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
A full set of armor consists of 24 units of a given material. A turtle shell is a helmet with no corresponding armor pieces. Despite there being chain items, chainmail armor cannot be crafted. A full suit of Netherite armor needs 4 units of Netherite ingots (16 netherite scraps and 16 gold ingots); obtaining netherite armor requires combining a diamond armor piece with a netherite ingot using a smithing table.

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, if the total durability of both of the armor pieces is more than the total durability that a piece of armor would have fresh from a crafting table, but any enchantments are lost. Repairing armor with an anvil preserves and combines the enchantments, with a rising experience cost for subsequent repairs on the same item.

Unit repair
A piece of armor can be repaired in an anvil by adding units of the armor material's repair material, with each repair material restoring 25% of the armor item's maximum durability, rounded down. Chainmail armor can be repaired in an anvil using iron ingots. Netherite armor can be repaired in an anvil using netherite Ingots.

Mob loot
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 0 to full durability. Upon death, zombies, skeletons, zombified piglins, 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.

Rarely, a mob can drop a chainmail armor item. This is the only other way to obtain chainmail armor besides finding in buried treasure or trading with villagers.

$$, 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.

Natural generation
Two armor stands are found in each taiga village outdoor armory, one equipped with an iron helmet, the other with an iron chestplate.

Trading
Leather armor can be bought from leatherworker villagers. These armor pieces have randomly determined color.

Iron armor, chainmail armor and enchanted diamond armor can be bought from armorer villagers.

Bartering
Piglins may barter iron boots enchanted with Soul Speed when given a gold ingot.

Fishing
Leather boots, often badly damaged, can be obtained as a junk item from fishing.

Chest loot

 * Helmets


 * Chestplates


 * Leggings


 * Boots

Protection value
Armor points count for less as the attack strength increases: each done by the attack reduces the effective defense points by, but not below 20% of the armor points. In short, the stronger the attack force, the less the armor points protect in since some changes coming from the Combat Update (1.9 version for the Java Edition and, for Bedrock players, Bedrock Edition 1.18.30). In older versions of Bedrock and in Java Edition 1.8, each armor point always protects 4%.
 * Minimum: the lowest percentage that the full set protects from a strong attack. Each point just protects 0.8%.
 * Maximum: the highest percentage each tier protects.
 * Protection: the fourth level adds 16 percent of protection to the final calculation.
 * Increased toughness means less armor defense point reduction from strong attacks.

More information on this can be seen in below.

Usage
To have any protective effect, armor must be worn by the player. A helmet, chestplate, 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 by right clicking while held. In Java Edition this will only equip to an empty slot, whereas $$, if the respective slot already contains a piece of armor, they are swapped, and the original armor ends up in the player's hand.

A chestplate provides 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 helmet trumps boots. A turtle shell, in addition to providing protection, also gives the player the Water Breathing status effect.

Each armor piece consumes one inventory slot. They cannot be stacked.

If wearing leather boots, players may walk on powder snow. This will grant the "Light as a Rabbit" achievement. If wearing any piece of leather armor, a player will be immune to freezing damage and FOV change.

Tiers
There are seven different types of materials of armor, including turtle shells. The six full sets 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 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 (276). In the game's code, it is equivalent in protection to iron armor.

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, allowing the wearer to glide through the air.

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

Default color HEX code for leather armor is.

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 the 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 (melee) attacks from mobs and players.
 * This includes the Strength and the Weakness effects and damage-increasing enchantments.
 * Getting hit with an arrow, a shulker bullet or a thrown trident.
 * This includes extra damage from enchantments (except shulker bullets).
 * Getting hit with a fireball from a ghast or blaze, or a fire charge.
 * Laser beam of a guardian or an elder guardian.
 * Damage from Thorns enchantment, or spikes of guardians and elder guardians.
 * Touching a damaging block (fire, lava, magma block, cactus or sweet berry bush).
 * Touching a pufferfish.
 * Explosions.
 * Fireworks with at least a firework star in the recipe.
 * Lightning.
 * Getting hit with a falling anvil.
 * Getting hit with a snowball from a player or snow golem.
 * Getting hit with an egg from a player

The following types of damage are not reduced by armor and have no effect on the armor itself:
 * Fall damage (including ender pearls, but Protection and Feather Falling enchantments reduce it)
 * Ongoing damage from being on fire.
 * Suffocating inside a block or due to entity cramming (also includes the world border).
 * Drowning in water (partially for turtle shells).
 * Starvation.
 * Colliding with a block while flying with elytra.
 * Touching a campfire block.
 * Magic (Evoker fangs, status effects and instant damage from a potion of Harming or Dragon's Breath) (but Protection does reduce magical damage ).
 * Falling into the void or.
 * Being inside of a powder snow block.
 * This excludes if the player or mob wears any piece of leather armor.

