Armor

Armor is used to protect the player from damage. There are many different kinds of armor that can be made of many different materials, from wood, all the way to iron plates. Each kind of armor gives small, or not so small, debuffs to things like movement speed or hunger rate. While each material provides increased protection and resistance.

Obtaining

All armor is accessible via crafting. Most metal armors have components made by smithing, except lamellae are cast.

Protection

The main goal of armor is protection. However, the armor model in Vintage Story is somewhat complex, with armor and damage tiers, relative and flat damage protection, and relative and flat damage loss by tier.

Basics

When it comes to armor, plate is the most protective, and pretty much the most expensive, as it requires plates on top of chainmail, which is on top of jerkin. It's important to simply understand how armor values are chosen. Basically, each construction, improvised, jerkin, etc., each have their own stat modifiers. A full set of iron plate slows you down just as much as a full set of copper plate, but iron is more protective. Generally, rarer and higher tier metals make better armor, iron is better than black bronze which is better than copper. So it's worth your resources to make good armor.

1. If the damage is not from a weapon, i.e. falling or starving, the armor has no effect.
2. The armor slot to damage is chosen, and each slot has a different chance to be damaged. The head has a 20% chance, the body has 50%, and the legs have 30%. If the chosen slot has no armor then full damage is applied.
3. Armor tier and damage tier are compared. If the damage tier is higher than the armor tier, different sets of losses are chosen.
4. The damage losses are applied for the damage tier. If the damage tier is high enough all protection could be negated.
5. Flat damage reduction is applied, then relative reduction.