Armor



Armor is a category of items that provide players and certain mobs with varying levels of protection from common damage types, and appear graphically on the wearer. These items include several different tiers of helmets, chestplates, leggings, and boots, which can each be placed in designated armor slots of a player's inventory for use.

Crafting
24 units of a given material make a full set of armor. A turtle shell is a helmet with no corresponding armor pieces. Chainmail armor cannot be crafted.

Armor can be repaired by placing two pieces of the same type (e.g., iron helmets) in a grindstone or in the crafting grid. The resulting item has 5% more durability left than the original items combined, but any enchantments are lost. Repairing armor with an anvil preserves and combine the enchantments, with a rising experience cost for subsequent repairs on the same item. Chainmail armor can be repaired in an anvil by combining iron ingots with it.

Unit repair
A piece of armor can be repaired in an anvil by adding units of the corresponding material (for chainmail: iron ingots; for turtle shells: scutes), each restores 25% its maximum durability, rounded down.

Drops
Zombies, skeletons, and their variants that spawn with armor have a small chance of dropping their armor when killed by the player. When killed, the armor they drop can vary from 1 to full durability. Upon death, zombies, skeletons, zombie pigmen and wither skeletons always drop any armor that they picked up and equipped. They may also be wearing enchanted armor that retains the enchantment when dropped.

$$, pillagers and vindicators that spawn in raids have a small chance to drop an iron helmet, iron chestplate, iron leggings or iron boots, in a badly damaged state, with a possibility of having a random enchantment.‌

$$, armorer villagers throw chainmail armor to players who have the Hero of the Village status effect.

Trading
Enchanted leather cap, leather cap, enchanted leather tunics, leather pants and leather boots can be bought from leatherworker villagers.

Iron helmets, iron chestplates, iron leggings, iron boots, enchanted diamond helmets, enchanted diamond chestplates, enchanted diamond leggings, enchanted diamond boots, chainmail helmets, chainmail chestplates, chainmail leggings and chainmail boots can be bought from armorer villagers.

Natural generation

 * Helmets
 * Chestplates
 * Leggings
 * Boots
 * Notes
 * Chestplates
 * Leggings
 * Boots
 * Notes
 * Leggings
 * Boots
 * Notes
 * Leggings
 * Boots
 * Notes
 * Leggings
 * Boots
 * Notes
 * Boots
 * Notes
 * Boots
 * Notes
 * Boots
 * Notes
 * Boots
 * Notes
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 * Notes

Usage
In order to have any protective effect, armor must be worn by the player. Helmets, chestplates, leggings and boots are equipped by placing them in the head,  chest,  legs and  feet slots of the inventory next to the player's character, respectively. Armor can also be equipped simply by right clicking when held.

Chestplates provide the most protection per unit of material, followed by leggings. For leather, iron, and diamond armor, boots have equivalent armor points as the helmet, but for chainmail and gold armor, the helmets trump boots. Turtle shells, in addition to providing protection, also gives the player the Water Breathing status effect.

Duplicate armor pieces are not stackable in inventory slots.

Tiers
There are five different types of materials of armor. The five different types are shown below in order from weakest (offers the least protection and is the least durable) to strongest (offers the most protection and is the most durable).

The does not fit into a tier, as it is not part of a full set. However, its defense points match gold, chainmail and iron helmets, while its durability is between iron and diamond helmets.

Other
Certain items provide beneficial effects when worn, but provide no protection against damage.

A carved pumpkin can be worn in the helmet slot. It partially blocks the player's vision, but prevents endermen from becoming aggressive when the player looks at them.

Mob heads can be worn in the helmet slot. They cut a player's detection range by 50% for the corresponding mob type, a bonus that stacks with potions of Invisibility and sneaking.

Elytra are worn in the chestplate slot, and they allow the player to glide through the air.

Dyeing leather armor
Leather armor can be dyed, and colors can be mixed.

Mechanics
Whenever a piece of armor absorbs damage for the player, the armor itself is damaged, reducing its durability. After taking enough damage, the armor piece is completely destroyed.

Note that if the damage is absorbed not by the armor itself, but by a protection enchantment of the armor, the armor is not damaged. Enchantments can also reduce damage that armor normally does not reduce.

Damage types
The following types of damage are reduced by armor and, consequently, damage the armor itself:
 * Direct attacks from mobs and players.
 * This includes the Strength effect and damage enchantments.
 * Getting hit with an arrow.
 * This includes extra damage from enchantments.
 * Getting hit with a fireball from a ghast or blaze, a fire charge or dragon fireballs.
 * Touching fire, lava, magma blocks or cacti.
 * Explosions.
 * Getting struck by lightning.
 * Getting hit with a falling anvil.
 * Getting hit by eggs and snowballs.
 * Getting hit with a fishing rod lure.

The following types of damage are not reduced by armor and have no effect on the armor itself:
 * Ongoing damage from being on fire.
 * Suffocating inside a block.
 * Drowning in water (partially for turtle shells).
 * Starvation.
 * Falling (including ender pearls and into the void).
 * Magic (Evoker fangs, Status effects and instant damage from a potion of Harming or Ender Acid).
 * Standing next to where lightning strikes.
 * Standing next to where lightning strikes.

Defense points
Armor defense points are controlled by an attribute,. The player's current protection level is represented visually by the armor bar. The armor meter is affected by the particular pieces that are worn as well as the tier of the armor. The following table shows the amount of defense points added by default by each individual piece of armor, as well as the total points added by a full set of armor for each material.

Different combinations of armor provide different levels of defense.

Armor toughness
Armor can further protect the player through a second attribute,. By default, only diamond armor provides toughness, with each piece granting +2 toughness.

