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This article is about the current version of DF.

Armor is the protective equipment used to reduce/deflect damage during combat. It comes in several pieces, each one protecting a certain area. The purpose of each piece is pretty much self-explanatory. Note that breastplates only protect upper/lower torso areas, while mail shirts also cover the neck, the upper arms, and the upper legs.


Keeping in mind the armored enemies you are likely to meet, it is advisable to equip your military dwarves with at least iron armor. Testing in the arena shows that armored dwarves have a huge advantage over the unarmored ones, usually taking no casualties while making short work of their enemies. (But you shouldn't need this wiki to figure that out.) With more recent versions, armor slows down dwarves considerably more than it did in the past, making the Armor User skill much more important. In prior versions both movement and attack speeds were slowed by heavy armor. It's unknown whether this is still the case in v0.40.

Dwarven armor coverage chart
Model of a dwarf in armor.
Art by Alex Vasin



Armor's purpose is simple: to allow your dwarves to better withstand damage in combat. Where an unarmored dwarf would invariably suffer injury from a weapon strike, well-armored dwarves have a good chance of taking reduced damage or shrugging it off altogether. Potentially damaging blows become mere bruises and otherwise lethal or incapacitating wounds are reduced to serious ones. Clothes, though not specifically recognized by the game as armor, nonetheless function as such and may block weak attacks.

While a clothed dwarf is a better fighter than a naked one, an unarmored dwarf will still succumb to a goblin ambush in seconds. One clad in a full set of exceptional-quality steel armor, however, can absorb most of a goblin squad's ammunition and half a minute of its time before finally being killed. Unarmored or lightly-armored dwarves may suffice to deal with lone thieves and the local wildlife, but a serious army requires equally serious armor.

Types of armor[edit]



Torso Head Arm Leg Feet Shields (block attacks)
Mail shirt (upper body + lower body + neck + upper arms + upper legs)

and/or Breastplate (upper body + lower body)

Leather armor (upper body + lower body) Cap Gloves (hands) Leggings, made of chain Low boots (feet) Buckler

The first row is the more effective choice, while the second row is an alternative, offering less protection.


Armor skill[edit]



Shield skill[edit]



See also: Metal#Weapon and armor quality
Material Workshop Labor Notes
Metal Metalsmith's forge Armoring Best choice; see notes below
Bone Craftsdwarf's workshop Bone carving Leggings, greaves, gauntlets, and helms only
Shell Craftsdwarf's workshop Bone carving Leggings, gauntlets, and helms only
Leather Leather works Leatherworking Light and unencumbering but weak protection.
Cloth Clothier's shop Clothesmaking Limited protection, nearly useless against metal.
Wood Carpenter's workshop Carpentry Shield/buckler only (except elves)


Shields are a bit different than other pieces of armor. Their material doesn't affect how well they deflect attacks. Wood or leather, both being very light, are very effective.

Certain weapons are surprisingly good at penetrating armor. Copper whips will shatter skulls through steel helmets. science!

Armor material comparison
Poor Acceptable Good Excellent Best
Leather/Bone Copper Iron/Bronze* Steel Adamantine

*Bronze here also includes Bismuth Bronze, as both have the same values and are armor-grade metals. Black bronze can not be used for armor.

  • Bone armor can be crafted very early in the game from the bones of livestock or other animals.
  • Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin, requiring cassiterite. It is much improved over copper armor and is slightly stronger than iron, but also weighs more and is more elastic.
  • Iron can be smelted from hematite, limonite, or magnetite, and is easiest to find in sedimentary layers (though igneous extrusive layers may contain hematite). It is comparable to bronze, but is slightly weaker (but more rigid) and has a less complicated smelting process.

A detailed breakdown can be found here. Note that a full suit of any non-adamantine metal armor will considerably slow down a raw recruit of average strength, as shown briefly here.


