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Armor refers to a set of items which increase the player's defensive abilities when worn. Armor can be made with leather, gold, iron and diamonds (and fire too, but fire is unavailable without the use of an inventory editor) and consists of chestplates, helmets, boots and leggings. The player's current protection is visually reflected by the armor meter, containing 10 total bars, with each armor bar giving 8% damage reduction for a total of 80% wearing the best armor.

Player armor

Armorc

Player armor (including "unarmored" Steve)

Helmets, chestplates, leggings, and boots can be crafted out of leather, gold, iron, diamond or fire*. Chain armor is only obtainable in Creative Mode, or through trading with villagers.

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 that he or she is 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 looks at them. The player will still be attacked if he or she physically attacks 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 🛡🛡🛡🛡🛡🛡 🛡 🛡🛡🛡 🛡🛡 🛡
Chain 🛡🛡🛡🛡🛡🛡 🛡 🛡🛡🛡 🛡🛡 🛡
Iron 🛡🛡🛡🛡🛡🛡🛡🛡 🛡 🛡🛡🛡 🛡🛡🛡 🛡
Diamond 🛡🛡🛡🛡🛡🛡🛡🛡🛡🛡 🛡🛡 🛡🛡🛡🛡 🛡🛡🛡 🛡🛡


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.

Material Full Set Helmet Chestplate Leggings Boots
Leather 29.2% 20% 37.5% 28.6% 25%
Gold 45.8% 40% 62.5% 42.9% 25%
Chain 50% 40% 62.5% 57.1% 25%
Iron 62.5% 40% 75% 71.4% 50%
Diamond 83.3% 60% 100% 85.7% 75%

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.

Armor enchantment effect calculation

Armor can get protection enchantments such as "Protection III" or "Fire protection IV". The maximum level of a protection enchantment is IV (4). Protection enchantments stack (up to a cap). The type of protection enchantment determines whether the protection enchantment comes into effect, according to the following table:

Enchantment Damage reduced for
Protection All
Fire Protection Fire, lava, and blaze fireballs
Blast Protection Explosions
Projectile Protection Arrows, ghast and blaze fireballs
Feather Falling Fall damage (including ender pearls)

This means that "Protection" is always at least as good as for example "Fire protection", even against fire damage (with the exception of "Feather falling", see below).

The enchantment damage reduction is applied to the damage left after the armor's basic effect, and the base "enchantment protection factor" (EPF) of an enchanted item is

  floor ( (6 + level * level) / 2 )

Which gives the following EPF for enchantments of level I-IV:

Level EPF
I 3
II 5
III 7
IV 11

For Feather falling, the EPF of the specific piece is doubled.

The total EPF is the sum for all armor pieces, and capped at 25. An EPF of 25 can be reached by two level III pieces and one level IV piece (2*7+11=25). This also means that Feather Falling is unnecessary to reduce fall damage if you can reach an EPF of 25 without Feather falling boots.

The actual EPF applied is randomized to between 50% and 100% of the EPF calculated above, rounded up, and capped at 20. Each level of the actual EPF reduces damage by 4%, for a maximum damage reduction of 80% from enchantments. Since this is applied after the base armor damage reduction (80% for diamond), you get a total 89.6% to 96% damage reduction for a diamond armor set with an EPF of 25, for damage which is mitigated by unenchanted armor (fx fall damage is not mitigated by unenchanted armor).[1]

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. The following chart displays how many hits each piece of armor can endure. The numbers on this chart are subject to change by enchantments.

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


The following tables shows the durability per unit of material of each piece of armor, compared to that of the boots. Note that the durability per unit does not depend on the material.

Helmet Chestplate Leggings Boots
durability/unit 68% 61% 66% 100%

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 lesser durability per unit.

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
Chain 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.)

Dyeing

See also: Other types of dyeing
File:Dyegraph.png

A graph showing all combinations of two dyes on a chestplate, only the Lime Dye + Lime Dye does not show the correct colour.

