Armor

Armor adds extra protection via a separate health bar that reaches 10 armor points.

Player armor
Since Indev, helmets, chestplates, leggings, and boots can be crafted by players out of leather, gold, iron, or diamond (in order of increasing durability). This armor prevents part of the damage dealt to the player, including falling, drowning and fire based damage.

Every time the player takes damage the armor loses durability, and its protective capabilities quickly diminish as it loses durability. See Item Durability for more explanation of how armor's durability affects its protective abilities. Materials such as diamond makes a strong armor that withstands quite a bit of punishment, while leather armor barely survives 20 hits.

Chainmail armor can also be hacked into the game, or crafted with edited-in fire blocks. It has the same durability as gold armor.

Before version 1.0.8, cloth was used instead of leather as the lowest tier of armor in Alpha.

Armor crafting
It takes 24 units of material to make a full set of armor. Although is is not necessary that all of your armor is the same material, each individual piece must consist of only one material.

Mob armor
In Survival Test, certain Zombies could be found wearing armor; a chestplate and/or a helmet. This armor does nothing; it was just added for cosmetics and possibly a feature that had not been implemented then. Although, Zombies could wear a chestplate or a helmet. It was possible, (but not likely) that a zombie could wear both a chestplate AND a helmet at the same time. It is ALSO possible (but also not likely) that a skeleton could be found wearing this armor. There is probably less than a 2% chance that a skeleton was ever found wearing both helmet and chestplate together. It was so rare to see a skeleton wearing armor, that in the gallery below, there are no pictures of it.

Trivia

 * The names for Iron, Gold, and Diamond armor are different than Leather names. Iron, gold, and Diamond are called Helmets, Chestplates, and Leggings, and with Leather they are called Caps, Tunics, and Pants.

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