Armor

Armor is a category of items that provide players and certain mobs with varying levels of protection from common damage types, and appear graphically on the wearer. These items include several different tiers of helmets, chestplates, leggings, and boots, which can each be placed in designated armor slots of a player's inventory for use.

Like with Weapons, only certain classes are able to equip different types of Armor. Weight is also a factor, with each piece of Armor having its own weight value. The Vitality stat of every class determines how much weight they can handle before being physically slowed. For all classes though, if your Armor weight exceeds a certain amount, you will sink in water, take reduced knockback, and take heat damage in hot environments.

## Obtaining

### Crafting

A full set of armor consists of 24 units of a given material. A turtle shell is a helmet with no corresponding armor pieces. Despite there being chain items, chainmail armor cannot be crafted. A full suit of Netherite armor needs 4 units of Netherite ingots (16 netherite scraps and 16 gold ingots); obtaining netherite armor requires combining a diamond armor piece with a netherite ingot using a smithing table.

Armor can be repaired by placing two pieces of the same type (e.g., iron helmets) in a grindstone or in the crafting grid. The resulting item has 5% more durability left than the original items combined, if the total durability of both of the armor pieces is more than the total durability that a piece of armor would have fresh from a crafting table, but any enchantments are lost. Repairing armor with an anvil preserves and combines the enchantments, with a rising experience cost for subsequent repairs on the same item.

### Upgrading

In a Smithing Table, you can combine certain Armor with others to create something new.

* Leather Armor and Chain Armor will create Studded Armor.
* Diamond Armor and a Netherite Ingot will create Netherite Armor.

### Repairing

#### Grinding

Two Pieces of identical Armor can be placed in a Grindstone to combine them, and repair their durability.

#### Unit repair

A piece of armor can be repaired in an anvil by adding units of the armor material's repair material, with each repair material restoring 25% of the armor item's maximum durability, rounded down. Chainmail armor can be repaired in an anvil using iron ingots. Netherite armor can be repaired in an anvil using netherite Ingots.

### Mob loot

Zombies, skeletons and their variants that spawn with armor have a small chance of dropping their armor when killed by the player. When killed, the armor they drop can vary from 0 to full durability. Upon death, zombies, skeletons, zombified piglins, and wither skeletons always drop any armor that they picked up and equipped. They may also be wearing enchanted armor that retains the enchantment when dropped.

Rarely, a mob can drop a chainmail armor item. This is the only other way to obtain chainmail armor besides finding it in buried treasure or trading with villagers.

Armorer villagers throw chainmail armor to players who have the Hero of the Village status effect.

### Natural generation

Two armor stands are found in each taiga village outdoor armory, one equipped with an iron helmet, the other with an iron chestplate.

### Trading

Leather armor can be bought from leatherworker villagers. These armor pieces have randomly determined color.

Iron armor, chainmail armor and enchanted diamond armor can be bought from armorer villagers.

### Bartering

Piglins may barter iron boots enchanted with Soul Speed when given a gold ingot.

### Fishing

Leather boots, often badly damaged, can be obtained as a junk item from fishing.

### Chest loot

**Helmets**

**Chestplates**

**Leggings**

**Boots**

## Protection value

Armor points count for less as the attack strength increases: each 2 done by the attack reduces the effective defense points by 1 (), but not below 20% of the armor points. In short, the stronger the attack force, the less the armor points protect the player.

* Minimum: the lowest percentage that the full set protects from a strong attack. Each point just protects 0.8%.
* Maximum: the highest percentage each tier protects.
* Protection: the fourth level adds 16 percent of protection to the final calculation.
* Increased toughness means less armor defense point reduction from strong attacks.

More information on this can be seen in § Mechanics below.

## Usage

To have any protective effect, armor must be worn by the player. A helmet, chestplate, leggings, and boots are equipped by placing them in the  head,  chest,  legs and  feet slots of the inventory next to the player's character, respectively. Armor can also be equipped by right clicking while held. In Java Edition this equips to an empty slot, whereas In Bedrock Edition, if the respective slot already contains a piece of armor, they are swapped, and the original armor ends up in the player's hand.

A chestplate provides the most protection per unit of material, followed by leggings. For leather, iron, and diamond armor, boots have equivalent armor points as the helmet, but for chainmail and gold armor, the helmet trumps boots. A turtle shell, in addition to providing protection, also gives the player the Water Breathing status effect.

Each armor piece consumes one inventory slot. They cannot be stacked.

If wearing any piece of gold armor, Piglins become neutral towards the player, however Piglin Brutes will remain hostile. If wearing any piece of leather armor, a player is immune to freezing damage and FOV change. If wearing leather boots, players may walk on powder snow. This grants the "Light as a Rabbit" achievement.