Quality and strange moods[edit]


Designation Description Value
Sharpness  Weapon To-Hit /
Armor Deflect Modifier
 Item Name —     50%
-Item Name- Well-crafted 60% 1.2×
+Item Name+ Finely-crafted 70% 1.4×
*Item Name* Superior quality 80% 1.6×
≡Item Name≡ Exceptional 90% 1.8×
☼Item Name☼ Masterful 12× 100%
Unique name Artifact 120× 100%
«Item Name» Decorated object Varies Varies unknown


Dwarves in strange moods can produce legendary artifacts, which benefit from a 3x multiplier, three times as good as a more mundane piece of armor. Artifact-quality weapons-grade armor items are very strong defensively. However, artifacts can also be made of totally inappropriate materials, and the spectacularly low defensive values of a giant hedgehog bone leggings vastly outweigh any bonuses it gets. Fortunately, soldiers will not by themselves claim artifact equipment, it can only be issued by the overseer assigning it as specific item.



Dwarves that have used a particular piece of armor for an extended period of time may grow attached to it, becoming better at withstanding blows with it and unhappy if it is taken away. This is fine if it is a pair of ☼Steel Greaves☼, but a major problem if they are using what is meant to be interim armor. This happens less often with armor than it does for weapons. These events generate announcements.


There is no hard difference between clothing and armor, something accentuated by regular clothing's ability to block attacks. Armor can be thought of as metal clothing, thicker and made of materials that have a much better chance of blocking attacks. Armor is, however, different in that it is not subject to standard wear, and the fact that only non-clothing garments increase the armor user skill.

The availability of specific articles of clothing varies by civilization, and each has its own set of clothing that it can produce. In Fortress mode, sandals and shoes are in the same clothing class, but only the latter can be produced by dwarves, where the former must be stripped off of dead enemies. Dwarves are gender-insensitive; a male dwarf may well put on a dress.

Non-armor clothing can provide some defense, most importantly to areas that are not covered by regular armor. The ears, nose, lips, and teeth are always exposed, even in full armor. Robes and cloaks will provide a bulwark of low-level protection, making them useful for military dwarves, especially those you plan to send through the danger room.




Wearing a combination of 1 pair of metal gauntlets, 1 pair of metal boots, 1 metal helmet, and 1 metal mail shirt gives an armor level 2Verify (are armor levels still relevant in the new material properties-based mechanics?) layer metal armor that covers all areas without sacrificing speed due to encumbrance on non-armor users. This set-up will prevent most cutting and stabbing attacks from weapons below the armor's metal grade, but will still be vulnerable to crushing attacks, since no metal greaves or breastplate is worn. Lighter and weaker types of armor, like leather armor and bone greaves, can also be worn in addition to the metal layer to provide additional protection without encumbrance, and tend to be at least moderately effective if they are masterworks. Shields should be made of wood when possible because a copper shield could weigh up to 13 units of weight, and material does not matter for blocking attacks. However, wooden and leather shields wear out and break rather quickly in the new version when used to block, so in the long run a metal shield might be worth it.


Armor can suffer wear when it is struck in combat.v0.43.04 Whether armor is damaged in a fight depends on material differences (steel weapons can easily damage copper armor, etc.), and presumably also the power of the attacker. Armor is irreparable, so if it's destroyed in combat, new armor must be made or purchased to replace it.

Armor (and clothing) stored in a stockpile with the refuse category enabled experience accelerated wear—this is a "feature" intended to dispose of unwanted armor.Bug:5711


The layers are, in order from inner to outer:

  • Under
  • Over
  • Armor
  • Cover

Types of Protection[edit]

Material Requirements[edit]

The number of regular metal bars needed to make a piece of metal armor is equal to the material size divided by 3, rounded down with a minimum of one. The number of adamantine wafers or stacks of adamantine cloth required to create armor is equal to the material size.



Upper Body[edit]


Quiver and Backpack are also worn on the upper body, counting towards layer permit size.




Lower Body[edit]



Socks 1 C 10 15 Under 100% N/A N/A N/A




Note: Striking with a shield trains both misc object user and armor user skills. Additionally, shield material and quality only matters for bashing attacks and does not affect blocking. Source

Special procedurally generated armors[edit]

Some rare entities have their own procedurally generated armors. Currently, these armors are produced by copying the default properties of the "base" armor, and adding an adjective ("bulging", "segmented", "rounded", etc.). Dwarves in strange moods which select from all armors with a certain tag may produce one of these procedurally generated armors. Since they retain the properties of their base items, these armors should be as usable as standard armor of the base type.

