Armor



Armor is a category of items that provide a player with varying levels of protection from common damage types, and appear graphically on the player as worn clothing. These items include several different classes of helmets, chestplates, leggings, and boots, which can each be placed in designated armor slots of a player's inventory for activation. Players, Horses, Zombie (Pigmen) and (Wither) Skeletons can wear armor.

Classes


Armor classes include (from weakest/least durable to strongest/most durable):
 * Leather
 * Gold
 * Chain
 * Iron
 * Diamond

Chain armor is rare, and uncraftable via legitimate in-game means. It can be obtained through trading with villagers or as rare drops from mobs wearing them. It can be crafted with the fire item, though that item is only available via inventory editors.

Novelty armor
A player can wear a pumpkin as a helmet. This will partially block the player's view and does not reduce attack damage, but it will prevent an Enderman from becoming aggressive towards the player when the player looks at it. However, putting on the pumpkin after provoking the enderman or attacking the enderman with the pumpkin on will NOT stop it from attacking.

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

Leather armor can be dyed to create colored clothing with some protection.

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 destroyed.

The player's current protection level is represented visually by the armor meter, which contains 10 armor icons that each represent 8% damage reduction. With all 10 shown full, the player has a total of 80% damage reduction. The armor meter is affected by the particular pieces currently worn, as well as the class and current durability of each piece.

When the player takes damage of a sort that is not affected by armor (see damage types below), armor they are wearing does not take damage.

Armor can also be enchanted to provide protection enhancements, such as protection from additional damage types. These will not affect the armor meter.

Damage types
The following types of damage are reduced by armor and, consequently, damage the armor itself:
 * Direct attacks from mobs and player
 * Getting hit with an arrow
 * Getting hit with a fireball from a Ghast or Blaze or getting hit by a Fire Charge
 * Touching fire, lava or cactus
 * Explosions

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*
 * 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. (including Ender Pearls)*
 * Getting struck by lightning.

* Except in Pocket Edition

Protection enchantments can protect from types of damage that armor doesn't normally protect against, such as fall damage. Armor durability still doesn't decrease when protection-enchanted armor takes environmental damage.

Defense points
Defense points are each signified by half of a shirt of mail in the armor bar above the health bar. Each defense point will reduce any damage dealt to the player which is absorbed by armor by 4%, increasing additively with the number of defense points. Different materials and combinations of armor provide different levels of defense. A full suit of diamond armor protects the player from 80% of damage, whereas a full suit of iron will provide 60% protection and a full suit of leather will provide 28%.

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.

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 for each piece of armor, compared to that of the boots. Note that the durability per unit does not depend on the particular 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 less durability per unit.

Enchantments
Enchantments can improve armor's capability to reduce damage, or add capabilities.

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.

The EPFs for each enchantment and level are the result of the following formula:.

When a player or mob wearing armor is subjected to damage, the EPFs of all applicable enchantments are added together, capped at 25, multiplied by a random value between 50% and 100%, rounded up, and capped again at 20. The damage is then reduced by 4% per point of total effective EPF (for example, a total effective EPF of 20 reduces damage by 80%).

Because of the caps in the calculation, it's possible to max out protection against specific types of damage with only three pieces of armor. For example, two pieces of armor with Blast Protection IV (EPF 11 each) and a single piece with Protection III (EPF 3) would give a total EPF of 25 versus explosions (before the remainder of the calculation). 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. For example, a full suit of diamond armor reduces damage from melee attacks by 80% -- if each piece of armor also had a Protection IV enchantment (EPF 5 each), the enchantments would further reduce damage by 40% to 80% each time, for a total damage reduction of 88% to 96% (i.e., 80%, plus 40%-80% of the remaining 20%).

Crafting
It takes 24 units of a given material to make a full set of armor. It is not necessary that all of your armor pieces are the same class, though each individual piece can only consist of one material. You could wear a leather cap with an iron chestplate, for example, but you cannot craft a single chestplate from both iron and gold.

Chestplates (tunics) provide the most protection per unit of material, followed by leggings (pants). For Iron and Diamond, boots are then followed by helmets, but for other materials, the helmet (cap) is more efficient. However, boots are always the most durable.

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 any enchantments will be lost. Armor can also be repaired on an anvil, which preserves and combines enchantments. Anvils can also repair a piece of armor using units of that armor's base material. Chain armor can be repaired in this manner by using iron ingots.

Duplicate armor pieces are not stackable in inventory slots.

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. This can be any tier of armor, including chain armor. Zombie Pigmen can wear armor too. The armor can be dyed, or enchanted rarely. In the 1.6 snapshots, horses can wear an armor type called horse armor.

Mob "armor"
Other mobs do have armor values built in. Sheep have wool unless they are sheared. Pigs can wear saddles, which is also "armor". Snow Golems have pumpkins worn on their heads as helmets. 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 this version, all of the armor seen are only sprites. Usable and craft-able armor were added later, but leather-chain armor never made it to release versions.

Trivia

 * 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. However, their helmet's durability will soar down.
 * There is a texture file for armor labeled "Power", a faint blue energy used by Creepers when struck by lightning (becoming a charged creeper).
 * Chain armor is unique in that it is the only default armor with large amounts of transparency within the armor. Every other pixel is transparent, except for the front of the head, which has a clear space for the face, and other areas which have no covering. It also has longer sleeves than other chestplates, by one pixel.
 * The chain helmet covers all sides of the head completely except the face unlike most helms where the face has a nose guard and covers the sides of the head partially.
 * The leather armor design, armor 'mannequin' outlines, and apple and iron sword sprites, were also used in 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.
 * On Halloween, zombies, skeletons, zombie pigmen, and wither skeletons have a relatively large chance of spawning wearing a pumpkin, and a smaller chance of spawning with a jack-o-lantern.
 * Gold is the only armor not obtainable in villager trading. Butchers give leather, and the blacksmith just about every other type.
 * It is rarer to get chain armor in villager trading than diamond or iron, even though chain is weaker than both.

Pocket Edition

 * Armor was not legitimately obtainable until version Alpha 0.6.0. A set of illegitimate armor could be hacked in, but would crash the game when tapped on, regardless of being in the player's inventory or a chest. If a chest containing it was broken, and the armor picked up, the game would crash. The illegitimate armor still crashes the game in 0.6.1, and looks exactly like normal armor except for the red background.
 * Armor is sometimes not lost when the player dies.
 * Leather armor was released with the old texture, even thought the new texture was released for PC before it.
 * Chain armor exists but is unobtainable.