### Tiers

There are ten different types of materials of armor, excluding specialty armor.

The Turtle Shell is not part of a full set. However, its defense points match gold, chainmail, and iron helmets, while its durability is between iron and diamond helmets (276). In the game's code, it is equivalent in protection to iron armor.

### Specialty Armor

Specialty Armor is Armor with a secondary function in addition to adding Absorb. Most of them trade protection for an effect in fact.

### Dyeing leather armor

Leather armor can be dyed, and colors can be mixed.

Default color HEX code for leather armor is

#A06540.

### Smelting ingredient

Smelting Plate, Chain, and Iron Armor will yield 1 Iron Nugget.

Smelting Gold Armor will yield 1 Gold Nugget.

## Mechanics

Whenever a piece of armor absorbs damage for the player, the armor itself is damaged, reducing its durability. After taking enough damage, the armor piece is completely destroyed.

Note that if the damage is absorbed not by the armor itself, but by a protection enchantment of the armor, the armor is not damaged. Enchantments can also reduce the damage that armor normally does not reduce.

### Damage types

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

* Direct (melee) attacks from mobs and players. This includes the Strength and the Weakness effects and damage-increasing enchantments.
* Getting hit with an arrow, a shulker bullet or a thrown trident. This includes extra damage from enchantments (except shulker bullets).
* Getting hit with a fireball from a ghast or blaze, or a fire charge.
* Laser beam of a guardian or an elder guardian.
* Damage from Thorns enchantment, or spikes of guardians and elder guardians.
* Touching a damaging block (fire, lava, magma block, cactus or sweet berry bush).
	+ This excludes netherite armor which is not damaged by fire-related sources.
* Touching a pufferfish.
* Explosions.
* Fireworks with at least a firework star in the recipe.
* Lightning.
* Getting hit with a falling anvil.
* Getting hit with a snowball from a player‌ or snow golem.
* Getting hit with an egg from a player.

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

* Ranged sonic attacks from wardens.
* Fall damage (including ender pearls, but Protection and Feather Falling enchantments reduce it).
* Ongoing damage from being on fire.
* Suffocating inside a block or due to entity cramming (also includes the world border)‌.
* Drowning in water (partially for turtle shells).
* Starvation.
* Colliding with a block while flying with elytra.
* Magic (Evoker fangs, status effects and instant damage from a potion of Harming or Dragon's Breath) (but Protection does reduce magical damage‌.
* Falling into the void or `/kill`.
* Being inside of a powder snow block.
	+ This excludes if the player or mob wears any piece of leather armor.

### Knockback reduction

Each netherite armor piece gives 10% of knockback reduction, protecting 40% with a full set.

### Enchantments

Armor can be enchanted to provide various enchantments. Enchantments can provide more protection or allow armor to protect certain types of damage that armor doesn't normally protect against, such as fall damage or fire. Damage reduction from enchantments does not decrease the armor's durability. Armor enchantments do not appear on the armor bar.

As with several enchantments, several different levels of protection are possible. The maximum level of a protection enchantment is currently IV (4). Protection enchantments from multiple pieces of armor stack together, up to a calculated maximum.

Each protection enchantment protects against specific types of damage. The amount of damage reduction depends on the **Enchantment Protection Factor** (EPF) provided by that enchantment.

When a player or mob wearing armor is subjected to damage, the EPFs of all applicable enchantments are added together, capped at 20, and then damage reduction is `cappedEPF / 25`, giving a maximum reduction of 20⁄25 (80%) at EPF 20.

Because of the caps in the calculation, it is possible to achieve maximum protection against specific types of damage with just three pieces of armor. For example, two pieces of armor with Blast Protection IV (EPF 8 each) and a single piece with Protection IV (EPF 4) would give a total EPF of 20 versus explosions. Any additional EPF would be wasted against explosions (but might be useful against other types of damage, if applicable).

If the damage is of a type that armor protects against normally, this reduction applies only to the damage that got through the armor.

It is possible using `/give` to obtain armor with an enchantment level higher than what is normally obtainable via normal survival. Using this method, a player could give themselves, for example, a full set of diamond armor with a Protection V enchantment on every piece. Following the algorithm above, we find that, because Protection V has an EPF of 5, the armor reaches the maximum EPF of 20 for all types of damage. Any higher Protection enchantments could be used to reach the cap with just one level XX (20) enchantment, rather than having a full set of enchanted armor, but would be wasted if all pieces shared the same level enchantment.