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 number 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, generic.armor_toughness. Normally, armor nullifies a lesser portion of damage from attacks that deal greater damage. Armor toughness resists this effect, mitigating the power of strong attacks. By default, only diamond and netherite armor provide toughness, with each piece granting +2 toughness for diamond and +3 for netherite.

Different combinations of armor provide different levels of armor toughness.

Armor toughness system includes a new formula for calculating damage:
 * $$\mathsf{totalDamage} = \mathsf{damage}\times \left( 1 - \frac{\text{max}\left(\frac{\mathsf{defensePoints}}{5}, \mathsf{defensePoints} - \frac{4\times\mathsf{damage}}{\mathsf{toughness}+8} \right)}{25} \right)$$

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

$$\mathsf{damage}=\mathsf{weapon\ damage}\times\left(1-\frac{\min\left(20,\max\left(\frac{\mathsf{defense\ points}}{5},\mathsf{defense\ points}-\frac{4\times\mathsf{weapon\ damage}}{\mathsf{toughness}+8}\right)\right)}{25}\right)$$

(Note: the min and max operators mean that only the minimum or maximum output of the two expressions that follow them (separated by commas) is used. for example, "y = min (2x, 16)" means that "y" is equal to the smallest value out of "2x" and "16", while the largest is ignored.)

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 percentage points 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 and netherite armors protect the player from up to 80% of damage, iron provides up to 60% damage reduction and leather provides up to 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%. Netherite armor decreases this even further. One piece of netherite armor reduce the defense reduction value for every hit point to $16/11$ (about 1.4545%), two decrease it to $8/7$ (about 1.1428%), three decrease to $16/17$ (about 0.9412%) and four decrease it to 0.8%. The exact formula for the defense reduction in percent is:

$$\mathsf{defense\ reduction\ in\ percent} = \frac{16 \times \mathsf{damage}}{\mathsf{toughness}+8}$$

Simply put, as toughness increases, the amount of defense reduction done by high-damaging attacks is diminished, and as toughness approaches a 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. An illustration of the armor reduction is given below.



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 or netherite armor.

Older versions
There were not armor penetration and toughness mechanics.

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.

Knockback reduction (Java and Bedrock)
Each netherite armor piece gives 10% / 22.5% of knockback reduction, protecting 40% / 90% with a full set.

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 reduction is, giving a maximum reduction of $20/25$ (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). $$, a full set of armor with Protection IV gives the maximum damage reduction.

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 level XX (20) 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: Note: Only one form of protection can be applied to a piece of armor (i.e. a chestplate cannot have both Fire Protection and Blast Protection, unless using commands to get all protection enchants in one piece of armor). Feather Falling, Frost Walker, Depth Strider and Soul Speed are enchantments applicable only to boots. Respiration and Aqua Affinity are enchantments applicable only to helmets.

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 lose durability when exposed to sunlight due to absorbing the mob's damage from sunlight.

Netherite armor does not lose durability from lava or fire damage.

Mobs equipping armor
Certain mobs can spawn equipped with random armor pieces. Some mobs also spawn with the ability to pick up the armor on the ground and equip them. The probability of mobs spawning equipped with armor, whether the armor is enchanted, the level of the 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:

It is impossible for zombies and skeletons to naturally spawn with netherite armor.

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 on normal or hard difficulty:



The following do not naturally spawn with armor, but they do pick up dropped armor and their armor does not render:



These mobs can have armor equipped on them via dispensers, but do not pick up armor:



These mobs can have armor equipped on them via dispensers, but their armor does not render:

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. 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 does 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.

ID




Item data
When leather armor is dyed, it has the following NBT:
 * : Parent tag.
 * : Display properties.
 * : The color of the leather armor. The tooltip displays "Dyed" if advanced tooltips are disabled, otherwise it displays the hexadecimal color value. Color codes are calculated from the Red, Green and Blue components using this formula:  Red <<16 + Green <<8 + Blue 

History

 * Armor durability from Indev until late Beta