Armor adds extra protection via a separate health bar that reaches 10 armor points.
Player armor
Player armor in Alpha
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 it is not required to all be the same material, it has to be the same material for one piece (you can't use leather and diamond together, for example.)
Template:Armor Crafting
Mob armor
In Survival Test, certain Zombies and Skeletons 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.
Trivia
- The names for Iron, Gold and Diamond armour is different to Leather names (With Iron gold and Diamond they are called Helmets and Chestplates, with Leather they are called Caps and Tunics.


