40d:Armor

Armor

Armor is a class of clothing items that your dwarves can wear for protection to keep them alive longer. Armor can range from simple clothing, light weight shell, bone and leather, to heavy chain mail and plate mail.

Giving your dwarves protective garments will help to keep them alive in combat, as well as safe from the elements. It will also protect them against sparring injuries and may develop their Armor user skill.

While clothing is not something that you need to worry about in the first few years of your fortress, after some time the clothing your dwarves wear will start to wear away. Wearing old or tattered clothes creates unhappy thoughts, and having clothing wear away completely creates an even bigger one. Civilians will not wear armor other than clothing. Assign them to be miners or lumberjacks if you're concerned about them, since they'll carry axes and picks then even if they're not drafted.

Making armor

Depending on the type and material, different dwarves with specific skills are needed to make armor. While clothes aren't necessarily armor, they do offer limited protection. Shell and bone armors are made by a bone carver at a craftsdwarf's workshop. Chain mail and plate mail are made by an armorer at a metalsmith's forge. The type of metal used affects the effectiveness of the armor. Leather armors are made at a leather works by a leatherworker. Skilled craftdwarves, leather workers and armorers will produce better quality armor that multiplies the effectiveness of the item.

Quality

Toady has stated that item quality increases its protection (or damage, in the case of weapons), namely, "Quality has a huge effect on damage and damage reduction... Exceptional is almost double damage/damage block."

Symbol	Name	Damage reduction multiplier
Item	Basic armor	x1.0
-Item-	Well-crafted armor	x1.2
+Item+	Finely Crafted armor	x1.4
*Item*	Superior Quality armor	x1.6
≡Item≡	Exceptional armor	x1.8
☼Item☼	Masterful armor	x2.0

Material

Better materials provide better protection, according to the following table:

Material	Modifier %
Adamantine	500
Steel	133
Iron	100
Bronze or Bismuth bronze	75
Copper	66
Other metals/materials (leather, cloth, bone, shell, wood, etc.)	50

Using Armor

To tell a dwarf to wear armor in Fortress Mode, view the dwarf, go to preferences, then soldiering. There you can select the highest level of armor he should wear: clothes, leather, chain, or plate. Shield level is selected separately. You can also set the armor level for many dwarves at once on the military screen, under weapons.

Upgrading a civilian dwarf's armor level will not take effect unless they are activated as soldiers. Civilians will not wear armor other than clothing, except for those given the Hunting labor (provided their armor level is set above "clothing"). This will, however, cause them to go out into the wilderness and hunt any wild animal they encounter. If you set dwarves' armor level above their current set of armor (for instance, 'plate' when they are wearing chain armor), they will replace their current armor level and use armor of the better armor level when it is available. Unfortunately, dwarves do not make a distinction between different materials or item qualities, so if they are already wearing a helm (of, say, copper), they will not pick up a steel helm, as they are of the same armor level.

The solution is to set the dwarf's armor level to 'clothes', so that they drop their armor altogether, then station them standing on top of the pieces of armor you want them to wear (typically located on an armor stockpile or still in the forge) and set their armor to the desired level again. Hopefully you can get them to complete the operation without wandering off to find a set of civilian clothes to wear first. A similar technique can be used to get dwarves to change weapons as well (from an iron short sword to an obsidian one, for instance). This can be effectively managed by using the [q] tool to edit stockpiles to store only certain kinds of item materials. You could for instance keep a Stockpile of bone and wood bolts as well as silver weapons behind a door near the barracks, so you can lock up the crappy stuff when the goblins are at the door. In older versions of the game, armor would be stored on an Armor stand -- a piece of furniture which could also be used to define a room as a barracks. However, both armor stands and weapon racks proved to be buggy, and their "container" status has currently been disabled. For now, store your armor in a stockpile dedicated for the purpose.

Sometimes dwarves will ignore the armor they are standing on top of, and go put on the armor they had just removed. The best way to avoid this is to get rid of the inferior armor -- either by chasming it, melting it (if metal), or trading it away. This may take some time to carry out, meaning you must leave some of your soldiers at "clothing" armor level for a while until the unwanted pieces are disposed of. Keep in mind when melting armor pieces that only about 30% of the metal is recovered, so you should avoid making excess quantities with your most precious metal (steel, generally) unless you have a legendary armorsmith.

Heavy armor can reduce dwarves' speed, especially when they wear several pieces. Being Strong will reduce this problem, as will Armor user skill (gained by fighting or sparring in armor). Extremely Strong dwarves can generally wear a complete suit of plate armor without being burdened. Armor User at "Expert" level is also generally enough to eliminate the burden of a full suit of plate, even for a dwarf without any Strength attribute. Experiment in adventure mode in order to find out more how this system works.

As an emergency measure, a dwarf who is about to be hammered can be turned into a military recruit and set to "Plate" armor level; if they manage to don the suit before being captured, it will reduce the damage they take.

Armor Levels

Slot	Leather	Chain	Plate
Head	leather cap and/or helm	metal cap and/or helm	helm
Upper Body	leather armor	chain mail	plate mail
Lower Body	leather leggings	metal/bone/shell leggings	greaves
Foot	leather low/high boot	metal low/high boot	metal low/high boot
Hand	nothing	gauntlet	gauntlet

Types of Protection

Garments fit on different body parts depending on the item in question, and require different orders based on material sometimes. They may additionally protect upper and lower arms and legs, depending on the garment. Dwarves do not seem to make a distinction between genders when selecting clothing to wear, so don't be startled when you see them running around in dresses. There is no real difference between armor and clothing, except that maybe only non-Clothing Garments may increase the Armor user skill.

