armor How does armor durability work?

[VoxelMaster]

I've just finished crafting my first proper armor (i.e. not leather or bear armor), namely a set of bismuth bronze plate armor. Thinking I was finally ready to do some spelunking without getting one- or two-shot by any nightmare-level creatures I come across, I went underground to do some exploring (though it ended up more like fighting with a side of exploring).

Unfortunately, however, that endeavour was suddenly cut short by at least 40% of my HP bar evaporating when getting hit from a nightmare shiver in the middle of a brawl with some drifters.

To my surprise, it turns out that was because my armor breast piece had already dropped from 900 to zero durability, which seems very odd. Sure, I'd been fighting for a while, but given the amount of time it takes to craft the darn thing, I would expect a bit more lifetime. For reference how long I spent underground, I used up around 250 durability of my steel flax and ended up with around 30 flax fiber (having looted nearly everything I killed). I think the number of enemies was a bit more than double that.

Either way, now I'm curious how armor durability actually works. Clearly it's not 1 hit = 1 durability, because I'm certain I didn't get hit over 9000, uh, 900 times (plus whatever durability is missing from head & leg armor). Is it 1 durability per damage blocked? Does it depend on the damage tier?
Kind of bummed out about this. If it's gonna be more or less the same for steel plate, I don't know if I really want to invest the insane amount of time it takes to acquire and refine the amount of iron required (especially the long carburization process), plus the crafting time for the chain and plates themselves.

Also, according to the wiki, the chances for each piece to be selected upon getting hit are head = 20%, body = 50%, and legs = 30%. However, while my chest piece is broken (0/900), my helmet is still at 732/900 and my leg armor at at 759/900. That the helmet has lost more durability than the legs despite a supposedly lower chance is probably just coincidence, but it seems very strange to me that the chest piece is completely obliterated, while the rest of the armor (which, combined, should have the same chance of being hit as the chest) has only lost 309 durability, 3x less than what the chest lost. And that's not even counting any hits I took while the chest was already busted, nor that I used a shield for several of the hits I took (though not the majority).

Even if hits from nightmare creatures take ff more durability than other hits, it seems unlikely that the distribution is this uneven.

(Note: I do have mods installed, but none that should mess with armor)

[LadyWYT]

First off, welcome to the forums!

2 hours ago, VoxelMaster said:

bismuth bronze plate armor.

2 hours ago, VoxelMaster said:

nightmare shiver

Armor is a bit difficult to explain, but basically what happened is the armor you had equipped wasn't tough enough to handle that kind of enemy. Bronze gear is tier 2, and while plate specifically is resistant to higher tier damage, you were up against a tier 4 enemy. To be fair, bronze armor is better than nothing in this situation, but nightmare enemies hit HARD and bronze armor is mostly just buying you enough time to escape(though plate is the worst armor to try to escape in).

 

2 hours ago, VoxelMaster said:

Either way, now I'm curious how armor durability actually works. Clearly it's not 1 hit = 1 durability, because I'm certain I didn't get hit over 9000, uh, 900 times (plus whatever durability is missing from head & leg armor). Is it 1 durability per damage blocked? Does it depend on the damage tier?

Basically, what you want to do, is wear the appropriate tier of armor for whatever tier of enemy you're trying to face. For nightmare level enemies, this will be steel. However, if you're decently skilled, and have plenty of healing supplies to work with, iron will work just fine as well(or even gambeson), but you will need to be more cautious due to the armor not mitigating as much damage.

 

2 hours ago, VoxelMaster said:

Kind of bummed out about this. If it's gonna be more or less the same for steel plate, I don't know if I really want to invest the insane amount of time it takes to acquire and refine the amount of iron required (especially the long carburization process), plus the crafting time for the chain and plates themselves.

Fair warning, but nightmare level enemies are no joke, even with steel. Steel is very protective, but attacks from nightmare enemies are still going to hurt, and you're not going to want to be bogged down in an extended battle with them, if you can avoid it.

As for armor type, steel plate is the most protective, but it's generally better suited for base defense or caving, and not so much for adventuring. Steel chain tends to be the best for adventuring, since it offers great protection along with good movement and decent accuracy. Scale is similar to chain in that regards, but sacrifices some speed and ranged accuracy in return for a bit more protection. Brigandine has the worst protection of this tier, with more penalty to speed/accuracy than chain I believe, but the advantage of brigandine is that it's cheap to craft compared to its counterparts, which makes it a decent choice for adventuring.

2 hours ago, VoxelMaster said:

Even if hits from nightmare creatures take ff more durability than other hits, it seems unlikely that the distribution is this uneven.

(Note: I do have mods installed, but none that should mess with armor)

Which armor piece takes the hit is kinda luck-of-the-draw, to my knowledge, but as stated previously, the reason it was shredded so fast in this case was due to being the wrong tier of armor for nightmare enemies. A mod could be affecting things as well, so it doesn't hurt to double-check your modlist just in case something slipped through.

[VoxelMaster]

@LadyWYT thank you for the detailed answer!

That said, I'm already aware about the difference in tiers, and I know how hard nightmare creatures hit. In the same chain of combats I've faced off against a couple other nightmare-class creatures, I think two nightmare drifters and another nightmare shiver.

None of them dealt as much damage as that last shiver to me though (maybe 5HP or so) - if my armor hadn't broken down, I don't think I would have died when I did.

This is really just a question about durability, not about which armors allow me to tank damage the best.

 

PS: I guess I do have one question about armors ^^
Would you say steel chainmail is better than bronze plate against nightmare creatures? It's certainly not cheap either, but much more affordable than full plate armor.

[LadyWYT]

16 minutes ago, VoxelMaster said:

Would you say steel chainmail is better than bronze plate against nightmare creatures? It's certainly not cheap either, but much more affordable than full plate armor.

ABSOLUTELY! I'm not even joking with the emphasis there.  It's due purely to the material the armor is made from, since steel is the appropriate tier for nightmare monsters. Do bear in mind their attacks will still hurt, but the damage to both you and the armor will be less(for the armor, much less). 

 

18 minutes ago, VoxelMaster said:

This is really just a question about durability, not about which armors allow me to tank damage the best.

I gotcha. In that case, it's just a matter of picking the right material for the job. For nightmares, that's going to be steel. On my friend's server I have a set of steel brigandine that's been through the first couple of story locations, as well as several temporal storms and a couple of caving expeditions, and it's barely scratched. Steel might be expensive, but the expense is offset by just how durable and effective the stuff is at the job.