Defense

Defense (commonly abbreviated as DEF) is a statistic in the Castlevania series and serves as a mean of cutting back damage dealt to the player. It can be increased by means of equipping armor, special equipable items, certain one-use items, spells, and by leveling up through accruing experience points (EXP). Alternatively, the defense stat can be lowered by unequipping items or (depending on the game) by status ailments.
Some attacks are so powerful that they will pierce through a hero's Defense stat, however. In these cases, one is better off completely avoiding and/or preventing the attacks in question rather than simply bracing for the worst. See below for specific information on which attacks pierce through a hero's Defense. Depending on the circumstances, there may be a way for one to gain resistance toward that attack attribute, which will work as normal.
==Game specific information==
===Castlevania: Symphony of the Night===
*For how Alucard's CON stat affects his DEF, see Constitution#Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.
*Each point of Defense equals 1 point of damage reduction when taking a hit from an enemy.
*If Alucard manages to reach 100 points of defense, he can walk through enemies without being sent into hit recovery. This value, however, requires the use of Shield Potions, the Leather Shield's Shield Rod spell, or glitches that allow Alucard to power up the Walk Armor.
*While Defense works against most measures of attack, the following attacks will pierce through it:
**Touching spikes will inflict roughly 1/8th of the character's maximum HP in damage, ignoring their Defense.
**The above can also happen if Alucard takes a hit while petrified.
===Castlevania: Circle of the Moon===
*In Circle of the Moon, Defense works against the square of an enemy's Strength rating. It means that doubling Nathan's Defense will halve the damage taken from the enemy, and receiving an attack of an enemy twice as strong as the previous one with the same value of Defense will quadruple the damage.
===Castlevania: Lament of Innocence===
In the Belmont-based Lament of Innocence, Leon Belmont also has this statistic. However, its computation is not complex compared to the other games, but as simple as reducing a percentage of the damage received. There are only four Body Armors that influence this, which are unlocked in Rinaldo's shop with each progress on the search ratio of the map.
===Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow===
*For every 2 points added to Soma's Constitution, he gains +1 Defense.
*Due to the damage formula, defense points from Constitution reduce damage more effectively than the rest. Due to the same reason, defense points from equipment increases damage from spike and the floor trap.
===Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow===
*Constitution continues to contribute to Defense at the rate of 1 point for every 2 points, like in Aria of Sorrow
*Every 2 points of Defense gives the player +1 damage reduction when taking damage.
===Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin===
*For the most part, Defense works in Portrait of Ruin much like it did for Dawn of Sorrow.
*There is a change noteworthy for the player to be aware of, however. Starting in Portrait of Ruin, Defense works only on physical damage. For magical attacks, the player should try to increase the character's Mind stat.
*The danger of attacks that pierce through a hero's Defense returns in Portrait of Ruin, although perhaps not present as often as it was in Symphony of the Night. For the most part, this form of offense is limited to certain boss monsters:
**The Werewolf's grab attack will inflict around 100 damage to those hit, ignoring their Defense.
**True Dracula's wing crushing attack will inflict 560 damage to all caught in the area, followed by a stream of much weaker hits. All of these hits will ignore the characters' Defense stat.
*Defense does not reduce extra damage taken in Hard Mode. Even a high-level well-equipped Jonathan/Charlotte can take severe damage from a single Bat.
===Later games===
No major changes have happened to the Defense stat since Portrait of Ruin, so for the most part, the information seen for that game is the same for games with the Metroidvania style afterward.
Category:Statistics