This list only lists equipment Dwarves should be able to manufacture, from the file \raw\objects\entity_default.txt

Body Part	Clothing	Weight	Block	Fiber/Silk	Leather	Bone	Shell	Metal	Wood	Size	Permit
Head	Cap	10	20	Clothes	Clothes			Leather		10	15
	Helm[S]	20	60		Leather	Leather	Leather	Chain		30	20
	Hood	10	20	Clothes	Clothes					10	100
Upper Body	Chainmail	75	50/30					Chain		15	50
	Cloak	10	5/5	Clothes	Clothes					15	150
	Coat	50	15/15	Clothes	Clothes					20	50
	Dress	10	3/3	Clothes	Clothes					10	50
	Leather Armor[S]	50	20/20		Leather					20	50
	Platemail[S]	150	70/50					Plate		20	50
	Robe	10	5/5	Clothes	Clothes					20	100
	Shirt	10	3/3	Clothes	Clothes					10	50
	Tunic	10	5/5	Clothes	Clothes					10	50
	Vest(*)	10	2/2	Clothes	Clothes					10	50
Hands	Gauntlets[S]	25	60			Chain	Chain	Chain		20	15
	Gloves	10	60	Clothes	Clothes					10	10
	Mittens	10	60	Clothes	Clothes					15	20
Lower Body	Greaves[S]	60	70			Plate		Plate		15	30
	Leggings[S]	40	50		Leather	Leather	Leather	Chain		15	30
	Trousers	20	20	Clothes	Clothes					15	30
Feet	High Boots	20	60		Leather			Chain		25	15
	Low Boots	15	60		Leather			Chain		25	15
	Shoes	10	60	Clothes	Clothes					20	15
Shield	Buckler	15	60(10%)		Buckler			Buckler	Buckler	Just	One
	Shield	50	60(20%)		Shield			Shield	Shield	Just	One

(*) = Not currently manufactable ^{v0.28.181.39e}

[S] = Max one [S] per body slot(eg. only one plate mail, and no greaves and Leggings on top)

The Value in each hex represents the kind of armor a specific piece of armor counts as.

The "weight" figure is for items made of metal. Metal armor may be made from copper, bronze, iron, or steel, and weigh the same regardless of which metal they are made of. Leather, plant cloth, bone, and shell items weigh half as much, adamantine items weigh one-eighth as much, and silk items one-tenth as much. Certain items (such as Leather Armor) cannot be made of metal, so their weights will always be half that listed in the table.

The Size and Permit values dictate how you stack armor. A dwarf who is authorized to use a certain type of armor that he can find easily(as in a stockpile), when he's not terribly busy, will go there and pick it up and use it depending on these variables. The dwarf has a Layer for every body slot. As he wears Garments, their' Size add to the body slot the items belong to(Head, Upper Body, etc.). When this layer variable is OVER an item's Permit, then the dwarf will not consider to wear that item. This means that you can Cram a dwarf into one plate mail and three chain mails. The last chain mail went over the chain mail's limit of 50, so no more chain mail. Dwarves in Fortress mode will use the lowest permit of all the items they are wearing, and the code for finding and evaluating new equipment has some quirks that can lead to rather odd equipment setups, including the seeming inability for Fortress dwarves to wear cloaks unless set to "clothes" armor level. In adventure mode you can use a hefty bunch of cloaks on top of your Plate mail and 3 Chain mails though, since you are not at all prohibited by the search algorithms of Fortress dwarves.

Other Sizes

Beware! Dwarves can not wear any armor that is named 'large', 'narrow' or 'small' (elves', goblins'...) (except large rat leather armor :-) ). The smug traders will not warn you of this.

Requirements

Creating plate mails requires three bars of metal to forge. Chain mails and greaves require two bars. All other metal armors require one bar. Note that making gauntlets or boots will always produce a pair (a left and right gauntlet, or two boots) from one bar of metal. A full suit of leather armor requires four leather pieces to manufacture, a full suit of chain armor requires six metal bars, and a full suit of plate armor requires eight metal bars. This does not include shields.

Bone greaves require three stacks of bone to make (the stacks can be of any size), and bone leggings require two stacks; all other bone and shell items (including shell leggings) require one stack of bone/one shell to make.

Shields and Bucklers

Shields and bucklers come in all the same material flavours as armor, but offer a slightly different form of protection. While armor absorbs some of the damage from all successful attacks, a shield provides complete protection from some attacks. In Adventure Mode, a successful block may also grant the defender an immediate free counterattack. Bucklers weigh less than shields, making them useful for more mobile Marksdwarves, but provide less protection.

Shields work by offering a chance for an instantaneous deflection. Shields provide a 20% chance of total deflection, while bucklers provide a 10% chance of deflection. This chance of deflection is then altered by the wielder's Shield user skill, although the exact mechanics are unknown.

Fun Facts

• Dwarves will not switch to Metal greaves by themselves if they already wear bone greaves.
• Dwarves will not take off leather armor or chain mail when allowed a higher armor class; they will also keep what they wear. They will however switch between leggings and greaves.
• Dwarves feel it's perfectly normal to wear one leather low boot and one steel high boot. If it fits, it fits, right?