As of 12w34a, dyeing armor is accomplished by crafting leather armor with any type of dye. Dyes can be mixed together (e.g., orange dye + bone meal + leather cap = beige leather cap) and armor can be dyed multiple times (e.g., blue leather shoes + rose red = purple leather shoes.) Zombies can wear dyed armor. It is impossible to get a color darker than #191919, leaving fewer than 12326391 (231 x 231 x 231) colors available. Current estimates put the realistic upper boundary of available colors at just over 4 million[2]. Leather armor can be "washed" by right clicking a full cauldron to remove all the dye.

Although it was possible to trick players into thinking you had Diamond, Iron or Gold armour in 12w34a, in the most recent snapshots there are bits of the leather armour that show to prove it's leather armour.

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

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.

Armor is not stackable.

Template:Armor Crafting

Data values

The following are the data values for each armor piece:

Material Helmet Chestplate Leggings Boots
Leather 298 299 300 301
Chain 302 303 304 305
Iron 306 307 308 309
Diamond 310 311 312 313
Gold 314 315 316 317

History

Alpha
Alpha 1.0.8Before this update, wool armor was the lowest tier of armor, rather than leather armor.
Beta
1.9pre1Before 1.9pre1, 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%.
r
1.0 There was a bug that caused all armor to be twice as effective at reducing damage as intended. This was fixed in Minecraft 1.1, and as of 1.1, iron armor naturally generates in NPC village chests.
1.2 Zombies can now drop iron helmets on rare occasions, and Zombie Pigmen can drop golden helmets.
12w15a Jeb mentioned that shift-clicking armor into armor slots was "on the list of things to do.",[3] and it was later added in weekly snapshot 12w15a.
12w21a Chain armor is now obtainable legitimately in survival mode through trading with blacksmith villagers.
u
12w32aA full set of any armor is sometimes worn by zombies, skeletons and Zombie Pigmen, likelihood increasing with difficulty.
?Jeb and Dinnerbone tweeted pictures of dyable leather armor.
12w34aLeather armor can now be dyed. The dye can be removed by right-clicking a full cauldron.
Leather armor texture is changed to a darker one, and has been modified in the inventory tooltip.
12w34bLeather armor texture slightly changed again. Leather armor sleeves are extended by one pixel. Their item texture has been changed to match the new texture.
12w36aLeather armor now uses two overlayed textures, one being the color.
12w37aLeather armor now has a non-dyed base layer.
12w41aIf you wear any helmet, an anvil can fall from any height and you will always take 6♥♥♥ health points of damage.

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. It is always in a full set, and can be any tier of armor, including chain armor. Zombie Pigman can wear armor too. The armor can be dyed, or enchanted rarely.

Other mobs do have armor values built in. Sheep have wool, unless sheared. Pigs can wear saddles, which is also "armor". 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 up to four times as big. 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 the version all of the armor seen is just sprites, armor which was usable and craftable was added later.

Video

Armor/video


Trivia

  • You need 24 of a material to make a full set of armor from it. Having 24 different potential materials does not mean you can have a full set.
  • 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).
  • There is a texture file for armor labeled "Power", a faint blue energy used by Creepers when struck by lightning (becoming a charged creeper).
  • The chain chestplate has slightly longer sleeves than all other chestplates.
  • The leather armor design, along with other Minecraft sprites, come from a 21st Ludum Dare game Legend of the Chambered, created by Notch.
  • If you are sitting in a minecart with armor leggings on, and press E (for your Inventory), or press F5 (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.
  • There was a popular rumor stating that chain armor absorbs all damage done (so instead of losing .5 armor and .5 hearts you lose 1.0 armor), but this is not true.
  • In the Xbox 360 Edition, drowning or falling will cause all equipped armor to take damage due to it being built off beta stages of the game.
  • A pumpkin can also be worn as a helmet, but provides no defensive protection. It does prevent Endermen from becoming angered by looking at them and reduces visibility for the player.
  • In the Maltese language translation, the iron helmet is called 'elmu tad-djamant' meaning 'diamond helmet'. It is suppose to be called 'elmu tal-hadid' to translate to 'iron helmet'. But all other tools and armor made from iron are translated correctly.
  • When sitting in a boat, leggings or pants appear as though you are standing.

Gallery

References

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