The table below shows all armor enchantments at their max levels:

Armor Enchantments at Max Levels
 Respiration
 Frost Walker
 Aqua Affinity
 Curse of Vanishing

Note: Only one form of protection can be applied to a piece of armor (i.e. a chestplate cannot have both Fire Protection and Blast Protection, unless using commands to get all protection enchants in one piece of armor). Feather Falling, Frost Walker, Depth Strider and Soul Speed are enchantments applicable only to boots. Respiration and Aqua Affinity are enchantments applicable only to helmets. Swift Sneak is enchantment applicable only to leggings.

### Durability

Any hit from a damage source that can be blocked by armor removes one point of durability from each piece of armor worn for every 4 of incoming damage (rounded down, but never below 1). The following chart displays how many hits each piece of armor can endure.

The chart below shows the durability per unit of material for each piece of armor, compared to that of the boots. Note that the durability per unit does not depend on the tier of the armor.

This means that for the same number of leather/iron ingots/gold ingots/chainmail/diamond, boots can take 1.5 more damage than leggings. Thus, chestplates and leggings offer more defense points per unit, but have less durability per unit.

Armor worn by a non-player mob does not lose durability when attacked by any means. Helmets that are worn by undead mobs lose durability when exposed to sunlight due to absorbing the mob's damage from sunlight.

Netherite armor does not lose durability from lava or fire damage.

## Mob armor

### Mobs equipping armor

Certain mobs can spawn equipped with random armor pieces. Some mobs also spawn with the ability to pick up the armor on the ground and equip them. The probability of mobs spawning equipped with armor, whether the armor is enchanted, the level of the enchantment of the armor, and how many pieces of armor a mob spawns with depends on the difficulty; if a mob spawns with armor, the tier of armor (leather, gold, etc.) has a fixed probability:

 Gold
 Chainmail
 Iron
 Diamond

It is impossible for zombies and skeletons to naturally spawn with netherite armor.

The protection provided by armor and armor enchantments works the same with mobs as it does with players.

The following mobs can spawn with armor:

* Zombie
	+ Baby Zombie
	+ Zombie Villager‌
		- Baby Zombie Villager‌
	+ Husk
		- Baby Husk
* Skeleton
	+ Stray
* Piglin

The following do not naturally spawn with armor, but they do pick up dropped armor on normal or hard difficulty:

* Drowned
	+ Baby Drowned
* Zombified Piglin
	+ Baby Zombified Piglin
* Wither Skeleton
* Zombie Villager‌
	+ Baby Zombie Villager‌

The following do not naturally spawn with armor, but they do pick up dropped armor and their armor does not render:

* Fox‌
	+ Baby Fox‌

These mobs can have armor equipped on them via dispensers, but do not pick up armor:

* Piglin Brute

These mobs can have armor equipped on them via dispensers, but their armor does not render:

* Villager
	+ Baby Villager

These mobs cannot wear armor through survival mode means, but if equipped with commands, their armor is visible:

* Giant‌
* Pillager‌
* Vindicator‌
* Evoker‌

All other mobs can be equipped via commands, although the armor cannot be seen. Helmets can protect mobs from burning in sunlight, depleting its durability as it absorbs the damage. Eventually, the helmet loses all of its durability and breaks. Pumpkins, mob heads, or anything placed into the head slot using commands, also protect mobs from burning in sunlight. Damage caused by any other source does not cause the mob's armor durability to decrease.

### Horse armor

Horse armor can be equipped on horses to protect them from mob and player damage.

## List of Armor

### Armor Sets

* Cloth
* Leather Armor
* Chainmail Armor
* Studded Armor
* Plate Armor
* Iron Armor
* Gold Armor
* Silver Armor
* Diamond Armor
* Netherite Armor
* Adamantine Armor
* Mithril Armor

### Shields

* Wooden Shield
* Leather Shield
* Buckler
* Iron Shield
* Gold Shield
* Silver Shield
* Diamond Shield
* Netherite Shield
* Adamantine Shield
* Mithril Shield
* Protect Cape
* Mirror Shield

### Bracelets

* Copper Bracelet
* Iron Bracers
* Gold Bracelet
* Silver Bracelet
* Opal Bracelet

### Necklaces

* Copper Locket
* Silver Locket
* Gold Locket
* Locket of Illusion
* Amulet of Sight
* Pixie Amulet
* Dragon Amulet
* Charm of Greed
* Charm of Bloodlust

### Rings

* Protect Ring
* Lapis Lazuli Ring
* Ruby Ring
* Invisibility Ring
* Fury Ring
* Numb Ring
* Static Ring
* Swill Ring

### Specialty Armor

* Wraith Shroud
* Speed Boots
* Flippers
* Turtle Shell
* Ribbon
* Gold Hairpin
* Bandages
* Elytra
* Mole Gloves
* Lead Boots
* Bandit Mask
* Bear Skin
* Bunny Slippers
* Dueling Glove
* Skiis