Equipping clothing[edit]

Items in Dwarf Fortress must be equipped in a specific order. A dwarf must equip a layer type of Under before he equips a layer type of Over, for example. The complete order goes: Under, Over, Armor, Cover. It is common among civilians to see a dwarf equip pants with no undergarments due to this restriction, even when an undergarment is available. This issue doesn't typically occur with soldiers, however.


Process for equipping a new piece of clothing[edit]

The following variables will be used in the logic below:

Current Item refers to the specific item being equipped.


  • then checks if total size of items on each body part the current item would cover (excluding the current item's size) is less than or equal to the current item's permit.
  • in case of an Armor layer item, also checks whether its own size + permit value is greater than the total size of items already on the body part.
  • in case of any non-Cover item, the total size of items in the same layer including the current item has to be less than the smallest permit value among these items.
  • if all above logic is true, the dwarf will equip the item.

Equipment process example[edit]


Item Type Size Permit Total Size*
Mail Shirt 15 50 0
Mail Shirt 15 50 15
Mail Shirt 15 50 30
Breastplate [S] 20 50 45
Mail Shirt 15 50 65
Cloak 15 150 65
Cloak 15 150 80
Cloak 15 150 95
Cloak 15 150 110
Cloak 15 150 125
Cloak 15 150 140
Cloak 15 150 155

Size, Permit, and layering armor[edit]







Some more workarounds regarding Size, Permit and Layering[edit]



Now you want to add mail shirts. Each one has a permit of 50 and a size of 15. You can add three of these if you want. It checks the size against each of the armor pieces permit + size (or rather, the permit value ignoring that items size in the calculation), like so;


Now if you add a fourth mail shirt these tests will fail. However, because of the layering order (mail shirts being armor layer 2, the breastplate armor layer 3) the breastplate is added after the shirts. This results in the breastplate being dropped.


However, you can add cover layer items, in this case, cloaks. Each cloak has a size of 15 and a permit of 150. Taking into account the 50 size already on the upper body, we can add 100 size worth of cloaks. This lets us add 6 (x 15 = 90) cloaks over the existing armor.


1 x breastplate
3 x mail shirts
6 x cloaks

Armor (cheap)
6 x dress
3 x robe
3 x cloak

3 x long skirts
1 x greaves

Legs (no foreign items)
2 x trousers
1 x greaves

Legs (cheap)
2 x trousers
1 x leggings

1 x helm
6 x hood

1 x pairs of gauntlets
1 x pairs of mittens

Gloves (cheap)
2 x pairs of gloves
1 x pairs of mittens

Boots †
1 x pairs of chausses
1 x pairs of high boots

Boots (no foreign items) †
1 x pairs of socks
1 x pairs of high boots

Boots (cheap) †
1 x pairs of socks
1 x pairs of shoes

To produce a set of full armor for a single dwarf (assuming you use no foreign items), you would require 14 metal bars and 16 units of cloth (or silk or yarn.)


Note: "Cheap" implies the sets can be made from secondary materials such as bone and cloth, with item types not overlapping with the other, more combat oriented sets which use metal, leather and cloth (for socks). As a rule of thumb, combat sets provide better protection, but cheap sets are lighter and easier to mass-produce.







Mail shirts have [UBSTEP:1], so cover the upper arms and neck.






Dwarven armor coverage chart




Low boots literally only cover the foot.

The whole method is pretty nifty, even though faces can't be covered by head armor. This means that mouths, noses, eyes, and cheeks are as vulnerable as if you were not wearing anything at all, even if the name of an article of clothing would normally imply that it protects them. This also applies to teeth, lips, and ears.


Other Restrictions[edit]


Also, if you do not tell dwarves to replace clothing with a uniform, they will wear it alongside the uniform and possibly come into conflict with layering and sizes/permits, making them unable to wear assigned items. Particularly, caps conflict with helms (both are shaped items), and shoes are too large to fit inside boots.


In adventurer mode, you have direct control over what armor you put on, and are only limited by permit and "one only" (shaped) restrictions. This means you can wear three suits of mail (total size 45) plus another suit of chain or plate on top of them. On top of this, you can add six cloaks.



"Armor" in other Languages Books-aj.svg aj ashton 01.svg
Dwarven: tosid
Elvish: datome
Goblin: nuklat
Human: stalcon