Durability

Item durability is a property to which certain crafted items, including all tools, weapons and armor, as well as certain other usable items, are subject; it represents the number of useful actions an item can perform and depletes upon item use. For tools and weapons, item durability represents the number of available uses before the tool is destroyed (note that bows are exempted from durability). For armour it represents the amount of damage that can be absorbed before the armour is destroyed; in addition, it determines the fraction of damage received the armour will absorb.

The remaining durability of any item can be seen by looking at the item's durability bar on the bottom of the item icon in the inventory and action bar. An item that has not once been used will not display a durability bar. As the item's durability decreases, the bar shortens right to left, changing colour from green to red. When the item has only small number of uses left the durability bar is an empty grey line.

Armor durability
Armor durability is based on the armor's type (head, torso, legs, feet) and material (leather, gold, iron, diamond). Any time you take damage, each piece of armor you are wearing loses durability equal to the number of half-hearts of the base damage.
 * Example: A character is wearing a full set of new leather armor, providing 10 armor points of protection. The character falls a great distance that normally causes 5 points of damage. Because of the 10 armor points, this damage is reduced to only 2 hearts. The base damage was 5 points, which is equal to 10 half-hearts, so each piece of armor the character was wearing loses 10 durability.

The effective armor points of a character is equal to the sum of the base armor point values, times the sum of the current durabilities, divided by the sum of the base durabilities.




 * Example: A character has a damaged diamond chestplate (4 armor points, 192 base durability, 96 current durability) and a new leather helmet (1.5 armor points, 34 base and current durability), the character's total armor points are equal to (4 + 1.5) &times; (96 + 34) / (192 + 34) = 5.5 &times; 130 / 226 &asymp; 3.16 armor points. For display purposes, this is rounded down to 3.

Even though the initial armor point values are the same for all materials, lower-quality armor must be replaced more often.

Note: even the most minor of falling damage will incur a durability loss in armor. The author recommends that players not wear their best armor when engaging in activity where some minor falls are likely but serious danger is absent.

Mixing Armor Materials


Because the base armor points and current and base durabilities of each armor piece are added up before calculating total armor points, some counter-intuitive things can happen with the math.


 * Example: A character is wearing a diamond chestplate, leggings, and boots that are all at full durability: 384 + 368 + 320 = 1072 of a possible 1072, and they provide 4 + 3 + 1.5 = 8.5 armor points. If you then add to this a leather cap with only 1 durability left, the total becomes 1073 of a possible 1106 durability, and your defense increases to 9.5 armor points.

One would expect the leather cap to contribute only 1/34 of its 1.5 defense; this would mean that the leather cap should have no effect whatsoever. This is not the case.

This suggests a strategy of always having one high durability item made of iron or diamond, combined with three leather items at any level of durability. For example, mixing a brand new pair of diamond boots with leather items with only one durability each would give you 323 of a possible 448 durability, which would result in seven shields of defense (and more if the leather items are in any kind of decent condition).

One warning: as soon as one of the items is destroyed, then all of its benefits are gone regardless of the condition of the remaining items. In the example above (diamond boots and everything else leather with 1 durability), taking a single hit would drop your defense from 7 to 1 immediately (since the boots would now have 319 out of 320 durability and would be rounded down to 1 defense instead of 1.5). Use this technique at your own risk.

Also note that this mechanic can work against you as well. With a leather cap, tunic, and leggings at full strength, you will have 8.5 defense. Adding diamond boots with 1 durability left would drop this to 2.5 defense! This means that the more durability an item has to start with, the less useful (and more harmful) it is when its durability gets low.

Durability tables
Below are listed the numbers of uses for each tool and armor type. Armor values represent the number of half-hearts of damage it can sustain, and tool values stand for how many blocks a tool can break or hits a sword can deal.