Damage protection
Damage taken depends on the number of defense points, the toughness of the armor worn and the strength of the attack.


 * ArmorDamageFormula.svg

Broken down, this means that each armor point gives 4% maximum damage reduction against an incoming attack. Without toughness, this max damage reduction is lessened by 2% for each hit point of the incoming attack. 2 defense points are worth 8% protection, so the total protection that can be achieved with armor is 80%. Diamond armor protects the player from 80% of damage, iron provides 60% damage reduction, and leather provides 28%.

One piece of diamond armor (granting +2 toughness) decreases the defense reduction value for each attack hit point to 1.6%. Two diamond pieces decrease it to $4/3$% (about 1.3333%), three decrease it to $8/7$% (about 1.1428%), and four decrease it to 1%. The exact formula for the defense reduction in percent is:.

Simply put, as toughness increases, the amount of defense reduction done by high-damaging attacks is diminished, and as toughness approaches a very high value (through commands), the defense reduction caused by high-damaging attacks becomes negligible. The final damage reduction value of the armor is capped at a minimum of 0.8% damage reduction per armor point, and to a maximum of 80% total. If armor is cheated in so that the min cap is larger than the max cap, the min cap is ignored.

In tabular form (with a toughness of 0), damages are:

Note that these damage values are lower if a player wears pieces of diamond armor or has toughness added to the armor through commands. Without using cheats, armor values of 16 and above are impossible to obtain without at least one piece of diamond armor.

Bedrock Edition and pre-1.9 versions
Damage taken depends only on the number of defense points.

Each armor point gives 4% damage reduction, for example, a player wearing a complete set of leather, always gives 28% of damage protection (while in Java 1.15 it protects 5.6-14%).

The Protection enchantment is also more circumspective; since it was debuff in 1.9.

Enchantments
Armor can be enchanted to provide various enchantments. Enchantments can provide more protection or allow armor to protect certain types of damage that armor doesn't normally protect against, such as fall damage or fire. Damage reduction from enchantments does not decrease the armor's durability. Armor enchantments do not appear on the armor bar.

An armor's material determines how enchantable it is. The higher a material's enchantability, the greater the chances of getting multiple and high-level enchantments (see enchantment mechanics for details).

As with several enchantments, several different levels of protection are possible. The maximum level of a protection enchantment is currently IV (4). Protection enchantments from multiple pieces of armor stack together, up to a calculated maximum.

Each protection enchantment protects against specific types of damage. The amount of damage reduction depends on the Enchantment Protection Factor (EPF) provided by that enchantment.

When a player or mob wearing armor is subjected to damage, the EPFs of all applicable enchantments are added together, capped at 20, and then damage is reduced as, giving a maximum reduction of 80% at EPF 20.

Because of the caps in the calculation, it is possible to achieve maximum protection against specific types of damage with just three pieces of armor. For example, two pieces of armor with Blast Protection IV (EPF 8 each) and a single piece with Protection IV (EPF 4) would give a total EPF of 20 versus explosions. Any additional EPF would be wasted against explosions (but might be useful against other types of damage, if applicable).

If the damage is of a type that armor protects against normally, this reduction applies only to the damage that got through the armor.

It is possible using to obtain armor with an enchantment level higher than what is normally obtainable via normal survival. Using this method, a player could give themselves, for example, a full set of diamond armor with a Protection V enchantment on every piece. Following the algorithm above, we find that, because Protection V has an EPF of 5, the armor reaches the maximum EPF of 20 for all types of damage. Any higher Protection enchantments could be used to reach the cap with just one enchantment, rather than having a full set of enchanted armor, but would be wasted if all pieces shared the same level enchantment.

The table below shows all armor enchantments at their max levels:

Durability
Any hit from a damage source that can be blocked by armor removes one point of durability from each piece of armor worn for every of incoming damage (rounded down, but never below 1). The following chart displays how many hits each piece of armor can endure.

The chart below shows the durability per unit of material for each piece of armor, compared to that of the boots. Note that the durability per unit does not depend on the tier of the armor.

This means that for the same number of leather/iron ingots/gold ingots/chainmail/diamond, boots can take 1.5 more damage than leggings. Thus, chestplates and leggings offer more defense points per unit, but have less durability per unit.

Armor worn by a non-player mob does not lose durability when attacked by any means. Helmets that are worn by undead mobs will lose durability when exposed to sunlight due to absorbing the mob's damage from sunlight.

Mobs equipping armor


Certain mobs can spawn equipped with random armor pieces. Some mobs also spawn with the ability to pick up armor on the ground and equip them. The probability of mobs spawning equipped with armor, whether the armor is enchanted, the level of enchantment of the armor, and how many pieces of armor a mob spawns with depends on the difficulty; if a mob spawns with armor, the tier of armor (leather, gold, etc.) has a fixed probability:

The protection provided by armor and armor enchantments works the same with mobs as it does with players.

The following mobs can spawn with armor:



The following do not naturally spawn with armor, but they do pick up dropped armor:



These mobs cannot wear armor through survival mode means, but if equipped with commands, their armor is visible:



All other mobs can be equipped via commands, although the armor cannot be seen. It is also possible to equip villagers with armor via dispensers.

Helmets can protect mobs from burning in sunlight, depleting its durability as it absorbs the damage. Eventually, the helmet loses all of its durability and breaks. Pumpkins and mob heads also protect mobs from burning in sunlight. Damage caused by any other source do not cause the mob's armor durability to decrease.

Horse armor
Horse armor can be equipped on horses to protect them from mob and player damage.

Armor points
Certain mobs naturally have armor points.