Armor
There are five primary locations for armor: torso, off hand (shield), head, arms and legs. When an attack hits it will be against one of these spots with the following probabilities:
| Torso |
28%
|
| Off Hand |
28%
|
| Head |
14%
|
| Arms |
14%
|
| Legs |
14%
|
If the character does not have a blocking item (shield) in his off hand, then those hits are applied to the torso.
The torso consists of three armor slots: leather & cloth; chainmail; plate - all three may be worn and will protect your torso.
Damage to the specific hit location is absorbed by two factors: the armor absorption (modified by the type of damage) and the overall armor absorption.
Armor absorption at the point of impact is equal to that specific piece of armor's absorption rating modified by the type of damage.
Armor can also be worn in other locations (such as feet) that are not specific hit locations. All armor contributes to an overall "absorption" value to reduce the damage you take from a hit. The contribution to overall absorption is 50% of the absorption rating of the item.
Specific hit location absorption is dependent on the armor type and damage type:
| Leather | Good against all damage types (x2) |
| Chainmail | Good against edged weapons (x2) |
| Plate | Good (x2) against everything except piercing damage. |
Armor Type Table
| Absorption | Agility Penalty | |
| Leather | 1 | -3 |
| Chainmail | 2 | -5 |
| Plate | 3 | -6 |
Each improved material type adds one point to the absorption. Each point of quality increases avoidance by 0.1%.
Example: a quality 12 suede leather tunic will have absorption of 2, agility penalty of -4 and an avoidance bonus of 1.2%
Let's look at a starting set of armor for your armored, but poor soldier - all equipment will be of lowest quality (Quality 0 and worst material):
| Absorption | Agility Penalty | Avoidance Bonus | Cost | Craft Time | |
| Bronze Plate Helm | 3 | -6 | 10 SP | 133 hrs | |
| Rawhide Leather Tunic | 1 | -3 | 2.5 SP | 33 hrs | |
| Bronze Chainmail Shirt | 2 | -5 | 15 SP | 177 hrs | |
| Rawhide Leather Arms | 1 | -3 | 2 SP | 27 hrs | |
| Rawhide Leather Leggings | 1 | -3 | 2 SP | 27 hrs | |
| Total | 8 | -20 |
Now let's attack this player with a run of the mill generic enemy (ignoring tactics and individual stats and skills) armed with a bronze long sword Q11 (edged weapon with 44% accuracy and 17 damage). Against an unarmored opponent this attack will do an average of 31 points of damage per hit or 13.64 points of damage per swing. Because of the agility penalty this attacker will now have a 52.8% chance to hit. Overall absorption is the total of 8 divided by 2 or "4" (all blows will be reduced by 4 points). Most of the time (56%) of the time the blow will land on the torso. When the torso is hit by an edged weapon the rawhide leather tunic will absorb 2 points and the bronze chainmail shirt will absorb 4 points. Thus a blow to the torso has a total reduction of 10 points. So for simplicity we will assume all blows to hit the torso giving this situation a resulting average damage of 21 points per hit or 11.1 points per swing. Our hero is now taking 18% less damage per round!
But of course this is a simplification since not all blows will hit the torso. Using Rhyslin's spreadsheet we get an average of 11.7 points per swing or a 14% advantage.
Cost / Crafting analysis: this set of armor would cost a total of ? SP (at a rough income of 1 SP per week that's almost a year); this set would take ? days to craft for a player that logs in every other day.
Note: this second case is currently inaccurate
Now lets look at the case of a more developed soldier with good armor (all Quality 12 and the second material type suede/iron):
| Absorption | Agility Penalty | Avoidance Bonus | |
| Iron Plate Helm | 4 | -6 | 1.2% |
| Suede Leather Tunic | 2 | -4 | 1.2% |
| Iron Chainmail Shirt | 3 | -5 | 1.2% |
| Iron Plate Cuirass | 4 | -6 | 1.2% |
| Iron Chainmail Arms | 2 | -5 | 1.2% |
| Iron Chainmail Leggings | 1 | -5 | 1.2% |
| Total | 16 | -31 | 7.2% |
Now let's attack this player with a run of the mill generic enemy (ignoring tactics and individual stats and skills) armed with a bronze long sword (edged weapon with 44% accuracy and 17 damage). Against an unarmored opponent this attack will do an average of 31 points of damage per hit or 13.64 points of damage per swing. Because of the agility penalty this attacker will now have a 57.64% chance to hit. But wait! The avoidance bonus from the quality of the armor means this really is 54.47%. Overall absorption is the total of 16 divided by 2 or "8" (all blows will be reduced by 8 points). Most of the time (56%) of the time the blow will land on the torso. When the torso is hit by an edged weapon the suede leather tunic will absorb 4 points, the iron chainmail shirt will absorb 6 points and the iron plate cuirass will absorb 8 points. Thus a blow to the torso has a total reduction of 26 points. So for simplicity we will assume all blows to hit the torso giving this situation a resulting average damage of 5 points per hit or 2.72 points per swing. Our hero is now taking 80% less damage per round!
Now imagine the attacker is only armed with a dagger doing an average of 21 points per hit. Because the dagger is a piercing not edged weapon the chainmail and plate armor is less effective, but still giving an absorption on a torso hit of 19, thus meaning that on average the dagger only scores a hit of 2 points of damage per hit! Wow... our armored hero is nearly immune to an enemy armed with a dagger! Just imagine if he had Mithrel armor and perhaps some bracers, shoes and other armor items! He would be nearly impossible to hurt!