail does not use a texture like regular armor.

Crafting
It takes 24 units of material to make a full set of armor. Although it is not necessary that all of your armor is the same material, each individual piece must consist of only one material. This means that you could wear a leather cap with an iron chestplate, but you cannot craft leggings out of both iron and gold.

Note that chestplates (tunics) provide the most protection per unit of material, followed by leggings (Pants), followed by boots, followed by helmets (caps). The exact ratio varies between different materials, however, and golden helmets are actually more cost-effective than golden boots.

As with other items with durability, armor can be repaired by placing two pieces of the same type (e.g., iron helmets) in a crafting grid. The resulting item will have slightly more durability left than the original items combined, but will be unenchanted. Armor can also be repaired on an anvil, which not only preserves enchantments, but can combine the enchantments from two different items.

Armor is not stackable.

Data values
The following are the data values for each armor piece:

Mob armor
In Survival Test, certain zombies and skeletons could be found wearing armor; a chestplate or a helmet. Zombies had the potential, although extremely unlikely, to wear both a chestplate and a helmet at the same time. Skeletons could also be found wearing armor, albeit extremely infrequently. Mob armor was purely cosmetic; however, it is possible that it was a planned feature to increase hostile mob difficulty. The armor was soon removed.

However in 12w32a, mob armor was reintroduced. Zombies and skeletons sometimes wear armor in Normal or Hard, increased likelihood in Hard. It is always in a full set, and can be any tier of armor, including chain armor. Zombie Pigman can wear armor too. The armor can be dyed, or enchanted rarely.

Other mobs do have armor values built in. Sheep have wool unless they are sheared. Pigs can wear saddles, which is also "armor". When a creeper is struck by lightning, it will become a charged creeper. Charged creepers have an electric glow around them, which provides no health, but makes the creeper's explosion twice as big in diameter. The wither will develop a shield when it is about halfway defeated, which will make it immune to arrows. A tamed wolf's collar is considered armor, and will still be seen even with invisibility potions, like all armor.

The most armor a mob can have without using MCEdit or another external editing program is 88%, unless the armor is enchanted.

Leather-chain armor


The leather-chain armor is a sprite from Indev 0.31's items.png file. In the version all of the armor seen is just sprites, armor which was usable and craftable was added later.

Trivia

 * You need 24 of a material to make a full set of armor from it. Having 24 different potential materials does not mean you can have a full set, because you can't make armor from 2 iron and 2 leather.
 * Helmets, chestplates, and leggings have different names when they are made of leather. Helmets are called caps, chestplates are called tunics, and leggings are called pants. Boots do not change.
 * In the armor folder inside minecraft.jar, leather armor is called cloth armor. This is because leather armor was initially made from cloth (later renamed to Wool).
 * Mobs that burn when exposed to sunlight will be unaffected by day if they have a helmet of any type.
 * There is a texture file for armor labeled "Power", a faint blue energy used by Creepers when struck by lightning (becoming a charged creeper).
 * The chain chestplate has slightly longer sleeves than all other chestplates.
 * The leather armor design, armor 'mannequin' outlines, and apple and iron sword sprites, were also used Notch's RPG Legend of the Chambered.
 * If you are sitting in a boat or minecart with armor leggings on, and press (for your Inventory), or press  (for third person view), your legs will be in a sitting position, but your armor will be a standing position. This can be fixed by un-equipping any bottom piece of armor and then re-equipping them.
 * There was a popular rumor stating that chain armor absorbs all damage done (so instead of losing .5 armor and .5 hearts you lose 1.0 armor), but this is not true.
 * In the Xbox 360 Edition, drowning or falling will cause all equipped armor to take damage due to it being built off beta stages of the game.
 * A pumpkin can also be worn as a helmet, but provides no defensive protection. It does prevent Endermen from becoming angered by looking at them and reduces visibility for the player.
 * On Halloween, zombies, skeletons, zombie pigman, and wither skeletons have a relatively large chance of spawning wearing a pumpkin, and a smaller chance of spawning with a jack-o-lantern.