Armor encompasses items a character equips to their body slot, that provide the wearer defensive bonuses during combat, particularly increasing its Damage Reduction (DR) and Additional Damage Reduction (ADR), at the cost of reduced maximum Stamina and Essence. Your equipped armor also determines how stable you are against incoming attacks, and determines the intensity and recovery time of your reactions to successful enemy attacks.
Armor is grouped into different classes based on their weight: Light, Medium, and Heavy. Heavier armor provides more Damage Reduction, but has a greater impact on maximum Stamina and Essence, while lighter armor is not as protective but does not significantly impede your physical and magical endurance. In addition, heavier armor physically weighs more, taking up more of your overall carry capacity
Each class of armor also has a series of types (Hide, Brigandine, Plate, etc). All types of armor within class share the same Additional Damage Reduction, but vary in their Damage Reduction and Maximum Stamina/Essence penalty.
Note: The following stats are base stats, representing a common quality version of an armor with no upgrades.
Like weapons, armor is available in different quality levels: Common, Fine, Exceptional, Superb, and Legendary. Each quality level has three upgrades which may be crafted, which improve the stats of the armor.
Upgrading an armor's quality increases its Additional Damage Reduction. All armor upgrades across types (Light, Medium, Heavy) have the same resource costs, but differ in the amount of Additional Damage Reduction provided.
