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Armor adds extra protection via a separate health bar that reaches 10 armor points. Armor can be made with leather, gold, iron, diamonds and fire (fire is unavailable without the use of hacking or modding) and consists of chestplates, helmets, boots and leggings. Each armor point gives 8% damage reduction, with a maximum of 80% damage reduction with 10 armor points.

Player armor

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Player armor (not including Chainmail Armor)

Helmets, chestplates, leggings, and boots can be crafted out of leather, gold, iron, or diamond. Chainmail armor also exists but is not legitimately attainable in Survival mode or Hardcore mode.

While worn, each piece of armor adds to the player's total defense points, which serve to reduce certain kinds of damage to the player. Whenever a piece of armor absorbs damage for the player, the armor itself is damaged. After taking enough damage, the armor piece is destroyed. Each individual combination of armor type and material gives a different amount of defense points and has a different level of durability. Diamond gives the highest defense along with the most durability, and leather gives the least defense and least durability.

When the player takes damage of a sort that is not affected by armor, any armor they are wearing does not take damage. See the effects section below for more information.

Players can also wear a Pumpkin as their helmet. Although this will block the player's view and not provide protection from attacks, it will prevent Endermen from attacking the player when the player stops looking at them. The player will still be attacked if they physically attack the Enderman.

Effects

The following types of damage are reduced by armor and, consequently, damage the armor itself:

The following types of damage are not reduced by armor and have no effect on the armor itself:

Protection enchantments protect from types of damage that armor doesn't protect against without an enchantment, like falling damage. Armor durability still doesn't decrease when protection-enchanted armor takes environmental damage.

Defense points

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.

Material Full set Helmet Chestplate Leggings Boots
Leather 🛡🛡🛡🛡 🛡 🛡🛡 🛡 🛡
Gold 🛡🛡🛡🛡🛡🛡 🛡 🛡🛡🛡 🛡🛡 🛡
Chainmail 🛡🛡🛡🛡🛡🛡 🛡 🛡🛡🛡 🛡🛡 🛡
Iron 🛡🛡🛡🛡🛡🛡🛡🛡 🛡 🛡🛡🛡 🛡🛡🛡 🛡
Diamond 🛡🛡🛡🛡🛡🛡🛡🛡🛡🛡 🛡🛡 🛡🛡🛡🛡 🛡🛡🛡 🛡🛡

Durability

The following table shows the amount of damage each piece of armor can absorb before being destroyed.

Any "hit" dealt by a mob (including creeper explosions) will remove 2 durability points to the armor.
Other damage sources usually remove 3 durability points to the armor, except cacti (only one point).
Damage taken that armor doesn't protect (such as falling or drowning) will not damage the armor.

Material Helmet Chestplate Leggings Boots
Leather 56 81 76 66
Gold 78 113 106 92
Chainmail 166 241 226 196
Iron 166 241 226 196
Diamond 364 529 496 430

Enchantability

Armor can be enchanted, and the material it's made of determines how enchantable it is, according to the following factors.

Leather 15
Gold 25
Chainmail 12
Iron 9
Diamond 10

Notice that golden armor is highly enchantable, compensating somewhat for its poor defensive properties. See the enchanting page for the exact details of how this works.

Crafting

It takes 24 units of material to make a full set of armor. Although it is not necessary that all of your armor is the same material, each individual piece must consist of only one material. This means that you could wear a leather cap with an iron chestplate, but you cannot craft leggings out of both iron and gold.

Note that chestplates provide the most protection per unit of material, followed by leggings, followed by boots, followed by helmets. The exact ratio varies between different materials, however, and golden helmets are actually more cost-effective than golden boots.

Template:Armor Crafting

Data Values

The following are the data values for each armor piece:

Leather Chain Iron Diamond Gold
Dec Hex Dec Hex Dec Hex Dec Hex Dec Hex
Cap/Helmets 298 12A 302 12E 306 132 310 136 314 13A
Tunic/Chestplates 299 12B 303 12F 307 133 311 137 315 13B
Pants/Leggings 300 12C 304 130 308 134 312 138 316 13C
Boots 301 12D 305 131 309 135 313 139 317 13D

Bugs

  • The armor breaking animation and sounds only play in singleplayer.

Trivia

  • Helmets, chestplates and leggings have different names when they are made of leather than when they are made of other materials. Helmets are named caps, chestplates are called tunics, and leggings are termed pants. Boots are still called boots.
  • If you look in the armor folder inside Minecraft.jar, leather armor is still called cloth armor. This is because, as listed above, before the addition of Cows this armor was made from Wool.
  • There is a texture file for armor labeled "Power", a indiscernible blue energy used by Creepers when struck by lightning (becoming a charged creeper).
  • The chainmail chestplate has slightly longer sleeves than all other chestplates.
  • The Leather Armor design comes from an old game Notch never finished "Legend of the Chambered".
  • If you are sitting in a minecart with armor leggings on, and press E (for your Inventory), or pressing F5 (for third person view), your legs will be in a sitting position, but your armor will be a standing position. However this can be fixed by removing any bottom piece of armor and then replacing them.
  • There was a popular rumor that stated chain mail armor absorbs all damage done (so instead of losing .5 armor and .5 hearts you lose 1.0 armor), but this is not true.
  • When in Pirate language, Golden Boots will be called "Buttershoes", a reference to Seananners, a well known YouTube personality that ran a Minecraft series.
  • In German, leather pants are actually called Lederhosen.
  • Since snapshot 12w06a, Zombies have a rare chance of dropping iron helmets.

History

Before Alpha 1.0.8, wool was used instead of leather as the lowest tier of armor.

Before 1.9 Prerelease 1, all helmets gave 🛡🛡 (0.30 efficiency), all chest armor gave 🛡🛡🛡🛡 (0.50 efficiency), all leg armor gave 🛡🛡🛡 (0.43 efficiency), and all boots gave 🛡🛡 (0.38 efficiency). Armor's effectiveness was linked to durability, with lower tier materials less durable than higher tier materials. Leather armor was as protective as diamond armor when undamaged, but leather armor quickly lost durability to attacks, thus its defense power would more rapidly diminish. Likewise, if you put on almost fully decreased boots when you had other armor on, it lowered your armor protection.

Also before 1.9 Prerelease 1, specific types of damage were reduced by a certain amount based upon the effective armor points of the player. Each point of armor reduced the damage you took by 8%, up to the maximum reduction of 80%. As of 1.1, iron armor naturally generates in NPC villages.

Minecraft 1.0 had a bug that caused all armor to be twice as effective at reducing damage as intended. This was fixed in Minecraft 1.1.

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, although it is possible that it was a planned feature to increase mob difficulty.

Gallery

References


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